User:Alharaka/Egyptian Emergency Law

Emergency law in Egypt was first enacted in 1958, as Law No. 162 of 1958 and has remained in effect since 1967, except for an 18-month break in 1980. The emergency was imposed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and reimposed following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

Details of the law
Under the law, police powers are extended, constitutional rights suspended and censorship is legalized. The law sharply circumscribes any non-governmental political activity, and street demonstrations, non-approved political organizations, and unregistered financial donations are formally banned. Some 17,000 people are detained under the law, and estimates of political prisoners run as high as 30,000.

Under state of emergency, the government has the right to imprison individuals for any period of time, and for virtually no reason, thus keeping them in prisons without trials for any period. The government continues the claim that opposition groups like the Muslim Brotherhood could come into power in Egypt if the current government did not forgo parliamentary elections, confiscate the group's main financiers' possessions, and detain group figureheads, actions which are virtually impossible without emergency law and judicial-system independence prevention. Pro-democracy advocates in Egypt argue that this goes against the principles of democracy, which include a citizen's right to a fair trial and their right to vote for whichever candidate and/or party they deem fit to run their country.

Extensions
The Emergency Law has been continuously extended every three years since 1981. In 2006, President Hosni Mubarak promised reforms including repealing the Emergency Law, replacing it with other measures. However, he then renewed the Emergency Law.

During the 2011 January protests, a key demand by the protestors was to end emergency law. While then President Hosni Mubarak indicated he would repeal Emergency Rule, this was unsatisfactory. After Mubarak's resignation on 11 February 2011, the military claimed they would remove the law when the streets finally clear of protesters.