Thursday, March 09, 2006

Lawsuits against Danish, Norwegian and French Ambassadors to Egypt over Cartoons

The Egyptian daily Al Gomhuria newspaper has this story (Arabic) today that I find it very strange and funny. But I think this only can happen in Egypt...a true Banana Republic... I am seriously stunned.

The popular paper says the leader of an Egyptian political party, who was not named, five lawyers and one citizen have filed a lawsuit against the ambassadors of Denmark, Norway and France to Egypt demanding that the three ambassadors apologise to Muslims in Egypt and all over the world, as well as pay L.E. 6 billions for insulting Muslims.

It explains the plaintiffs are asking for condemning the Ambassadors as they represent their countries and sentencing them according to the Egyptian penal law and for civil indemnity that amount to L.E. 2001 that should reach L.E. 6 billions to be allocated to disaster damages in the Islamic world. The plaintiffs believe that the Islamic world was stabbed in the most precious pillars of its lifw which is its faith.

Why this is a Banana Republic?
  1. Diplomats cannot be sued. They have immunity from prosecution.
  2. If Egypt jurisdiction resigns to such lawsuits that puts Egypt in trouble. This means that Egypt is not complying with international agreements and obligations governing diplomacy.
  3. Press in Egypt is not responsible enough to disseminate misleading information to the people, making them believe in unrealistic victories over the west.

3 Comments:

At 5:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was going to write something about the many more countries that could be sued, the foreign aid for Egypt and the aid for victims of disasters already given, but I'm out of words.

 
At 6:06 AM, Blogger Richard Fouad said...

why r u stunned ?
no one in egypt is responsible for anything...not only the press nor the lawsuits ..even the dogs,every nature is either misleaded or leaded by ignorance...as our popular say : obey our mawlana and the melon of mawlana

 
At 7:52 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not familiar with Egyptian affairs, so my reaction is more directed at the article taking the lawsuit serious. I guess the Minister of Foreign Affairs should have been interviewed to tell, how the official Egypt thinks about it.

This lawsuit has not yet been reported in my country, which is one of the three mentioned.

At the moment the tourist industry in Egypt reportedly are seeing a 20-25% decrease in numbers of tourists. With all this cartoons thing, the demonstrations, the boycott, the reports of tourist beeing kicked out of cabs in Cairo tourists this year go to Spain, Italy and Greece instead.
Tourists are also staying away from Turkey.
When planning vacation with your children, nobody wants to go to a place, they are not welcome. And at the moment the general impression is, that people from the "West" as well as our political ideas are not welcome.
The trend is seen in all of Europe.

From my general impression I never thought of Egypt as a Banana Republic before. If a lawsuit is to take place, then it will be seen as if Egypt as a country doesn't aggre - as FFE put it - with international agreements and obligations governing diplomacy.
And it will in my opinion have severe consequenses for the image of Egypt.

 

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