Recently, a friend of mine who is a source of useful and often highly disturbing information about international affairs [1] sent me a piece of information about Egypt’s secret police [2]. I have written before on the troubles in Egypt regarding the so-called Arab Spring and the troubles in the region [3]. When Mubarak’s regime fell, a group of people who had been tortured and imprisoned and investigated by the oppressive Mubarak regime sought to overthrow the secret police regime that had held the nation prisoner, seizing the files that were about themselves and other people. Naturally, the secret police, as the Mubarak regime was falling, had tried to destroy their files, which included a lot of mundane information about the lives of investigated and targeted individuals.

Many people are highly paranoid about the government spying on our lives and behavior. Others think that governments only target those who are genuine and real threats. The situation in Egypt suggests otherwise. After all, one of the exiles of Mubarak’s regime was was a simple and straightforward writer, but his file had included fraudulent information about his family’s supposed happiness at the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 and his nonexistent going to South Lebanon to lead a battalion there. And, sadly, even after the fall of Mubarak the secret files have not been released as a whole nor has the policy of imprisoning people ceased. The real threat of a government intelligence operation is not in the collection of information about its citizens, much of which is trivial and mundane, but rather that people will be investigated, interrogated, imprisoned, and tortured based on fabricated evidence.

One of the most intriguing ways in which Egyptian activists are seeking to turn the tables on former secret police is by posting photographs and videos of secret police online so that those who have participated as part of the regime’s terror apparatus are known publicly as such, no longer safe behind the mask of anonymity. Even in remote history, executioners and torturers often wore masks to hide their identity from the threat of vengeance for their behaviors. When a government’s behavior is based on secrets and lies, the truth is a dangerous and deep threat, and shining a light on those responsible for atrocities threatens their ability to live without accountability, either to the slow wheels of justice in time and history or the threat of rough justice and vigilantism if justice should be denied.

Sadly, torturers seem to be immune from many of the torments that survivors of the torment and abuse face. They may write their memoirs and talk about lessons that can be learned by future generations, without the nightmares and flashbacks. The damage done to them by their own torture does not gnaw at their peace of mind in nightmares and panic attacks as much as it has corroded and perverted their very spirit. Justice is not likely to be found in this world–far too many people, especially people in power, are unwilling to seek or permit justice to be done, for fear of what it means for them. But let us hope that people who have survived such horrors have the bravery of spirit to write their own histories and force the truth into the light.

The biggest threat to tyrannical regimes is for the truth about their insecurity and their evil to be brought into the light. Once people are brave enough to speak up about their hopes and their memories, other people are encouraged to do the same, to rise above the horrors of the past by putting them in their proper perspective. And once that happens, the days of a terror regime are numbered, because once people no longer fear the power of an oppressive state, then the only thing that regime can do is either destroy its own base of power and legitimacy by killing its citizens or seeking some sort of exit strategy. And once either happen, those in power lose in one way or another.

Ultimately, it matters little whether the secret police files kept under lock and key make it into the light or not. What is done is done, and destroying the record of what was done in the secret police dungeons, the fabricated evidence that was saved for a possible case against a writer who just happened to be too noisy or too nosy, the identities of the people responsible for such atrocities and such frauds will not destroy that actual behavior. Those of us who trust is cosmic justice must merely await the very slow but very thorough workings of that eternal justice, and we must remember not to behave likewise ourselves, lest we put ourselves under the same threat of eternal judgment as our oppressors, or to think our own misdeeds are hidden in the darkness and will never be brought to light.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/uzbekistan-and-the-war-on-children/

[2] http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/docarchive_20120607-0100c.mp3

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/things-fall-apart-a-grim-musing-on-egypt/