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The Egyptian human rights activist stopped eating and drinking. The UN, several human rights organizations and politicians such as Frenchman Emmanuel Macron have called for his release, coinciding with the Cop27 celebration in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh.
Alaa Abdel Fattah, of British and Egyptian nationality, is one of the icons of the 2011 popular uprising in Egypt. On April 2 he stopped eating and since Sunday he stopped drinking the glass of tea with honey with which he ate in the Wadi al Natrun prison, northeast of Cairo.
The activist has been imprisoned several times since 2006 under Hosni Mubarak. He returned to prison with Marshal Tantaui, de facto leader between 2011 and 2012, also under Morsi and then with President Al Sisi. His last arrest dates back to September 2019 after criticizing the military dictatorship on social media. According to Amnesty International, he was tortured and later sentenced in 2021 to five years in prison for “spreading false information”. He was not given the opportunity to appeal the decision.
“It is very likely that Alaa Abdel Fattah will not see how these days end,” laments Alfonso López, Egypt expert at Amnesty International in Spain. “He is a person who has been arrested many times in the last ten years, who has been subjected to unfair trials, that she has been accused of falsehoods in order to have him detained,” she adds.
Alfonso López, Egypt expert at Amnesty International in Spain, talks about the case of Alaa Abdel Fattah
“Thanks to many organizations his case is being remembered, it is possible that we will see how the image that remains in the world of this environmental conference is of a country in which there are no rights, in which there is a very strong repression and in which the government authoritarian Al Sisi must completely change his attitude to be credible in any type of negotiation”, Alfonso López tells RFI, recalling that there are hundreds of detainees, similar cases such as that of the human rights defender, Mohamed Baker.
Regarding the fact that the world climate conference is taking place in a country accused of trampling human rights, the expert assures that it is not very credible that the climate crisis can be seriously addressed. “Faced with a very harsh panorama against civil society.
“In Egypt we are seeing that civil society is being harshly repressed, there are thousands of people arbitrarily imprisoned, unfair trials, there is torture, the death penalty in recent years has grown brutally and we are concerned that there are people who could Believing in the face of these images that Al Sisi is a respected government and that it is within international parameters and that for this reason they are organizing the conference, when it is quite the opposite”, concludes Alfonso López.
