America’s Most Miserable Cities

No. 3 Merced, Calif. The economic downturn and busted housing market hit Merced harder than any other area in the country. Average unemployment of 16.2% since 2008 is the highest in the U.S., as is the city’s 64% drop in median home prices.

California has never looked less golden, with eight of its cities making the top 20 on our annual list.

Forbes | Feb 9, 2011

by Kurt Badenhausen

Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as the governor of California at the end of 2003 amid a wave of optimism that his independent thinking and fresh ideas would revive a state stumbling after the recall of Gov. Gray Davis.

The good vibes are a distant memory: The Governator exited office last month with the state facing a crippling checklist of problems including massive budget deficits, high unemployment, plunging home prices, rampant crime and sky-high taxes. Schwarzenegger’s approval ratings hit 22% last year, a record low for any sitting California governor.

California’s troubles helped it land eight of the 20 spots on our annual list of America’s Most Miserable Cities, with Stockton ranking first for the second time in three years.

Located in the state’s Central Valley, Stockton has been ravaged by the housing bust. Median home prices in the city tripled between 1998 and 2005, when they peaked at $431,000. Now they are back to where they started, as the median price is forecast to be $142,000 this year, according to research firm Economy.com, a decline of 67% from 2005. Foreclosure filings affected 6.9% of homes last year in the Stockton area, the seventh-highest rate in the nation, according to online foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac.

Stockton’s violent crime and unemployment rates also rank among the 10 worst in the country, although violent crime was down 10% in the latest figures from the FBI. Jobless rates are expected to decline or stay flat in most U.S. metro areas in 2011, but in Stockton, unemployment is projected to rise to 18.1% in 2011 after averaging 17.2% in 2010, according to Economy.com.
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Using sports teams is not the way to view miserableness. All the other factors work, but sports teams? Come on, we are not all high school wanna be jocks.

“Stockton has issues that it needs to address, but an article like this is the equivalent of bayoneting the wounded,” says Bob Deis, Stockton city manager. “I find it unfair, and it does everybody a disservice. The people of Stockton are warm. The sense of community is fantastic. You have to come here and talk to leaders. The data is the data, but there is a richer story here.”

There are many ways to gauge misery. The most famous is the Misery Index developed by economist Arthur Okun, which adds unemployment and inflation rates together. Okun’s index shows the U.S. is still is in the dumps despite the recent gains in the economy: It averaged 11.3 in 2010 (blame a 9.6% unemployment rate and not inflation), the highest annual rate since 1984.

Our list of America’s Most Miserable Cities goes a step further: We consider a total of 10 factors, things that people gripe about around the water cooler every day. Most are serious issues, including unemployment, crime and taxes. A few we factor in are not as critical, but still elevate people’s blood pressure, like the weather, commute times and how the local sports team is doing.

One of the biggest issues causing Americans angst the past four years is the value of their homes. To account for that we tweaked the methodology for this year’s list and considered foreclosure rates and the change in home prices over the past three years. Click here for a more detailed rundown of our methodology.

Florida and California have ample sunshine in common, but also massive housing problems that have millions of residents stuck with underwater mortgages. The two states are home to 16 of the top 20 metros in terms of home foreclosure rates in 2010. The metro area with the most foreclosure filings (171,704) and fifth-highest rate (7.1%) last year is Miami, which ranks No. 2 on our list of Most Miserable Cities.

The good weather and lack of a state income tax are the only things that kept Miami out of the top spot. In addition to housing problems (prices are down 50% over three years), corruption is off the charts, with 404 government officials convicted of crimes this decade in South Florida. Factor in violent crime rates among the worst in the country and long commutes, and it’s easy to understand why Miami has steadily moved up our list, from No. 9 in 2009 to No. 6 last year to the runner-up spot this year.

California cities take the next three spots: Merced (No. 3), Modesto (No. 4) and Sacramento (No. 5). Each has struggled with declining home prices, high unemployment and high crime rates, in addition to the problems all Californians face, like high sales and income taxes and service cuts to help close massive budget shortfalls.

