Egypt hunger strike movement gains momentum - inside & outside prison

Al-Jazeera

Egypt hunger strikes gain momentum A nationwide hunger strike is gaining support in Egypt against the country's controversial Protest Law
September 14, 2014
Cairo, Egypt - As Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi heads to New York next week for the UN General Assembly, he leaves behind a country with a growing movement of hunger strikers calling for the release of detainees jailed under a controversial Protest Law. Several political parties and journalists began a symbolic nationwide hunger strike on Saturday to demand the release of detainees held for violating a law enacted last year that has been criticised by both domestic and international human rights groups, as well as prominent political figures, as curtailing peoples' right to protest. Laila Soueif, an assistant professor of mathematics at Cairo University, whose two children, Sanaa and Alaa, are in jail for demonstrating against the law, has been on hunger strike with her only child that remains out of jail, Mona Seif, since September 4. "I'm on a hunger strike until my children are released, and all those in their two cases are released with them," she said. "The circle of people joining our hunger strike increases every day. We haven't reached the stage yet to achieve what is needed, but as long as more people keep joining our protest then this is a success." The nationwide strike coincided with the court session of Soueif's daughter, Sanaa, a human rights defender, and 22 other detainees. They were jailed on June 21 after they denounced the law in front of the Ettehadiya presidential palace in Cairo. Their case has been adjourned until October 21, with all the detainees - which include prominent human rights activists, lawyers and journalists - remaining in jail. Sanaa's brother, prominent blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah, is also in jail in a separate case. In June, Alaa and 24 others were sentenced to 15 years in prison for participating in a protest outside the Shura Council, Egypt's consultative assembly, last year. His retrial, along with the other Shura Council detainees, resumed on September 10. During the hearing, the prosecution showed a home video of Alaa's wife belly dancing as evidence against him, according to the Associated Press news agency. Taher Abul-Nasr, the lead defence lawyer, told the court the video was taken from a computer seized from the couple's home without a search warrant, and called the material irrelevant and defamatory. None of the video evidence presented showed Abdel Fattah or any other defendants in the case. The retrial is set to resume on September 15. Alaa and Sanaa's father, Ahmed Seif, an internationally-respected human rights lawyer who was on their defence team, died on August 27. In January, at a press conference while Alaa was in jail, Seif addressed his son: "I wanted you to inherit a democratic society that guards your rights, my son, but instead I passed on the prison cell that held me, and now holds you." Sanaa and Alaa have joined at least 63 other detainees who are refraining from food in jail, according to the Freedom to the Brave campaign group, which was formed in January to call for the release of the increasing number of people they say are being unjustly detained. "The hunger strikes are an expression of desperation, because of the extreme level of political and human rights abuses in Egypt," said Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington DC based think-tank. "It's become so difficult to protest in the ways Egyptians were used to in the past, because of the very draconian Protest Law. Even the media is more closed, and civil society is under threat," Dunne said. Egypt has come under increased criticism by domestic and international human rights groups since the army deposed former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, after a wave of mass protests calling on him to resign. Sisi, then acting as the country's defence minister, led Morsi's ouster. In a joint statement on June 10, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said Sisi would be taking office as president "in the midst of a human rights crisis as dire as in any period in the country's modern history." They criticised excessive use of force by security forces, leading to the worst incident of mass unlawful killings in Egypt's recent history, unprecedented large-scale death sentences, mass arrests and torture. They described it as hearkening "back to the darkest days of former President Hosni Mubarak's rule". The Protest Law was enacted in November 2013 by Egypt's then interim president, Adly Mansour, banning protests without prior police notification. "The draft law seeks to criminalise all forms of peaceful assembly, including demonstrations and public meetings, and gives the state free hand to disperse peaceful gatherings by use of force," read a joint statement issued in November 2013 by 19 Egyptian rights organisations. The legislation has been used against supporters of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group and Morsi, as well as secular political activists and youth protesters that led the 2011 uprising against Mubarak.

Supporters of the law say it is necessary to stabilise a country that has been rocked by protests since 2011. When Sisi was campaigning for the presidency in May, he defended the law, saying that "irresponsible" demonstrations threaten the state, according to the state-owned Ahram Online news website. 

Since the 2011 uprising, Egypt's economy has been stuck in its deepest slump in two decades, according to Bloomberg News, as tourists and investors have been deterred by political instability.
But as domestic and international rights groups have criticised recent moves by the government to impose greater state control over non-governmental organisations, Sisi does not seem shaken.

