KAMAL ABBAS

That this House regrets that Kamal Abbas, the General Co-ordinator of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services has been sentenced in absentia to six months in prison for insulting a public officer, the acting president of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, the pre-revolution government-controlled labour front, at a meeting of the International Labour Organisations (ILO); believes that this ruling is a clear attack on freedom of expression, as guaranteed in Article 12 of Egypt's Constitutional Declaration, and on Egypt's independent unions, an essential bedrock of civil society and democracy, and on the right of Egyptian workers to decide their own representatives; welcomes the campaign for the lifting of this sentence by the International Trade Union Confederation, the TUC and LabourStart; and urges the Egyptian authorities to pass the draft law on trade union freedoms that would guarantee freedom of association and collective bargaining and bring Egypt in line with the core conventions of the ILO.