HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH 2021: POLITICAL RIGHTS

INSTRUCTIONS: Make a summarize report.

EGYPT

Egyptians in 2020 continued to live under the harsh authoritarian grip of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government. Tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned on politically motivated charges, many in lengthy pretrial detention. Authorities frequently used terrorism charges against peaceful activists and harassed and detained relatives of dissidents abroad. Authorities used vague "morality" charges to prosecute female social media influencers for posts of themselves, as well as gang-rape witnesses following reporting of sexual assault cases online. Media close to the government smeared rape witnesses by publishing private photos and videos online without their consent. The Covid-19 outbreak exacerbated dire detention conditions and dozens of persons detained on political grounds died in custody, including at least 14 who likely died of Covid-19 complications between March and July. Authorities arrested health workers who criticized the government's Covid-19 response. Security forces continued to operate with impunity in war-torn North Sinai. The government closed schools nationwide from mid-March until they reopened with a reduced schedule in mid-October, affecting the education of an estimated 20 million students.

Fair Trials, Due Process, and the Death Penalty

Judges and prosecutors kept thousands of people in pretrial detention, often solely for exercising their rights to peaceful assembly and free expression, and many beyond the two-year limit Egyptian law provides. Former presidential candidate Abd al-Moneim Abu al-Fotouh, arrested in February 2018 ahead of that year's presidential vote, was "recycled" into a new case just days before his detention would have reached the two-year limit in February 2020. Between mid-March and mid-August, security and judicial authorities used the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext to effectively preclude even a pretense of detention renewal hearings, in violation of Egyptian law, as well as regional African and international human rights treaties. Authorities have held hundreds, and most likely thousands, without even a pretense of judicial review. Prior to this, judges and prosecutors frequently deprived lawyers and detainees of a meaningful chance to present defense or review any purported evidence. Egyptian courts continued to impose the death penalty for a wide range of crimes, including cases of alleged political violence and terrorism in which defendants' claims of forced disappearance and torture almost always went uninvestigated by judges. According to the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, an independent Czech-based group, during the first half of 2020 Egyptian military and civilian courts issued 171 death sentences and upheld the sentences of 10 others, including 7 in a political case. From January to late October, authorities executed at least 83 persons, 25 of whom were charged in cases involving political violence, according to numbers compiled by Human Rights Watch and the Egyptian Front for Human Rights.

Freedom of Association and Attacks on Human Rights Defenders

Authorities continued to severely curtail space for civil society groups and target human rights defenders. At time of writing, the government has not issued implementing regulations for the draconian NGO law al-Sisi approved in August 2019 despite the requirement that it do so within six months of approving the law, and the stipulation in the new law that existing organizations must re-register within one year. The law prohibits a wide range of activities, such as "conduct opinion polls and publish or make their results available or conduct field research or disclose their results" without government approval. The law allows authorities to dissolve organizations for a wide range of "violations" and imposes fines of up to one million Egyptian pounds (US$60,000) for organizations that operate without a license or send or receive funds without government approval. In December 2019, persons believed to be working under the direction of the National Security Agency physically assaulted human rights lawyer Gamal Eid for the second time in two months. Authorities failed to hold anyone accountable. On February 7, Egyptian authorities detained Patrick George Zaki, a researcher with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), and held him incommunicado for 24 hours, during which time he was allegedly tortured, including with electric shocks. Zaki has been in pretrial detention since then facing charges that include "calling for protests without permission," "spreading false news," and "incitement to commit violence and terrorist crimes." Prosecutors and judges have regularly renewed the pretrial detention of Ibrahim Ezz el-Din, a housing rights researcher with the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), since November 2019. Security agencies had forcibly disappeared Ezz el-Din for over five months before the Supreme State Security Prosecution issued his official detention order. ECRF lawyers told Human Rights Watch that officers physically and psychologically tortured him, including with electric shocks, while questioning him about his activism. In August, an Egyptian court sentenced veteran human rights defender Baheyeddin Hassan to 15 years in prison in absentia for tweets criticizing the government. A court had sentenced him in September 2019 to three years in prison in absentia for criticizing Egypt's prosecution office. Authorities continued to arbitrarily detain without trial other human rights lawyers and defenders, including Mahinour al-Masry and Mohamed al-Baqer, whom security forces arrested in September 2019 when they were at the prosecutors' office in Cairo to defend other detainees. In July, a Cairo criminal court rejected a request to lift the five-year-long travel bans imposed on 14 leading human rights defenders including Mohamed Zarea, Hossam Bahgat, and Mozn Hassan, 2020 winner of the Hrant Dink Award. The 14 are among more than 30 human rights defenders who remained banned from leaving the country, most in connection with the protracted Case 173 of 2011 investigation, known as the "foreign funding case" in which authorities also have frozen the assets of leading organizations and defenders.

Freedom of Assembly and Expression

The government continued to criminalize peaceful assembly and punish peaceful critics. In late September and early October, authorities arrested nearly 1,000 protesters and bystanders before and after scattered anti-government protests in towns and villages in 21 governorates, according to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms. Arrests included at least 71 children, some as young as 13. In March, authorities arrested the academic and activist Laila Soueif, her sister, the novelist Ahdaf Soueif, her daughter, the prominent activist Mona Seif, and political scientist Rabab el-Mahdi for protesting peacefully for the release of unjustly detained prisoners over coronavirus fears. Egypt continued to detain dozens of politicians and activists, including Ziad alElaimy and Hossam Mo'nis, for planning a new electoral coalition to contest the 2020 parliamentary elections. In late June, Interior Ministry forces besieged the doctors' syndicate building and forced its members to cancel a press conference to address government harassment of doctors in connection with Covid-19. Authorities arrested at least 10 healthcare professionals who challenged the official narrative on the pandemic or criticized the lack of equipment at work. Authorities continued to silence journalists, bloggers, and critics on social media amid escalating use of the repressive 2018 cybercrimes law and have blocked hundreds of news and human rights websites without judicial authorization since 2017. Journalists Solafa Magdy, Hossam al-Sayed, and Mohamed Salah remain in pretrial detention on charges of "joining a terrorist group" and "spreading false news" since November 2019. According to international groups monitoring press freedoms, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Press Institute, the number of journalists behind bars in Egypt at a given time in 2020 was between 30 and 60, one of the highest in the world.