Visitors to Sharm el-Sheikh also face searches and video surveillance in taxis.
Across from Sharm el-Sheikh, a thin strip of well-maintained asphalt and concrete resorts near the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, groups of staff are putting the finishing touches on arrangements for the U. N. Cop27 weather conference.
The shiny new buses are able to roll down the widened roads that traverse the desert landscape, flanked by smooth, shiny new walkways adorned with sculptural angular arches. in time for the conference, as well as a new shopping mall.
New surveillance technologies have also been implemented, so much so that Major General Khaled Fouda, governor of South Sinai, recently boasted on a local cable channel that any guest entering by land would be nicely searched at a gate surrounding the city. He said 500 white taxis tasked with transporting convention attendees will have indoor cameras, all connected to a local “security observatory” to monitor the footage.
There will be room for protesters to gather at COP27, but only in a specially designed space near a road and away from the convention center or any other sign of life. Footage from the designated protest space shows a row of white-painted huts between a row of palm trees and a parking lot. It is unclear whether protesters will be allowed to disperse across the vast open landscape or whether they will be forced to crowd alongside huts to soothe the desert sun.
“It’s very chic, very clean. There are cafes and restaurants on site,” Fouda said, and “no one is allowed to be here without registering. He added that the Egyptian government built the protest zone in reaction to a series of calls from Western diplomats concerned that protests at Cop27 would be avoided in accordance with the ban on public demonstrations that has existed for almost a decade.
“He may be the most watched policeman in the history of the conference,” said Hussein Baoumi of Amnesty International.
He mocked the Egyptian government’s vision of a designated protest zone. “It’s theater,” he said. They do not need to allow the right to protest or freedom of assembly, but they must give the impression that they are. It’s [President] Sisi’s vision of a protest: You go into a position and record and protest for an hour where no one can see you, and then they have you in front of a camera where the government can see if you say something they don’t like. It is the act of a state that does not need to allow freedom of assembly, but does not. It must be stopped for not allowing it.
For many observers, Egypt’s choice to hold COP27 in a beach hotel far from the country’s bustling capital of 22 million people is deliberate. Sharm el-Sheikh has long been used by Egyptian leaders as a satellite location, a way to escape their own citizens. And make sure dignitaries and visiting officials stay away from major cities across the country when attending state events. Other people can simply gather in giant groups, even if the law allows it. Instead, long, flat roads connect a network of high-end luxury hotels, geared toward visiting tourists or Egypt’s elite to gaze at the Red Sea, the ultimate collection. floor for extensive surveillance of Cop27 attendees.
“Sharm el Sheikh is a dream hotel where the government can exclude the majority of Egyptians and invest huge amounts of resources so that everything is under surveillance and control,” Baoumi said. “It shows how the Egyptian presidency and the leaders see their ideal society, it’s a closed society without masses. “
Following COP27 participants will also make their virtual world, an app created by the Egyptian government to serve as a consultant to the convention’s facilities, bigger. You can download the official Cop27 mobile app, but you want to give your full name, address, cell phone number, nationality and passport number. It also wants to allow location tracking,” tweeted Hossam Baghat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. , due to its ability to access the user’s camera, handset, location awareness and Bluetooth.
Sharm el-Sheikh’s complex of hotels and mansions has symbolized elite isolation for decades. When former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak fled popular uprisings in mainland Egypt in 2011, he headed to his mansion in Sharm el-Sheikh. Bakr bin Laden, former head of the family’s corporate structure and half-brother of Osama, one of Mubarak’s notable neighbors, known for doing business from his sumptuous home.
The conference center adjacent to the Jolie Ville city hotel, with its lush gardens and golf course built by a former Mubarak ally, also hosts diplomatic events, a way for Egypt to host allies from Saudi Arabia or Israel in a remote location. But since it took effect in a military coup in 2013, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has also liked to use Sharm el-Sheikh as a venue for national meetings where the government can make radical decisions for Egyptian citizens away from any public input or review. . This includes the state’s economic progress conference in 2015, where it announced that Egypt would build a new desert capital outside Cairo and won $12. 5 billion in grants from Gulf of Egypt donors, as well as $12 billion in deals with BP.
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There is a stark contrast between who is welcome in Sharm el-Sheikh’s closed network and the remedy of those found elsewhere in the Sinai Peninsula, not least because Fouda oversaw the structure of a wall around the city in 2019 to “beautify and protect. “Sharm el-Sheikh. ” The wall is composed of concrete barriers and barbed cord with “four beautiful gates” to access the city. Meanwhile, Bedouin and local communities living in the north of the peninsula have long faced oblivion and state violence, adding to mass house demolitions that Human Rights Watch has called an imaginable war crime.
Observers say hosting COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh is a way for the Egyptian government to interact with the citizens of convention participants and ensure that anyone who has access is under close surveillance. global to interact with Egyptians,” Baomi said. One of the main reasons they organize the COP is greenwashing, to cover up the crimes that occur inside the country and prevent delegations and state officials from meeting with Egyptians. “
A player who attended a briefing with Egyptian officials at this year’s Bonn weather update convention described how they presented COP27. Palm trees on the beach. It’s extraordinary.
“They hinted that we could snorkel and do modern excursions, that we would be driven from place to place with a driving force: you’d think we were going on a dream vacation. Cop27 was sold to us as a five-star romantic getaway as many take a look to express their considerations that civil society and delegates from the global south cannot afford hotel room costs or obtain visas on time, to ensure that we can actually have interaction in meaningful discussion and action.
Using COP27 to showcase Sharm el-Sheikh as a tourist destination does not bode well for major climate negotiations, they added. about delivering results,” they said. It’s just about bringing money, washing the surroundings and taking beautiful photos along the way. “