Analysis by Zeina Dagher, Staff Writer and Cherly Abou Chabke, Staff Writer

June 12th, 2020

With the current civil unrest in the US Staff Writers of The Phoenix Daily explore, compare, and contrast the catalysts, incentives to mobilization, and fundamental inequalities of the US in 2020 and the Arab world in 2011 in a two-part series, The US Protests: An American Spring?

Part (1) of this series has previously compared unemployment, low wages, healthcare, and education in both the Arab countries and the US. Part (2) will now bring light to elements that characterize authoritarian regimes (or the start of them), found evidently in both regions.

While the mentioned factors played a major role in getting people to the streets, the catalyst element of the Arab Spring was arguably first and foremost: police brutality. It was after having been harassed by Tunisian police that Bouazizi immolated himself, and Egyptian protesters took to Tahrir Square in early 2011 after images of 28-year old Khaled Said emerged, brutally beaten to death by police in Alexandria. Police brutality often accompanies authoritarian regimes, and was especially found in Arab countries to repress any objections to implementing the IMF’s austerity measures, or any uprisings protesting the poor living conditions. Egypt under Mubarak’s regime particularly experienced it, with many local and international rights groups denouncing torture and abuse by police. According to the 2009 Human Rights Report from the U.S. State Department, "Domestic and international human rights groups reported that the Ministry of Interior (MOI) State Security Investigative Service (SSIS), police, and other government entities continued to employ torture to extract information or force confessions. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights documented 30 cases of torture during the year 2009.” In fact, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has documented 567 cases of torture (including 167 deaths) by police from 1993 to 2007. Social media had helped bring light to these human rights violations, with pictures and stories constantly circulating. For example, a Facebook page was created after Khaled Said’s death called “We are all Khaled Said”, and was successful in bringing nationwide attention to the case. 

Police brutality was a quasi-constant in the US’s history, and is the primary reason why riots are happening today all across the country. Most White communities, involving White police departments, were unfamiliar with the presence of African Americans, controversially, and reacted to their ‘increasing numbers’ with fear and hostility, attitudes that were exacerbated by deeply embedded racist stereotypes which nurtured segregation. According to Mapping Police Violence, there were only 27 days in 2019 where police didn’t kill someone. As we’ve seen in all the other points, Black citizens are much more targeted that White people: they are 3 times more likely to be killed by police, while being 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed. In fact, the recent events have revealed endless lists of names of police brutality victims of Black communities, many who were not even known before. That is because there is rarely any accountability: 99% of killings by police from 2013 to 2019 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime.

The Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013 with the use of the now widespread hashtag, to protest the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin in February 2012. Yet, police brutality goes a long way back. It was particularly prevalent during the Civil Rights Movement era, where many groups (like the Black Panther Party) formed in response to police brutality from disproportionally white police departments. Media coverage of the assaults sparked national outrage, and public sympathy for the movement grew rapidly as a result. Even in the following years, race was always closely linked to police brutality cases, and the media almost always played a major role in starting protests or race riots. The videotaping and broadcasting of the arrest and beating of Rodney King in 1991 by the LAPD was the key incident that had the 1992 LA riots break out, for example. Nevertheless, police brutality isn’t limited to race issues.

During the Vietnam War, anti-war protests were almost always met with extreme police violence. Later, in 1969, President Nixon’s “War on drugs” was marked by increased police misconduct, especially targeting minorities. After the attacks of 9/11, a 2006 report prepared for the UNHRC, stated that in the U.S. the “War on Terror” arguably “created a generalized climate of impunity for law enforcement officers, and contributed to the erosion of what few accountability mechanisms exist for civilian control over law enforcement agencies. As a result, police brutality and abuse persist unabated and undeterred across the country.” Today, protests and riots that broke out after the George Floyd killing by police, are also met with extreme police brutality. Numerous incidents have been exposed in disturbing videos and press accounts in recent days, with little sign that police are adjusting their tactics. From tear gas, to rubber bullets, pepper spray, batons, hands, feet, vehicles… Pictures of bloodied protesters, as well as journalists, are emerging and being shared every day on social media, no one is being spared.

While “Arab slave trade is a fact of history and anti-black racism is a fact of current reality”, corrupt politicians are mainly the predominant reason that lead to the rise of the Arab Spring- rather than racist politicians like the case of the US. In fact, oppression, poverty, authoritarianism, conniving capitalism, and clientelism, that devoured the political system of many Arab countries for years, and that questioned the very existence of the “rule of law” in most of these countries, constituted the bedrock of the Arab Springs. With national anger, ages of autocratic rule and lack of political freedom, and after Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation -the straw that broke the camel’s back- uprisings occurred around the the country, and quickly widespread over the Arab world. Civil protests urging those in power to resign; the most common slogan of these uprisings being: “the people want to bring down the regime.” Within only a year, a series of changes occurred: revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that climaxed the fall of the two regimes; a Yemeni civil war leading to the abolishment of the regime; civil uprisings in Yemen and Syria; massive protests in Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Oman, and Iraq; and minor uprisings in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.

