Citation

Abozaid AM. Aggress. Violent Behav. 2020; 51: e101385.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.avb.2020.101385

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since 2013, the Egyptian regime proclaims that it is involving in ruthless fight against terrorism; its strategy suffers from multiple flaws. It violates basic human rights, restricting freedoms and prohibits opposition against the government by labelling it with terrorist offences. This study investigates the way human rights and counterterrorism is portrait in Egypt's counterterrorism law no. 94 of 2015 in order to illustrate the correlation between counterterrorism discourse and human rights abuse in the post-revolutionary Egypt. By using the Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) approach and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) method to analyse the counterterrorism discourse in Egypt since the outbreak of the Arab Uprising of 2011, the study argues that the real purpose of counterterrorism discourse of the Egyptian regime after 2013 is to (1) construct an atmosphere where the state's violations of human rights are not only normalised or legitimise but also justifiable, uncritically and unaccountable; (2) establish a new legal and political legitimacy for the post 30 of June 2013 regime; (3) silencing all critics and corrective attempts that pursue to constrain authoritarianism and terrorism temptations to risk vulnerable individuals; (4) prevent the efforts of find a solution to terrorism away from military and coercive intervention. The study finds that the more Egyptian authorities violate human rights and rely on excessive use of force under the name of fighting terrorism, the faster terrorism grows. The counterterrorism law of 2015 adopted a broad, ambiguous and politicalised definition of terrorism in order to prevents any claims of reform or democratization. By associated political opposition with terrorists activities, Egypt demonises requests for political reform and de-legitimatise 'peaceful' opposition against the rules of the country, their families, public servants, and any public institutions.

Language: en

Keywords

Counterterrorism; Critical terrorism studies; Egypt; Human rights; The Arab uprising