A South Asian proverb:

When-buffaloes fight, it’s the trees that gets wrecked.

An African saying:

When elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets hurt.

Just at this moment, I received a divine revelation:

“When the world’s most powerful person and the planet’s richest person fight, it’s the world that gets ravaged.”

HOPE NOT!

HOPE …

they’ll “have dinner together,” instead.

To me, war God YHWH further revealed:

“Whatever happens elsewhere is none of my business. However, what happens in my ‘chosen land’ is my supreme concern. Thus one thing remains constant: My chosen one Bibi (not to be confused with this Bibi) is going to continue working to spread more peace.

“No one could stop Bibi’s mission: neither those who think expanding peace is a crime, nor those who claim the land belongs to other people.

“The chosen land is blessed with good neighbors: Pharaoh, Auto-man, puppet, mole, and GCCP. Bibi is busy mopping up the area of people who challenged the chosen ones. Only one bad neighbor is left now which, I am sure, Bibi will take care of.

“My people are also being supported by a communalist who follows a supremacist ideology. The founders of that supremacist ideology were impressed by the person who sent many people to gas chambers, including five to six million of my followers. The communalists were planning the same for the minorities in their own country.

(YHWH has used code-words rather than naming the neighbors.)

Pharaoh cannot be anyone but Egypt‘s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Auto-man sounds like Ottoman, that is, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan is a man who turns automatically in the direction where he sees benefits.

Puppet must be Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

Mole must be Morocco’s King Hassan II who, as a member of the Arab League, gave very important information from the conference recording to Israel’s spy agency Mossad. Why would Yahweh invoke Hassan II who died in 1999? Yahweh is probably trying to say that relations have remained the same with the new King, Muhammad VI, son of Hassan II.

GCCP. GCC stands for Gulf Cooperation Council made up of six countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Despite being Jewish God, YHWH has some knowledge of the rulers who are always worried about their ass-glued gold thrones and are thus looking for protection from the US at the expense of their resources and people. We can thus deduce that GCCP stand for Gulf Cooperation Council of Pimps.

The communalist is India’s Narendra Modi.

The “bad neighbor” is not difficult to identify because only Iran is left there who gave support to Gazans and opposes Israel’s hegemony. Israel, a nuclear power, is looking for ways to destroy Iran’s nuclear program so that it doesn’t have any nuclear rival.)

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by B.R. Gowani.

Abdelfattah has spent nearly a decade in prison and now faces an additional two years of detention—despite Egyptian legal provisions that should have guaranteed his release last September. On May 20, the journalist’s 69-year-old mother, Laila Soueif, resumed a near-total hunger strike in protest.

On March 4, CPJ led a joint letter signed by 50 prominent human rights leaders, Nobel laureates, writers, and public figures, urging President el-Sisi to issue a presidential pardon for Abdelfattah.

Read the full letter in English here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the chief guest at his nation's 74th Republic Day celebrations, Amnesty International on Thursday led calls for both right-wing leaders to "address the ongoing human rights and impunity crises" in their respective countries.

Meeting ahead of events commemorating the adoption of India's constitution—including a military parade in which members of the Egyptian army marched—Modi and El-Sisi agreed to elevate bilateral ties to a "strategic partnership," while calling for a "coordinated and concerted" effort to combat "terrorism."

Modi—who said Wednesday that he and El-Sisi "are in agreement that terrorism is the biggest threat to humanity"—has, like his Egyptian counterpart, been accused of using anti-terrorism laws to crush critics and silence dissent.

"The current human rights crises in India and Egypt are characterized by entrenched impunity and misuse of counterterrorism legislation to clamp down on civic space and peaceful dissent."

"The current human rights crises in India and Egypt are characterized by entrenched impunity and misuse of counterterrorism legislation to clamp down on civic space and peaceful dissent," Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa research and advocacy director at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

"Both countries show striking parallels in their attempts to harass and intimidate into silence all actual or perceived government critics and opponents. This unrelenting assault on human rights must end," he added.

As Amnesty noted:

In recent years, authorities in both countries have severely repressed the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly and failed to address entrenched discrimination against religious minorities.

[...]

Human rights defenders, lawyers, political opponents, peaceful protesters, academics, and students, face arbitrary arrests and detention, unjust prosecutions, and other forms of harassment and intimidation solely for their peaceful exercise of their human rights in both India and Egypt.

"India and Egypt seem to have taken their long-standing bilateral cooperation to a different level where they share tactics to increasingly repress rights and freedoms," Amnesty International India board chief Aakar Patel said in a statement. "As the leaders of the two countries take the center stage, celebrations of the adoption of India's constitution 74 years ago should not overshadow the grim reality that the human rights situations in both countries have been on a downward spiral."

Leading an open letter from Egyptian and Indian diaspora members published Tuesday by the Canadian alternative news site rabble.ca, Ehab Lotayef, Samaa Elibyari, and Jooneed Jeeroburkhan noted that India's constitution "guarantees full equality and rights to all Indians and declares the country a secular, socialist republic."

"However today's India is led by a Hindu ethno-nationalist party committed to converting it into a Hindu nation," the authors continued, and "the government of India has been called out by domestic and international human rights organizations for unleashing and engendering violence and detentions against Muslim, Dalit, and Christian minorities as well as any human rights defenders."