The US may not have had corrupt governors ruling for over 20 years, but isn’t an important part of the American citizens now demanding the resignation of the actual president (just like the Arab people did)? Isn’t it the first time ever, that the same cause united the 50 states around the same goal, or have all some sort of awakening (just like the Arab countries did)? Isn’t the fight against certain politicians, connecting people all over the states to stand together (just like the Arab societies did)? The US seems to be characterized by many racist politicians that continue to ‘poison’ the American society, despite existing legislation, proving therefore the institutional racism in the country that cripples the growth of the Black communities. Although, Trump described himself in 2016 to The Washington Post as “the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered”, some continue to affirm that “race is the original sin of the modern Republican Party”, with the very controversial tweets and comments on African-Americans, Indigenous Peoples, Hispanics, Women, Muslims… For instance, in 2019, President Trump tweeted that 4 Black and Brown congresswomen should go back to where they came from (insinuating Africa?), then attacked Elijah Cummings, the Baltimore, then Al Sharpton, told Black voters back in 2016  “what do you have to lose?’’, said in 1993 that Native American casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “they don’t look like Indians to me”… And all of this fuels police brutality against minorities. It’s no surprise that within this context the question of the racial justice systems is discussed.

Starting off with the Arab world, the justice system may have been known as “arbitrary” and “biased”, which is the case of many countries, in which governments exercise full control over the courts and can therefore convict defendants without fair trials. Taking Egypt’s example, arbitrary and excessive use of probation measures “against peaceful activists and individuals convicted after unfair trials” have also occurred in the country. Not to mention that the lack of “judicial independence” is an ultimate problem in the region, and specifically in Lebanon today, whose situation in all other fields is already going downhill.

However, it is fundamental to acknowledge that these qualifications, applied to certain Arab countries, affect a whole specific, targeted community in the US. Below are the extremely emblematic statistics of the deep-rooted racism in the American judicial system. A 2018 Post investigation “found that murders of White people are more likely to be solved than murders of Black people. There’s also a strong correlation between areas that are Black-majority and low-income and the areas with the lowest clearance rate for homicides”. Likewise, a study published in June 2018 reviewed every reported homicide between 1976 and 2009 and established that “homicides with white victims are significantly more likely to be ‘cleared’ by the arrest of a suspect than are homicides with minority victims.” According to figures from the National Registry of Exonerations (NER) “Black people are about five times more likely to go to prison for drug possession than white people. According to exoneration data, Black people are also 12 times more likely to be wrongly convicted of drug crimes”. Not to mention that over the past few years an alarming question keeps on being asked: Do Public Defenders Spend Less Time on Black Clients? with the talk about “implicit bias”, especially after “San Francisco public defender Mark Jacobs addressed a group of potential jurors in the murder trial of a young Black man and asked them point-blank to consider whether they might judge him more harshly because of his race”, in early 2016.

Looking at the facts, protests on the streets can be easily justified. Nonetheless, the President’s response to control the so-called “civil disobedience acts”, through the possible use of the “martial law”, has sparked some interest to look further into the situation of the Arab world. The martial law, implies basically the “temporary rule by military authorities of a designated area in time of emergency when the civil authorities are deemed unable to function”. It’s impossible to overlook this definition that is somehow linked to the Arab world. It goes without saying that the army is at the epicenter of almost every concern related to the Middle East. In many Arab countries, there’s a very tough alliance and entanglement between the military and political actors, to the extent of pointing out a “militarization of power”. Therefore, even if the stakes of using the “martial law” are low in the US, it seems very convincing to question the peculiarity of this practice in our analysis in order to convey the possible resemblance to the Arab world, in this particular domain. Concerns over the violation of human rights during protests were brought up during the Arab Spring and during the Lebanese revolution, in which people were getting arrested arbitrarily while protesting. What seems to be surprising now in the american protests, is that Habeas Corpus has been suspended, which means that anyone can be imprisoned indefinitely now in New York City without reason. NYC judge James Burke has suspended Habeas Corpus, in response to George Floyd protests, to regain control of the city. In that case NYPD has specifically been given the “go-ahead” to indefinitely detain peaceful protestors who violate NYC curfew.  Is the land of democracy really the land of democracy?

After questioning the reality of the principles that mold the US, we must also address the rest of the issues that contributed to the ongoing state of quandary in the different states. Just like the majority of countries in the Arab world, the United States suffers from a mass incarceration problem that heightens the existing inequalities within the system leading to the rise of riots. Arab countries notably Egypt, suffer from overcrowding problems in unhealthy, “not fit for humans” penitentiaries. A May 2015 report from the National Council for Human Rights stated that police stations were 300% over capacity and prisons 160% over capacity. 

While many prisons in the States face the same overcrowding issue with an increased prison population of 700% since 1970 -- as 2.3 million people are in jail and prison today, far outpacing population growth and crime”, it is also vital to note the racially disproportionate numbers of incarcerated people: “One out of every three Black boys born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino boys—compared to one of every 17 White boys”.  In fact, this is an issue that goes way back to the times where slavery was being abolished in America. The 13th amendment that came to abolish slavery stated that slavery or involuntary servitude was illegal in the US unless it was a punishment for crime. White Americans were in fear of the economy collapsing without all the free labor, so they started arresting Blacks for trivial things such as loitering, fitting the vague description of “a criminal”, and even homelessness. And there was the start of mass incarceration, still a major phenomenon today. While this issue seems to be quite polemic, it is important to address all the possible concerns that may add up to the myriad of challenges Americans are being subject to and that drove them to take the streets. 

2020 must unquestionably be the year of surprises, since the US - “a crucial vector and frontline soldier in the battle of human rights” - has been facing backlash for not owning up to its own “identity and definition components”, and therefore to the ideal American Dream that once, in a time far away from now, promised the equality of opportunity to anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into. What we can understand from this comparison is that if the segregation in the US is made on racial grounds, in Arab countries it is made on pro/against regime grounds. These inequalities also mostly stem from capitalism and free-market policies in both countries. In the end, we stand in solidarity with the protests happening in America, with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and all the other Black victims of police brutality and racial discrimination. Black lives matter, have always mattered, and will always matter, in the US, in Lebanon, and all around the world.