Egypt: Mohammed Morsi criticised by UN

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Outrage at Egypt's mounting constitutional crisis spread abroad, with the United Nations human rights chief and international bodies joining the opposition in criticising its restrictions on basic freedoms.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Tahrir Square for the third time in a week to protest President Mohammed Morsi's new constitutional declarations. At the front were a new coalition of opposition leaders, including Mohammed ElBaradei, the former UN atomic energy agency head, who has now become the liberal and secular movement's unofficial spokesman. "The president and his constituent assembly are currently staging a coup against democracy," he tweeted. "Regime legitimacy fast eroding." But Mr Morsi may be most worried by the comments from Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights who has led international condemnation of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Her spokesman confirmed she had written to Mr Morsi warning him that pushing through a constitution in the current circumstances "could be deeply divisive". In particular she questioned his decision to put his constitutional pronouncements above judicial scrutiny until after the constitution is approved in a referendum. "In my view, this provision contravenes the fundamental notion of the rule of law," she wrote. The constitution was finally approved at 6.30 on Friday morning after the assembly's 85 members spent all night voting through its 234 clauses one by one. The assembly was dominated by Islamists: all the Christians and most liberal and secular representatives boycotted it. There were just four women, all from Islamist parties. The resulting document guarantees a parliamentary democracy, supposedly with basic freedoms for all citizens. But guaranteed freedom of speech was curtailed by a clause banning "insults against a person", freedom of religious practice limited to Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and while equality of all citizens was stressed, so was the "genuine character of the Egyptian family" and its "moral values". Amnesty International said the document and the manner in which it had been approved would come as a "great disappointment" to many Egyptians and fell "well short of protecting human rights". Human Rights Watch said it protected some rights but undermined others. "The decision of constituent assembly leaders to move a flawed and contradictory draft to a vote is not the right way to guarantee fundamental rights," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director, said. The Muslim Brotherhood believes only a minority of Egyptians are concerned enough to vote against the referendum, and are planning their own rally on Saturday. Although the Tahrir Square protesters have attempted to renew the spirit of last year's revolt against ex-President Hosni Mubarak, they have yet to sustain the same passion – in part because the new authorities have not tried to stop them. Instead, the official website of the Muslim Brotherhood reiterated "our complete support of peaceful protesting and right to free speech".