Egyptian ‘repression’ crushes dissent
TWO years after the army ousted president Mohamed Mursi, Egypt has regressed into “all-out repression”, with activists jailed in a bid to crush dissent, Amnesty International warned yesterday.
The London-based human rights watchdog said that Egyptian authorities led by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi are engaged in a blatant attempt to “nip in the bid any future threat to their rule“.
“Mass protests have been replaced by mass arrests,” Amnesty said ahead of the second anniversary on Friday of the July 3 2013 ousting of the Islamist Mursi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader.
“Today... youth activists are languishing behind bars, providing every indication that Egypt has regressed into a state of allout repression,” said Amnesty’s Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.
It said a government crackdown has resulted in more than 41 000 people arrested, charged or indicted with a criminal offence, or sentenced after unfair trials.
“The Egyptian authorities have shown that they will stop at nothing in their attempts to crush all challenges to their authority,” Hadj Sahraoui said.
Amnesty said a new wave of arrests has seen at least 160 people detained in conditions amounting to enforced disappearance. The crackdown which began with the arrests of Mursi and his supporters has rapidly expanded to encompass Egypt’s entire political spectrum.
The Egyptian foreign ministry criticised Amnesty’s remarks, saying they “lacked objectivity” and showed the rights group’s policy of “double standards”.
Amnesty has “deliberately ignored presidential pardons granted to hundreds of young people,” the ministry said.
Earlier this month, the authorities released 165 people who had been jailed for breaking a controversial protest law. Those released do not include any figures from the 2011 revolt that drove Hosni Mubarak from power and who were imprisoned under the law in a move that caused uproar among human rights groups.
Amnesty, meanwhile, criticised Sisi’s Western allies for their ties with his regime, saying there is “no indication that stopping gross human rights violations in Egypt was on the agenda during” their meetings.
“The gross hypocrisy of Egypt’s partners has been laid bare in a race for lucrative business deals, political influence and intelligence, as well as new sales and transfers of policing equipment that could facilitate human rights violations,” Hadj Sahraoui said.
“Egypt is jailing peaceful activists while the international community looks the other away. There’s silence from states, silence from world leaders and silence in the UN Human Rights Council.”
Amnesty also called Monday’s killing of state prosecutor Hisham Barakat in a Cairo bombing as “a despicable, cowardly and cold-blooded act of murder”.
It urged the authorities “not to respond to the killing with further repression targeting peaceful protesters and activists”.
Mursi was ousted by then army chief Sisi three days after mass street protests on June 30 2013, against his sole year of divisive rule. The new authorities then launched a sweeping crackdown. — AFP