"Sisi and the Egyptian government have been quite insensitive to protests. It's quite unlike the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ruled after Mubarak stepped down, and before Morsi's election. Those leaders felt they were on shaky grounds, and they often did respond to street protests. That doesn't seem to be the case here," Dunne said.

Laila Soueif, the sister of prominent novelist Ahdaf Soueif, said she had no faith in Egypt's judiciary and is relying entirely on public opinion to help release the detainees. "In order to protect the progress we have made in our rights and freedoms, we need a new system of government around the world, based not on repression, but on negotiation and compromise," she said.


*Art by Carlos Latuff

Everyone's right to protest!

Comrades from Cairo
Everyone's Right to Protest

June 20, 2014

To Those At Whose Side We Struggle,

We write to you again at the bloody dawn of a new presidency: our fourth in as many years. General Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who oversaw the brutal overthrow of Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, now sits on Egypt’s Iron Throne.

Mubarak’s resurgent police state is more ferocious than ever. The media, controlled by a handful of millionaires, is terrorizing the populace into sacrificing their most basic rights to the double-faced deity of Security and Stability. And the young revolutionaries who dared to challenge the status quo and who, for a moment in 2011, glimpsed the possibility of something new, are being rounded up and jailed one by one.

Having hijacked the popular protests of 30 June 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood to ride back into power, the military establishment is now using every means at its disposal to silence all forms of dissent and annihilate the hard-won political space of the past three years.

Violence and intimidation have always been the principal tools of the police force, but in Sisi’s Egypt the judiciary has been given a new and leading role in the suppression of freedoms.

Their tool is the Protest Law, which in its seven months of life, has been used to round up, detain and sentence thousands of participants in peaceful protests - and to target specific and influential activists within them.

The most noted example today is Alaa Abd El Fattah. On 26 November 2013, around two hundred protesters gathered outside Egypt’s Parliamentary Upper House were attacked by police with water canons, batons, plainclothes thugs, and tear gas.

Fifty people were arrested, and once the women, journalists and lawyers--who were all beaten--were released, twenty four men were left in jail. The following night, the police violently arrested Alaa from his home.

Today, Alaa and the twenty four have been sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In Alexandria, Mahienour el-Massry, one of the coastal city’s most tireless human rights lawyers, sits in prison on a two-year sentence for holding a protest outside a courthouse where the policemen who murdered Khaled Said were standing trial.

Back in Cairo, the founders of the April 6th Youth Movement, one of the most organised, young political groups in the country, are serving three year sentences in maximum security. And there are many many more. Since 3 July 2013, over thirty six thousand have been arrested for political participation. More than eighty have died in custody.

So now we face the police’s bullets, the prosecution’s corruption and the courtroom’s cages. But there can only be one way forward. We will not hand our rights over to a tyrant and his security state. We will not let our comrades waste their youth in Mubarak’s prison cells. We will not be silenced.

And so on Saturday we march to the Presidential Palace. And around the world friends and comrades have stepped forward in solidarity. Protests have been announced for Athens, Berlin, Derry, London, Paris, New York, and Stockholm, with more still to join.

Though we know it will be a long time before we reach the dizzying heights of 2011 again, moments of unity and of international struggle are as important as ever.

The right to protest is not just under attack in Egypt but is being repressed and criminalized across the globe. And from Gezi Park to Nabi Saleh to US campuses to Marikana, people are fighting for it.

It is impossible to engage on all fronts, on all injustices, simultaneously. And often tragedy is required for focus. In Egypt we are at a crucial juncture.

The protest law must be brought down. The imprisoned must be freed. The government must know that it cannot act with impunity. Small actions multiplied, amplify.

When the world watched Tahrir Square in February 2011, it swelled the pressure building on Mubarak. When the revolution squared up to the Army (SCAF) later that year, the Generals’ delegitimization was hastened by the international public’s aversion to them.

The effects of solidarity are unquantifiable, unknowable. But we do know that if we, or anyone, gives up their right to protest we are giving up the right to shape our own world.

Blogger & 24 other activists sentenced to 15 yrs in prison for peaceful protest

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Egypt: 15-year jail sentences for blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah and 24 others condemned

June 11, 2014

‘It’s deeply troubling that, just days into Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s presidency, courts are already jailing government critics’ - Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui

 

The handing down of 15-year jail sentences to 25 activists in Egypt earlier today has been condemned by Amnesty International.