The Golden State has never looked less golden. “If I even mention California, they throw me out of the office,” says Ron Pollina, president of site selection firm Pollina Corporate Real Estate. “Every company hates California.”

Last year’s most miserable city, Cleveland, fell back to No. 10 this year despite the stomach punch delivered by LeBron James when he announced his exit from Cleveland on national television last summer. Cleveland’s unemployment rate rose slightly in 2010 to an average of 9.3%, but the city’s unemployment rank improved relative to other cities, thanks to soaring job losses across the U.S. Cleveland benefited from a housing market that never overheated and therefore hasn’t crashed as much as many other metros. Yet Cleveland was the only city to rank in the bottom half of each of the 10 categories we considered.

Two of the 10 largest metro areas make the list. Chicago ranks seventh on the strength of its long commutes (30.7 minutes on average–eighth-worst in the U.S.) and high sales tax (9.75%—tied for the highest). The Windy City also ranks in the bottom quartile on weather, crime, foreclosures and home price trends.

President Obama’s (relatively) new home also makes the cut at No. 16. Washington, D.C., has one of the healthiest economies, but problems abound. Traffic is a nightmare, with commute times averaging 33.4 minutes–only New York is worse. Income tax rates are among the highest in the country and home prices are down 27% over three years.

And it does not get much more miserable than the sports scene in Washington. Beltway fans should be grateful for the NHL’s Capitals, their only major pro team to finish out of the basement in the last two seasons. The Nationals (MLB), Redskins (NFL) and Wizards (NBA) have all finished in last place in their respective divisions the past two years.

Beijing blocks internet searches on Egypt

abc.net.au | Feb 2, 2011

By Girish Sawlani for Radio Australia

Chinese authorities are censoring internet references to protests in Egypt, fuelling speculation the government is deeply concerned about the effects Middle East unrest could have in China.

Two of the country’s biggest web portals have blocked search words such as “Cairo” and “Egypt”.

This follows discussion on Chinese social media websites where bloggers have drawn parallels between the uprisings in Cairo and similar incidents in China, including the 2009 protests in the north-western province of Xinjiang.

Days of violent protests in Cairo have dominated news headlines across the world and it is no different for the mainstream media in China, except for one thing.

“These reports have been avoiding discussion of the problems in these countries leading to the uprisings,” City University of Hong Kong Professor Joseph Cheng told Radio Australia’s Asia Pacific program.

Beijing authorities are focused on web-based discussions – targeting two of China’s biggest web portals, Sina.com.and Netease.com.

“We certainly see some censorship of media, especially at the internet level,” Professor Cheng said.

Wanning Sun, a professor of Chinese media and cultural Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, sees the government’s actions as a knee-jerk response.

“Individuals are saying interesting things about what is going on … or they are perhaps thinking about some of the historical parallels between what is going on in Egypt and what went on in China more than 20 years ago,” he said.

“Then … the government starts to get a little bit nervous. [It says] ‘hey, social media is going the wrong way, it’s getting a little bit erratic. Let’s do something about it’.

“It seems to me more a reactive thing rather than a deliberate, strategic move.”

Professor Cheng says China has its own economic-related problems that may be aggravated by the Egyptian example.

“Chinese leaders are quite concerned with the issue of unemployment among graduates,” he said.

“Every year, China produces 6.3 million or so of university graduates, and their unemployment rate is as high as 30 per cent.

“Certainly this is understood to be a source of grievances.”

28 hours in the dark heart of Egypt’s torture machine

Rough justice: Egyptian plainclothes police officers arresting a demonstrator in Cairo. Hundreds of opponents of President Hosni Mubarak have been detained, protesters say. Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images

A blindfolded Robert Tait could only listen as fellow captives were electrocuted and beaten by Mubarak’s security services

guardian.co.uk | Feb 9, 2011

by Robert Tait

The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor.

A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: “In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don’t behave – electrocution and rape.”

Cuffed and blindfolded, like my fellow detainees, I lay transfixed. My palms sweated and my heart raced. I felt myself shaking. Would it be my turn next? Or would my outsider status, conferred by holding a British passport, save me? I suspected – hoped – that it would be the latter and, thankfully, it was. But I could never be sure.