"Meanwhile, January 25 marks the start of the 17 days in 2011 which forced one of the region's longest-serving and most influential leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, from power," they continued. "We recall that moment of incredible exhilaration as all Egyptians aspired to more democracy and social justice. Unfortunately, on July 3, 2013, then-Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi staged a coup d'état that toppled President Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president of Egypt, and returned the country to dictatorial rule."

"Since his ascent to power through dubious elections, El-Sisi has governed Egypt with an iron fist," the trio wrote. "Under his direct command, on August 14, 2013, two encampments of protesters in Rabaa and al-Nahda squares, demanding that President Morsi be reinstated, were dismantled by lethal force and more than 1,000 people were killed."

"To date, no one has been held accountable," the authors added. "Since then, all dissenting voices have been silenced and more than 60,000 political prisoners languish behind bars in abject conditions."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

On July 7, state security forces arrested Ebeid, a reporter for state-owned weekly print newspaper Rose al-Yousef, from his home in Cairo, and detained him in an unknown location until July 18, when he appeared before the state prosecutor, according to a report by the local news website Darb and a local journalist, who is also a press freedom advocate, who spoke with CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

The journalist’s family first disclosed his arrest in that Darb report, published on Wednesday, August 24.

On July 18, the state prosecutor charged Ebeid with belonging to a terrorist group and spreading false news, without stating the reason for the charges, according to those sources. Authorities ordered him to be detained for 15 days, held him until August 21, and then renewed his detention for another 15 days, according to the journalist who spoke with CPJ.

“President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government is not fooling anyone into thinking it respects press freedom by releasing a few journalists this year, since it continues to arrest more,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour in Washington, D.C. “Egyptian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release journalist Raouf Ebeid, drop all charges against him, and allow journalists to work freely and without fear of arrest.” 

The journalist who spoke to CPJ said that Ebeid is being held in Al-Qanater Prison, in Cairo, and that Ebeid is diabetic and was not receiving any medical care in prison.

If convicted of belonging to a terrorist group, he could face a life sentence; convictions for spreading false news carry up to five years in prison, according to Egypt’s penal code.

The Egyptian Ministry of Interior did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment on Ebeid’s case.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The letter urged the Biden administration not to provide $300 million out of the proposed $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt, noting that the additional $300 million is conditioned on Egypt meeting a set of conditions related to human rights and the rule of law. The groups argue that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi’s recent purported human rights efforts are an attempt to “whitewash” his government’s crackdown on free expression and human rights.

Egypt was the third worst jailer of journalists in the world, with at least 25 journalists behind bars, at the time of CPJ’s 2021 prison census.

The letter can be read here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Biden plans to meet with regional leaders including Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi during the trip, scheduled to begin on July 13.

“President Biden’s planned meeting with Israeli, Saudi, and Egyptian leaders next month runs the risk of a return to business as usual, despite overwhelming evidence that their governments targeted journalists,” said CPJ Senior Middle East and North Africa Researcher Justin Shilad. “Biden should not normalize the killing and jailing of journalists, but should instead demand accountability and the release of journalists behind bars.”

The Biden administration’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report in February 2021 blaming bin Salman for the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently called for an “independent, credible” investigation into the May 11 killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

Egypt was the world’s the third-worst jailer of journalists on CPJ’s 2021 prison census, and the government continues to hold bloggers such as Alaa Abdelfattah in deplorable conditions.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

“We are pleased that Salah and Fayed are getting some relief after their unjust and prolonged detention, but there must also be justice for the many other journalists being held in Egypt’s jails,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator. “The Biden administration and other U.S. officials should continue to hold President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s feet close to the fire if he doesn’t deliver on reforms.”

The reports said the latest releases follow el-Sisi’s promises to call for political dialogue in the wake of growing concern among U.S. lawmakers about Egypt’s human rights record and the Biden administration’s decision to make a portion of U.S. military aid to Cairo conditional upon improvement of that record.

As of December 1, 2021, Egypt was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 25 reporters imprisoned in the country in retaliation for their work, according to CPJ’s most recent prison census.     

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“Egyptian President el-Sisi has systematically attacked the press, imprisoned journalists, and silenced critical voices,” said Tom Gibson, CPJ’s EU representative.  “The European Commission should abide by its values and demand during el-Sisi’s upcoming visit that Egyptian authorities cease their repression of the media. The commission cannot let business carry on as usual.”

Von der Leyen is scheduled to receive el-Sisi at a meeting on February 17, while he is in Brussels to attend a summit between the European Union and the African Union.

In its 2021 prison census, CPJ documented at least 25 journalists in detention in Egypt, making it the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists. Egyptian authorities have repeatedly harassed and censored journalists through legal threats, surveillance, and imprisonment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

The statement noted that the administration’s move to send $170 million in military aid, as reported by Politico and Reuters, “sidesteps the intent of Congress,” which had passed legislation to withhold such funds unless the Egyptian government acted to improve the human rights situation in the country. The statement notes that the administration agreed to temporarily withhold a further $130 million in military aid.

Previously, CPJ called on the Biden administration to refrain using human rights waivers to send military aid to Egypt, as used by the Obama and Trump administrations. As of December 1, 2020, Egypt was the third-worst jailer of journalists in the world, with at least 27 in prison for their work, according to CPJ’s latest prison census.

The statement called on the U.S. Congress to strengthen the language of next year’s appropriations bill to ensure that the administration cannot take similar action in the future.

The joint statement can be read here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.