 

Earlier today the leading activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah and 24 others were sentenced to 15 years in prison on politically-motivated charges by the Cairo Criminal Court.

 

The 25 were sentenced on charges of stealing a police radio, attacking security forces, protesting without permission and hindering the work of national institutions. They had been tried in relation to a peaceful protest which took place outside Egypt’s Shura Council last November by the “No To Military Trials” group. The activists were protesting against the inclusion of a provision allowing the trial of civilians before military courts by the Drafting Committee of the Constitution. 

 

Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said:

 

“It’s deeply troubling that, just days into Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s presidency, courts are already jailing government critics.

 

“By locking up one of the leading activists in Egypt, the authorities are sending a clear message that they will not tolerate anyone daring to challenge or criticise them.

 

“Protesting peacefully is not a crime. If held solely for taking part in a protest, the activists must be released immediately and unconditionally.”

*Photo courtesy of Noor Ayman Nour

Police kill student, jail 2 prominent activists

DPA 
Student killed as Egypt crackdown draws backlash

November 27, 2013

RAMADAN AL-FATASH and POL O GRADAIGH

CAIRO — A Cairo University student was killed Thursday in clashes with security forces, as a backlash grew over harsh sentences handed down to female Islamist demonstrators and a strict new protest law.

The engineering student was hit in the neck by a birdshot cartridge as police tried to push back Islamist students attempting to march from the university campus, the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported.

There were further clashes at the University of Alexandria on Egypt's north coast, where students stayed away from classes in three institutes in solidarity with 21 young Muslim Brotherhood women who received 11-year sentences on Wednesday, Al-Ahram said.

A misdemeanors court in the city had convicted the 21 on charges of illegal assembly, destroying property and carrying weapons at a protest they held in support of deposed President Mohammed Morsi.

The court sent seven of the convicted demonstrators, who were minors, to a juvenile home, while the remainder, mostly university students, were jailed.

Defense lawyers have said they will appeal.

Morsi's Brotherhood has condemned the verdicts as "false and unfair" and called for mass rallies Saturday to show solidarity with the girls.

Rights activists and some political figures also condemned the judgment.

"The continuation of issuing such politicized judgments by Egyptian judiciary members against activists in light of their political views (raises) ... doubts over the future of justice in Egypt," the Cairo-based Arab Network for Human Rights Information stated.

Controversy over the harsh legal steps against Islamists was further fanned by reports that a secondary school student had been detained for 15 days by prosecutors investigating an accusation that he had an Islamist symbol on his ruler.

Teachers at a secondary school in Kafr al-Sheikh province called police when they observed the Rabaa symbol - referring to the Cairo protest site where hundreds of Islamists were killed by security forces in August - on the pupil's ruler, the independent newspaper Al-Shorouq reported online.

Thousands of Morsi supporters have been detained since July when the army ousted him after mass street protests against him.

The military-installed authorities say the crackdown on Islamists is part of a campaign against terrorism allegedly incited by the Brotherhood.

Meanwhile, police arrested a prominent activist wanted for organizing an unauthorized protest in what was seen as a first test of a strict new law on demonstrations.

Alaa Abdel-Fattah was arrested at his home, the independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported, quoting security sources.

"Police broke into our house arrested (at)alaa and beaten me. They stole both our laptops and both our mobiles," his wife, Manal Bahy Eldin, wrote in English on Twitter.

Prosecutors had ordered the arrest of Abdel-Fattah and Ahmed Maher, founder of the revolutionary April 6 Movement, for allegedly organizing Tuesday's protest against a provision in the draft constitution allowing military courts to try civilians.

Both men have denied being organizers of the protest but said they would hand themselves in to prosecutors on Saturday.

Other activists arrested when police broke up the demonstration went on hunger strike after their detention was extended earlier Thursday, Mona Mamoun of the No Military Trials group told the German news agency dpa.

President Adly Mansour on Sunday ratified a law requiring organizers to give three days' notice of any protest to police, who may ban it if they believe it to be a threat to order.


*Photo of riot police firing into Cairo University campus, courtesy of Al-Masry Al-Youm

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/11/27/3202424/student-killed-as-egypt-crackdown.html#storylink=cpy