I had “disappeared”, along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak’s vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an “orderly transition” to democratic rule.

Judging by what I witnessed, that seems a forlorn hope.

I had often wondered, reading accounts of political prisoners detained and tortured in places such as junta-run Argentina of the 1970s, what it would be like to be totally at the mercy of, and dependent on, your jailer for everything – food, water, the toilet. I never dreamed I would find out. Yet here I was, cooped up in a tiny room with a group of Egyptian detainees who were being mercilessly brutalised.

I had been handed over to the security services after being stopped at a police checkpoint near central Cairo last Friday. I had flown there, along with an Iraqi-born British colleague, Abdelilah Nuaimi, to cover Egypt’s unfolding crisis for RFE/RL, an American radio station based in Prague.

We knew beforehand that foreign journalists had been targeted by security services as they scrambled to contain a revolt against Mubarak’s regime, so our incarceration was not unique.

Yet it was different. My experience, while highly personal, wasn’t really about me or the foreign media. It was about gaining an insight – if that is possible behind a blindfold – into the inner workings of the Mubarak regime. It told me all I needed to know about why it had become hated, feared and loathed by the mass of ordinary Egyptians.

We had been stopped en route to Tahrir Square, scene of the ongoing mass demonstrations, little more than half an hour after leaving Cairo airport.

Uniformed and plainclothes police swarmed around our car and demanded our passports and to see inside my bag. A satellite phone was found and one of the men got in our car and ordered our driver to follow a vehicle in front, which led us to a nearby police station.

There, an officer subjected our fixer, Ahmed, to intense questioning: did he know any Palestinians? Were they members of Hamas? Then we were ordered to move again, and eventually drove to a vast, unmarked complex next to a telecommunications building.

That’s when Ahmed sensed real danger. “I hope I don’t get beaten up,” he said. He had good reason to worry.

We were ordered out and blindfolded before being herded into another vehicle and driven a few hundred yards. Then we were pushed into what seemed like an open-air courtyard and handcuffed. I heard the rapid-fire clicking of the electric rattlesnake – I knew instantly what it was – and then Ahmed screaming in pain. A cold sweat washed over me and I thought I might faint or vomit. “I’m going to be tortured,” I thought.

But I wasn’t. “Mr Robert, what is wrong,” I was asked, before being told, with incongruous kindness, to sit down. I sensed then that I would avoid the worst. But I didn’t expect to gain such intimate knowledge of what that meant.

After being interrogated and held in one room for hours, I was frogmarched after nightfall to another room, upstairs, along with other prisoners. We believe our captors were members of the internal security service.

That’s when the violence – and the terror – really began.

At first, I attached no meaning to the dull slapping sounds. But comprehension dawned as, amid loud shouting, I heard the electrocuting rods being ratcheted up. My colleague, Abdelilah – kept in a neighbouring room – later told me what the torturers said next.

“Get the electric shocks ready. This lot are to be made to really suffer,” a guard said as a new batch of prisoners were brought in.

“Why did you do this to your country?” a jailer screamed as he tormented his victim. “You are not to speak in here, do you understand?” one prisoner was told. He did not reply. Thump. “Do you understand?” Still no answer. More thumps. “Do you understand?” Prisoner: “Yes, I understand.” Torturer: “I told you not to speak in here,” followed by a cascade of thumps, kicks, and electric shocks.

Exhausted, the prisoners fell asleep and snored loudly, provoking another round of furious assaults. “You’re committing a sin,” a stricken detainee said in a weak, pitiful voice.

Craving to see my fellow inmates, I discreetly adjusted my blindfold. I briefly saw three young men – two of them looked like Islamists, with bushy beards – with their hands cuffed behind their backs (mine were cuffed to the front), before my captors spotted what I had done and tightened my blindfold.

The brutality continued until, suddenly, I was ordered to stand and pushed towards a room, where I was told I was being taken to the airport. I received my possessions and looked at my watch. It was 5pm. I had been in captivity for 28 hours.

