Calling the groups that paraded the city of Asyut with arms last month ‘people’s committees’ is reminiscent of the revolutionary days in which civic initiatives created regional committees to maintain security after the collapse of the police on January 28, 2011.

Calling the groups that paraded the city of Asyut with arms last month ‘people’s committees’ is reminiscent of the revolutionary days in which civic initiatives created regional committees to maintain security after the collapse of the police on January 28, 2011.

The distinction between the two periods of time, however, is great, according to Muhammad Hassan, a member of the Egyptian People’s Committee League.  Hassan believes that the regional committees were voluntary, spontaneous and civilized and their members did not commit any violations. The current committees of the Islamic forces he says, show the organized militia nature of these forces, which displayed fascist features during the events of the Presidential Palace when they arrested, tortured and even killed opponents.

Hassan describes that call as the final nail in the coffin of the state of law, stressing that it is destined to fail, especially with the declining popularity of the Islamists. Since the revolution broke out against the bullying practices of the police, he says, people will not allow individuals of no capacity to reproduce such practices.

Using rights to cover ill intentions

What about the police force that will be replaced? Will it accept losing its functional capital? What is the favorable circumstance that has allowed the Islamists’ authority to try to depose it?

Admin of the “Police Officer Revolution” page and member of Asyut Police Officer Coalition, Captain Muhammad Shalabi, believes that the Islamic forces’ attempt to control state institutions, including security forces, is what show the police’s demands as conflicting, since they call for functional as well as technical rights.

“The setback experienced now by the police is caused by the practices of the regime itself, which neglected our scientific studies to restructure the police, change its philosophy and consider the policemen’s demands as important as those of society segments,” he explained.

Article 37 of the Criminal Law, he says, allows the witnesses of a crime to turn the culprit over to police, i.e. a right that is not tantamount to the police authority, but this right is used by the regime to cover ill intentions since it is flagrantly trying to intervene in the affairs of the police force and form parallel security services given that the attorney general has covered the proposal of Islamic powers through incorrectly redefining or interpreting that Article, saying that citizens are entitled to arrest others.

When asked about blaming them by the Islamic forces for insecurity, Shalabi stressed that the responsibility fell upon the regime, which rejected the proposals of police development and construction of a doctrine for the police to rebuild the citizens’ trust in it as a service agency. He suggested that the police would decisively and legally deal with those who impersonate policemen, of whatever political affiliation, in order to avoid a chaos in Egypt.

Civil war cloud

 “This is the road to perdition,” says Hamed Jaber, a leading figure of the Dignity Party Rescue Bloc, commenting on the issue of the committees. He explains that the crisis is a regime that is manipulating the law. Citizens’ right to arrest defendants  in criminal cases, he says, has been in place for ages, which contradicts the attorney general’s last statement.

He suggests that such practices can only be called as an attempt to break up the state after failing to overpower it, and that vesting the power of judicial arrest in private security companies, as the regime is trying to do now, is but a carefully designed civil war scheme.

At the human rights level, director of the Arab Network of Human Rights Information, Gamal Eid, says apart from the police reform initiatives presented by the police itself, several initiative have been provided by the civil society for more than a year to restructure the police in terms of human rights, but neither the Islamic regime nor the Military Council before it paid attention to them. Instead, the minister of justice and the attorney general who was dismissed through a court order devoted their time to repairing laws that were only suitable to establishing militias.

Popular support rather than replacement

The statements made by the media advisor of the Salafist Construction and Development Party, Khaled Shareef, seemed more like withdrawing when he said that the rumors about the initiative of the people’s committees were mere fabrications, since they only met with some police commanders to ensure the support of people, and that these committees, whose relevant law was discussed by the Shura Council, were supportive rather than alternative of the police.