Amnesty calls Egypt an ‘open-air prison’ for critics
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s crackdown on freedom of expression under the rule of general-turned-president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has reached “alarming” and “unprecedented” levels, Amnesty International said Tuesday, calling for the unconditional release of Egyptians jailed for peacefully expressing their views.
Launching a campaign called “Egypt, an Open-Air Prison for Critics,” the London-based advocacy group said it wanted supporters around the world to show their solidarity with Egyptians detained for expressing their views by writing to the Cairo government to end the “persecution.”
“It is currently more dangerous to criticize the government in Egypt than at any time in the country’s recent history,” Amnesty’s Najia Bounaim said in a statement. “Egyptians living under President el-Sissi are treated as criminals simply for peacefully expressing their opinions.”
Claiming that Egypt’s security services have ruthlessly dealt with what is left of political, social and cultural spaces, Bounaim said measures by el-Sissi’s government were more extreme than anything seen during the 29-year rule of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, ousted by a popular uprising in 2011. These measures, she said, “have turned Egypt into an open-air prison for critics.”
There was no immediate comment from the Egyptian government on the Amnesty statement, but Cairo authorities have a track record of indignantly dismissing criticism of the country’s human rights record as fabrications. It routinely accuses advocacy groups like Amnesty or Human Rights Watch of being unprofessional or tools in the hands of Egypt’s enemies.
International rights groups have pulled their staffs out of Egypt, while their researchers have been denied entry into the country. Some of their websites have been blocked.
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation with some 100 million, has launched a massive crackdown on dissent in the five years since the military ouster of a freely elected but divisive Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi. The government has since arrested thousands of his supporters along with secular activists, placed the media under tight control and suppressed freedoms.
In recent weeks alone, Egypt adopted a law that empowers the state’s top media regulatory agency to use the “fake news” label to shut down social media accounts with more than 5,000 followers, without having to obtain a court order.