The ordeal was almost over – save for another 16 hours waiting at an airport deportation facility. It had been nightmarish but it was nothing to what my Egyptian fellow-captives had endured.

Later, I learned that Ahmed, the fixer, had been released at the same time as Abdelilah and me. He told friends we had been “treated very well” but that he had bruises “from sleeping on the floor”. I had flown to Cairo to find out what was ailing so many Egyptians. I did not expect to learn the answer so graphically.

Robert Tait is a senior correspondent with RFE/RL. He was formerly the Guardian’s correspondent in Tehran and Istanbul

Arab uprising revives hope for a New World Order

Former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (L) applauds as he attends a conference with Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade (R) at the World Social Forum in Dakar on February 7, 2011. (Getty Images)

Arab uprising revives hope for a new world: Lula

tehrantimes.com | Feb 9, 2011

DAKAR, Senegal – Former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday urged Africa to become aware of its own power amid rising hopes of a new world order in the wake of the popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world.

Attending the annual World Social Forum which brings together leftist leaders seeking an alternative to globalization and capitalism, Agence France-Presse quoted Lula saying that liberal “dogmas” had failed.

“In South America, but especially in the streets of Tunis and Cairo and many other African cities, hopes for a new world are being revived,” Lula said,

“Millions of people are protesting against the poverty to which they are subjected to, against the rule of tyrants, against the submission of their country to world powers.”

His speech marked the second day of the six-day World Social Forum, an annual counterpunch to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

While the latter draws CEOs who sleep in four-star hotels and take turns on the Swiss slopes, the participants in the World Social Forum are happy to camp on the sides of roads or sleep with locals in order to take part in the yearly anti-capitalist gathering, , The Associated Press reported.

Instead of suits, they arrive wearing tie-die shirts and trousers of organic cotton, like Lula who addressed the cheering crowd in an informal white shirt. Presentations are frequently ad lib, including a fiery impromptu speech by Bolivian President Evo Morales on Sunday who told the assembled crowd that capitalism was in its death throes.

Recalling that Brazil is home to “the world’s second largest Black community after Nigeria,” Lula urged Africans to realize they had “an extraordinary future” with the continent’s 800 million people, vast territory and riches and could achieve food self-sufficiency.

“The global economic order is no longer shaped by a few leading economies,” he noted.

“All efforts to tackle poverty and inequality were seen as charity or populism … but history has refuted these false theories… the market is not a panacea,” the Brazilian statesman said.

Lula says capitalism is dead

Brazil’s first working class president and an icon of the downtrodden also said that the global financial crisis proves capitalism is broken.

Lula added it was time for affluent countries to begin paying attention to nations like Senegal, ranked as one of the world’s poorest, AP reported.

“For too long, rich countries saw us as peripheral, problematic, even dangerous,” said Lula, who stepped down last year with one of the highest approval ratings in his country’s history, “Today we are an essential, undeniable part of the solution to the biggest crisis of the last decade — a crisis that was not created by us, but that emerged from the great centers of world capitalism.”

The weeklong conference, which has drawn some 30,000 participants from 123 countries, aims to create “open space” for debate on subjects ranging from “the crisis of capitalism” to the African Diaspora. Many participants pointed out that the event is also taking place at a same time of change in Africa.

“If you look across the democratization struggle in Egypt and Tunisia and the challenges in Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe, it is very important for people to express their views and indicate that there is a ruling elite, a very small group of people who are holding us hostage,” said Zimbabwean journalist and participant Thomas Deves.

Nilza Iraci, a member of the forum’s international organizing committee, says that in the early years, the forum attempted to bridge the gap with Davos. They held a teleconference with members of the Davos conference in an attempt to exchange ideas.

Critics of the forum say it has not effected real change in the 11 years since it started.

Iraci says the event is not meant to effect change, but rather to create a space to network and to share ideas for a new world.

Signs of change: Morales

Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Dakar to mark the start of the Forum. Activists carried colorful banners denouncing land grabs, restrictive immigration laws, agricultural subsidies in Europe and the U.S. and many other issues, IPS reported.

