Amnesty International’s chief warned on Sunday that COP27 talks in Egypt could be marred by the death of one of the country’s top human rights activists following a criminal hunger and water strike if the Egyptian government releases him in the following days.
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard said Egypt had no more than 72 hours to save the life of jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, a British citizen.
Egypt’s climate summit, known as COP27, has highlighted its human rights record as radical repression continues under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The convention is held at the Egyptian hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea. .
“If you don’t want to end a death that you have avoided and that you may have avoided, you want to act now,” Callamard told a news conference in the capital, Cairo.
Callamard said she will attend COP27 to address human rights issues similar to climate change, adding losses and damages or reparations from countries to vulnerable nations suffering from climate change. Egypt supports the issue.
But it will also be there to push for immediate action in the case of Egyptian activist and British citizen Alaa Abdel Fattah and the tens of thousands of political prisoners believed to be in the country’s prisons, he said.
Opposition leader Abdel-Fattah stepped up his hunger strike this week, also denying himself water, coinciding with the first day of COP27, according to his family. Her aunt, Ahdaf Soueif, said she stopped drinking water at 10 a. m. local Sunday time amid developing considerations about his health.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah comes from a circle of relatives of well-known Egyptian activists and rose to prominence with the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East and toppled President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. The 40-year-old activist has passed the peak of the bars of the past decade and his detention has become a symbol of Egypt’s return to autocratic rule. For more than six months, he has been on a partial hunger strike, eating only a hundred calories a day.
In April, Abdel Fattah’s circle of relatives announced that he had received British citizenship through his mother, Laila Soueif, a London-born mathematics professor at Cairo University. The circle of relatives criticized the British leaders for no longer insisting on paying them a consular stopover at the detention center.
On Sunday, his circle of relatives published a letter they had won from British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who will attend the conclusion of COP27. The letter said the world summit is an opportunity to raise Abdel Fattah’s case “with Egyptian leaders. “Sunak “will continue to tense with the president (al-Sisi) the importance we attach to the prompt resolution of Alaa’s case and the end of his unacceptable treatment,” he added.
The Prime Minister’s Office showed the contents of the letter.
Abdel-Fattah’s younger sister, Sanaa Seif, landed in Sharm el-Sheikh early Monday from London via the Turkish city of Istanbul, her circle of relatives said.
“I’m here to do everything I can to try to clarify my brother’s case and save him,” Seif said upon arrival. “Today (Sunday) he had his last glass of water, so it’s a matter of hours. I’m worried. I’m also here to put pressure on world leaders coming.
She is expected to participate with Callamard on the human rights stage in Egypt on the sidelines of COP27. Seif, also a rights defender who spent a year in prison for spreading false news and insulting a policeman, will focus on her brother’s case. and other imprisoned activists.
Seif, who is also a British citizen, had staged a sit-in at the headquarters of the British Foreign Office in recent weeks, as part of a crusade to pressure the UK to act on her brother’s case.
Since 2013, al-Sisi, America’s best friend with deep economic ties to European countries, has overseen a major crackdown, jailing thousands of Islamists but also secular militants involved in the country’s 2011 uprising. Many other activists, news followers and others have fled the country. .
Amnesty also said on Sunday it had documented a new wave of government repression. According to the group’s figures, 766 Egyptian political prisoners were released before the conference, Callamard said. He added that more than 1500 people have been arrested since April, adding more than 150 in the last two weeks alone.
The latest sweep came after the Muslim Brotherhood, designated as a terrorist organization and largely driven into exile, called for anti-government protests on Nov. 11, in a bid to capitalize on Egypt’s worsening economic woes and global attention at COP27.
Other human rights teams also criticized Egypt on Sunday for restricting protests and increasing vigilance at the summit.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had joined some 1,400 teams around the world urging Egypt to lift restrictions on civil society teams, and also expressed fear of further rounds of arrests.
“It is transparent that the Egyptian government does not aim to relax its abusive security measures and allow freedom of expression and assembly,” Adam Coogle, the group’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
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