On Wednesday, November 16 at 19:30 GMT:
As Egypt hosts the COP27 local weather talks, human rights advocates are specializing in the destiny of detained British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who had been on a greater than 200-day starvation strike. His household and supporters say Alaa’s case and people of hundreds of different political prisoners in Egypt can’t be ignored as world leaders and summit delegates talk about local weather justice within the Crimson Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Abd el-Fattah, a software program developer and blogger who rose to prominence in the course of the 2011 Arab Spring, started a partial starvation strike in April to protest his imprisonment.
On the sidelines of COP27, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have reportedly raised the activist’s case throughout talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Abd el-Fattah has been detained for many of the previous decade, on prices of spreading false info and organising unauthorised protests. In December 2021, he was sentenced to 5 years in jail for reposting a Fb publish about human rights violations in jail.
Since Egypt’s 2013 army coup and overthrow of the nation’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, human rights watchdogs say the federal government’s crackdown on political dissent has been extreme. Rights organisations imagine about 60,000 political prisoners have been jailed since 2013, although el-Sisi denies their existence. Within the lead-up to COP27, Amnesty Worldwide documented the arrests of 1,540 individuals for exercising free speech.
On this episode of The Stream, we’ll take a look at Abd el-Fattah’s plight and the solidarity motion that has shaped round Egypt’s political prisoners throughout COP27.
On this episode of The Stream, we communicate with:
Mona Seif, @Monasosh
Human rights activist and sister of Alaa Abd el-Fattah
Hussein Baoumi, @husseinmagdy16
Egypt & Libya researcher, Amnesty Worldwide
Allison McManus, @AllisonLMcManus @thefreedomi
Analysis director, The Freedom Initiative
