Here’s a piece of jaw-dropping nastiness out of Egypt. A bunch of young prosecutors were fired because their parents hadn’t been to university.
Just months after they were appointed, 138 new prosecutors were removed from office in September 2013 following a ruling from the judiciary’s governing body that said only those born to parents with undergraduate degrees could join the state prosecution.
Can you believe it? Can you imagine how all those parents feel? The humiliation and guilt? And what on earth can possibly be the reason? It’s hard to think of any other than plain snobbery.
The deadlock is “a disaster to social justice”, Mohamed Kamal-Eddin, one of the excluded prosecutors, told Ahram Online, the English-language version of Egypt’s flagship state newspaper. “This condition is a punishment to the parents for not having received university education. Judges are supposed to be the guards of justice. It is absurd that they decide such a condition.’’
The justice ministry declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian. So did two spokesmen for the 138 prosecutors, saying the issue was an exclusively Egyptian matter that should not interest foreign media.
No, don’t say that. Egyptian media are welcome to report on the US’s many striking faults. We should all be internationalist and give a damn about each other.
Speaking on Egyptian television, a senior judge and former member of the board that banned the prosecutors said the decision was aimed at upholding the quality of the judiciary. “We have nothing against the job of garbage collectors, but their sons belong in other fields than the judiciary, because it’s a sensitive job,” said Justice Ahmed Abdelrahman.
Dear sweet tapdancing Jesus. Does he think the garbage collectors bring the garbage home, and marinate their children in it? Does he think the children take the garbage to university with them? What is he talking about?
Ugh, god, why are people so ingenious at thinking up ways to be shitty to each other?
Wow. This makes four or five posts in a row at B&W to which I’d like to, but can’t, apply Poe’s law. The idiots are running the asylum.
Here in the USA, I expect many Republicans would like to disbar any attorneys whose parents DID go to college.
I wonder if this is a way to make sure their children don’t have to deal with any competition for law school
This is utterly horrible and unjust to those lawyers, and also very socially self-destructive for Egypt. People who take advantage of the opportunity to become more educated than their ancestors were able to be are making their culture stronger.
This is especially true in a developing nation with high poverty and illiteracy rates. Punishing people for improving themselves is suicidal. And like you said, do they think people who work jobs where you have to get dirty are dirty people as a matter of principle who …teach their children to love garbage or something? They must not know many working class people.
From the last quote it almost sounds like he is talking about blackmail?
Does he think it would be so embarrassing for a judge to be outed as the son of a garbage collector that “their sons belong in other fields than the judiciary, because it’s a sensitive job”? In the same vein as how we (used to? I hope) exclude homosexuals from jobs requiring security clearances?
Even if this is what he means, it’s no excuse, of course.
Interesting that garbage collectors were singled out as being the wrong kind of family of origin, because the vast majority of garbage collectors in Cairo are Christians. So there may be some religious discrimination overlapping with the class discrimination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabbaleen
Oh, yikes, that is interesting. It’s rather like dalits then.
They were probably too interested in prosecuting wrongdoing and too dismissive of the powers that be.
It sounds like a form of tribalism to me. You are judged not on your individual merits, but rather on the status of your family.
Ophelia Benson (#6) –
It’s reverse-Sovietism. If your family weren’t bourgeoisie, you can’t be trusted.
Trebuchet (#1) –
Unless it was Liberty U (re: Bush’s 150 “graduate” employees in the injustice department).
Re:
‘…No, don’t say that. Egyptian media are welcome to report on the US’s many striking faults. We should all be internationalist and give a damn about each other.’
Oh, don’t worry. They’re doing it wrong. Too little emphasis on paternalism/colonialism, no reference to ‘respect’ for religion. Pretty weak sauce, as these things go…
Course, I kinda wonder, given Marion’s info, if there’s not an obvious reason for the same. As in: their position is very constrained, in reality, here. I suspect they feel this a necessary move on their part, since that ‘paternalism’ noise will almost certainly be in the narrative, if the world outside kicks up too much stink about it. So they figure this, they have to say, but cannot even safely say why.
Sad, really. And in its final effect, much like the dynamics of bullying on the playground, and in domestic abuse. The victim will be be driven to disavow outside help, rather than seek it. Shamed for needing it, in the case of bullying, attacked for daring to appeal to the larger power of the state in, in abuse, tarred as a stooge of imperialists, here.
The ‘shut up orientalist hegemonic colonizer’ trope can be played for ANYTHING.
Great … with all its existing social, religious, environmental, economic and regional problems Egypt has to deal with … they want to establish a rigid caste system … brilliant.
The response is obvious. Those “garbage collectors” should refuse to collect the garbage (no doubt quite a lot) thrown out by those judges and others who made this hideous decision.