Others sang freedom songs and played drums whilst marching peacefully through the streets along a route that began near the offices of Senegal’s public broadcaster, RTS, and ended at the Cheikh Anta Diop University, the main venue for the weeklong gathering.

Bolivian President Morales, who took part in the march, invited his counterparts from poor countries to take part in this event. “There must be awareness and a mobilization to put an end to capitalism and clear away invaders, neocolonialists and imperialists… I support the popular uprisings in Tunisia and in Egypt. These are signs of change,” said Morales, a former trade union leader who is a regular participant in anti-globalization movement gatherings.

“There must be resistance and awareness. There must be a program of social struggle to build a new world,” he said. “We must save humanity, and to do that, we must know our enemies. The enemies of the people are neocolonialists and imperialists. We must put an end to the capitalist model and put another in its place. It’s necessary to get rid of the rich and change the world.”

“We can see it with the global financial crisis. We can see it with climate change and global warming,” said Morales, who in 2005 became the first leader to be elected from Bolivia’s indigenous majority. “The capitalism of today is a capitalism that no longer produces but just consumes.”

Land grabbing in Africa denounced

The World Social Forum denounced land grabbing in Africa by foreign groups as a form of neo-colonialism in a day devoted to debates on the continent.

A rush to buy up land in cash-starved Africa and other developing countries amid a growing global food crisis was one of the main focuses among dozens of workshops and debates held on the second day of the Forum, AFP reported.

At a discussion entitled: “Do not touch my land, it’s my life” Oxfam and the NGO Enda denounced landgrabbing by “foreign groups, Europeans, Asians” as well as “wealthy Africans.” Senegalese Lamine Ndiaye with Oxfam mentioned “the case of a Libyan company which acquired 200,000 hectares in Mali, a private British company buying land in Tanzania” and other examples in Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique and Ethiopia.

“According to a report by the World Bank between August 2008 and October 2009, 42 million hectares had been acquired in countries of the South.”

Ndiaye said northern investors and southern elites involved in the grabbing were mostly involved in land speculation without investing in agriculture.

A report by the International Food Policy Institute in 2009 said the prolific acquisition of farmland in developing countries was “one of the lingering effects of the food price crisis of 2007/8.”

The trend has been described as a new “scramble for Africa,” as the 19th century acquisition of territory by European colonial powers was dubbed.

Bernard Pineau of the Catholic Committee against Hunger and Development said the purchases of land were made not only by multinational company such as South Korea’s Daewoo in Madagascar, but also by states such as Saudi Arabia, “to the detriment of small farmers.”

He told AFP that the message at the Forum “is to reinforce family farming in Africa, the only way to ensure food security.”

He gave the positive example of agricultural trade unionists in Guinea who were able to “impose higher tariffs for imported potatoes from the Netherlands, and enhance the local potato.”

The six-day World Social Forum meeting is being held in Africa for the second time after Nairobi in 2007 and comes 10 years after the first edition of the forum took place in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001.

This year’s theme is: “Crises of the system and civilization.”

The second day of the forum focused on the rush across Africa to buy up land amid a growing global food crisis.

Lamine Ndiaye, a Senegalese working for Oxfam cited “the case of a Libyan company which acquired 200,000 hectares in Mali, a private British company buying land in Tanzania” and other examples in Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique and Ethiopia.

“Africa is not a battleground for powerful countries… It is a rich continent, provided it is allowed to determine its policies and development strategies,” Tunisian Taoufik Ben Abdallah, coordinator of the African Social Forum, said at the opening of the gathering.

Egyptian military secretly detaining and torturing protesters

Army officers escort a prisoner away from Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt. The military – accused of involvement in torture – has always claimed to be a neutral force in the conflict. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

Military accused by human rights campaigners of targeting hundreds of anti-government protesters

guardian.co.uk | Feb 9, 2011

by Chris McGreal in Cairo

The Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.

The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.

The Guardian has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organised campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army.

Egyptian human rights groups say families are desperately searching for missing relatives who have disappeared into army custody. Some of the detainees have been held inside the renowned Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square. Those released have given graphic accounts of physical abuse by soldiers who accused them of acting for foreign powers, including Hamas and Israel.

