The United Nations human rights chief on Tuesday called for the prompt release of prominent Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who has refused to eat and drink water since the start of the COP27 climate conference on Sunday.
Alaa “is in wonderful danger,” Türk said, according to The Associated Press. “His dry hunger strike is his life at risk. “
As his spokesman said, the UN last raised Alaa’s fitness factor with the Egyptian government on Friday, calling for his “urgent, immediate release. “
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he and world leaders at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh hotel had explicitly raised Alaa’s case with their Egyptian counterparts.
“Something has to happen for a release to be possible, for the starving striker not to die,” Scholz said.
Alaa, an Egyptian-British dual national who was a leading figure in the pro-democracy “Arab Spring” movement more than a decade ago, has been jailed in Egypt during the height of Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s authoritarian term, since 2014. Alaa’s circle of family members and human rights teams say the tariffs opposing it are false.
“I fear for Alaa, but I also perceive very well his resolve to escalate, because he is condemned to die in a crime,” said his sister Sanaa Seif, who in the past spent time in an Egyptian prison for her rights activism. CBS News last week. ” Maybe the solution for him is to set the schedule, so that maybe there’s enough tension to save him. “
Seif, who also holds dual Egyptian-British citizenship, traveled to Egypt to attend the COP27 summit as a delegate, where she pledged to continue drawing attention to her brother’s case. He arrived here after spending days camping outdoors at the British Foreign Office in the weeks leading up to the weather conference.
On Monday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would meet el-Sisi at COP27 and “obviously raise this issue. This is something that only the UK, but many countries need to see resolved. “
At a news conference on Tuesday, Seif said his circle of relatives had not won the same old letter from Alaa, which they expected this week, and that he asked the British government to push for evidence of life.
Seif reports that el-Sisi had engaged with French President Emmanuel Macron to preserve Alaa’s fitness, he was concerned.
Is he handcuffed on a bed, is he put an IV line against his will?That’s what I hear when they say ‘preserve your health,’ but they don’t acknowledge their hunger strike and don’t allow consular access. “
“Let’s be clear, we are running out of time. If the government does not need to end a death it has prevented and can have prevented, it will have to act now,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard. journalists in Egypt said on Sunday. If they don’t, that death will cling to COP27. It will be in each and every discussion, in each and every discussion there will be Alaa. “
El-Sisi’s government has sought to use the organization of the COP27 assembly as an “internal show of force,” Seif said, insisting that climate replacement will be resolved in meaningful ways without political freedom.
“You’re up against interests, things like big oil corporations and things like that, and any improvement that we’re going to get is because of the strain of civil society and activists and marginalized communities, vulnerable communities,” he told CBS News. To solve the climate crisis, we want an open environment where other people can speak, can appeal to their politicians, can hold them accountable, and we don’t have that area in Egypt. “
Seif said he still hoped his brother would be released and allowed to leave Egypt and join his circle of relatives in the UK, but if he isn’t and doesn’t survive, he said it would have made a difference.
The Egyptian regime “used it to set an example to others. . . it’s anything he didn’t choose,” she told CBS News. “I am proud of him for living up to that example and for being an example of oppression. A symbol of oppression, it has become a symbol of resistance, of resilience. “