Among those detained have been human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, but most have been released. However, Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, said hundreds, and possibly thousands, of ordinary people had “disappeared” into military custody across the country for no more than carrying a political flyer, attending the demonstrations or even the way they look. Many were still missing.

“Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not,” he said. “It’s unusual and to the best of our knowledge it’s also unprecedented for the army to be doing this.”

One of those detained by the army was a 23-year-old man who would only give his first name, Ashraf, for fear of again being arrested. He was detained last Friday on the edge of Tahrir Square carrying a box of medical supplies intended for one of the makeshift clinics treating protesters attacked by pro-Mubarak forces.

“I was on a sidestreet and a soldier stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told him and he accused me of working for foreign enemies and other soldiers rushed over and they all started hitting me with their guns,” he said.

Ashraf was hauled off to a makeshift army post where his hands were bound behind his back and he was beaten some more before being moved to an area under military control at the back of the museum.

“They put me in a room. An officer came and asked me who was paying me to be against the government. When I said I wanted a better government he hit me across the head and I fell to the floor. Then soldiers started kicking me. One of them kept kicking me between my legs,” he said.

“They got a bayonet and threatened to rape me with it. Then they waved it between my legs. They said I could die there or I could disappear into prison and no one would ever know. The torture was painful but the idea of disappearing in a military prison was really frightening.”

Ashraf said the beatings continued on and off for several hours until he was put in a room with about a dozen other men, all of whom had been severely tortured. He was let go after about 18 hours with a warning not to return to Tahrir Square.

Others have not been so lucky. Heba Morayef, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Cairo, said: “A lot of families are calling us and saying: ‘I can’t find my son, he’s disappeared.’ I think what’s happening is that they’re being arrested by the military.”

Among those missing is Kareem Amer, a prominent government critic and blogger only recently released after serving a four-year prison sentence for criticising the regime. He was picked up on Monday evening at a military checkpoint late at night as he was leaving Tahrir Square.

Bahgat said the pattern of accounts from those released showed the military had been conducting a campaign to break the protests. “Some people, especially the activists, say they were interrogated about any possible links to political organisations or any outside forces. For the ordinary protesters, they get slapped around and asked: ‘Why are you in Tahrir?’ It seems to serve as an interrogation operation and an intimidation and deterrence.”

The military has claimed to be neutral in the political standoff and both Mubarak and his prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, have said there will be no “security pursuit” of anti-government activists. But Morayef says this is clearly not the case.

“I think it’s become pretty obvious by now that the military is not a neutral party. The military doesn’t want and doesn’t believe in the protests and this is even at the lower level, based on the interrogations,” she said.

Human Rights Watch says it has documented 119 arrests of civilians by the military but believes there are many more. Bahgat said it was impossible to know how many people had been detained because the army is not acknowledging the arrests. But he believes that the pattern of disappearances seen in Cairo is replicated across the country.

“Detentions either go completely unreported or they are unable to inform their family members or any lawyer of their detention so they are much more difficult to assist or look for,” he said. “Those held by the military police are not receiving any due process either because they are unaccounted for and they are unable to inform anyone of their detention.”

Human Rights Watch has also documented detentions including an unnamed democracy activist who described being stopped by a soldier who insisted on searching his bag, where he found a pro-democracy flyer.

“They started beating me up in the street their rubber batons and an electric Taser gun, shocking me,” the activist said.

“Then they took me to Abdin police station. By the time I arrived, the soldiers and officers there had been informed that a ‘spy’ was coming, and so when I arrived they gave me a ‘welcome beating’ that lasted some 30 minutes.”

While pro-government protesters have also been detained by the army during clashes in Tahrir Square, it is believed that they have been handed on to police and then released, rather than being held and tortured.

The detainee was held in a cell until an interrogator arrived, ordered him to undress and attached cables from an “electric shock machine”.

“He shocked me all over my body, leaving no place untouched. It wasn’t a real interrogation; he didn’t ask that many questions. He tortured me twice like this on Friday, and one more time on Saturday,” he said.