The letter raised concerns over Egypt’s worsening human rights situation, where authorities continue to suppress dissent, restrict civil society, and arbitrarily arrest thousands, including journalists. The letter highlighted Egyptian-British blogger Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has still not been released, even after completing his unjust five-year prison sentence in September 2024.

The signatories emphasized that a U.K.-led joint statement would send a strong message to Egyptian authorities about the urgency of Alaa’s release and the broader need to address Egypt’s deepening repression.

Read the full letter in English and العربية.

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

We discuss the cases of two of Egypt’s most prominent political activists, Hossam Bahgat and Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who have both been persecuted by the Egyptian government for exposing its human rights abuses. Bahgat is facing a new round of harassment from Egyptian security forces, while El-Fattah remains in prison past his expected release. El-Fattah’s mother, the Cairo University professor Laila Soueif, has been on hunger strike for nearly four months in the U.K., where both she and her son have dual citizenship, demanding that the British government pressure Egypt for El-Fattah’s freedom. “Her collapse is imminent. She’s probably going to be hospitalized soon,” says journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who recently spoke to Soueif’s family.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Egyptian authorities have refused to release Abd el-Fattah until January 2027, in violation of articles 482 and 484 of the country’s Criminal Procedure Law.

Abd el-Fattah was first arrested in September 2019, amidst a crackdown on protests calling for President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi’s resignation, and was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of anti-state and false news. In September 2024, CPJ separately called on the Egyptian government to release Abd el-Fattah, drop all remaining charges, and cease manipulating legal statutes to unjustly detain him.

Read the full statement here.

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

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated

Read over 400 magazine and newsletter back issues here

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Susie Day.

There are dictators in the world who wield absolute power, and then there are U.S. Senators. Very few understand the power these 100 individuals hold in the world's most powerful country. A single senator can effectively block any legislation. They don't need to give a reason, and often do it entirely in secret. President Joe Biden, who was a senator for decades, knows this and also knows he needs the vote of every Democratic senator to pass critical appropriations during Congress' current lame duck session.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, as one of his proud last acts in office, along with other Senators, should block further Egyptian military aid until Alaa is free.

Democratic Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, the longest-serving senator currently in office, is retiring on January 2nd after 48 years. He's been a champion of human rights, authoring the "Leahy Law" that denies U.S. aid to human rights abusing regimes. Senator Leahy or one of his colleagues could make a vital difference, and save lives, by blocking any bill in this session that shores up human rights abusing governments.

Take Egypt.

The U.S.-backed Egyptian dictator President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi rose to power after a military coup in 2013. His image is omnipresent in this sprawling capital city of 20 million, on buildings, lamp posts, and across the mass media, which is effectively controlled by the state. More than 60,000 political prisoners are locked up here; the true number is unknown. The most prominent is Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a writer, technologist and leading activist in the 2011 Arab Spring revolution that overthrew Egypt's previous, long-standing, U.S.-backed dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

Yet Alaa, a dual Egyptian and British citizen, has been in prison for most of the last decade. His case received global attention when Egypt hosted COP27, the UN climate summit, in Sharm el-Sheikh. Alaa had been on hunger strike for more than 200 days. As COP27 began on November 6th, he escalated his protest, refusing to drink water altogether. Last week, Alaa told family members, in their first prison visit in a month, that he suffered a near-death experience that week. The German Chancellor, the French President, the British Prime Minister, and President Biden had all raised his case directly with Sisi. Prison authorities medically intervened secretly, to avoid the crisis his death during COP27 would have provoked.

The Sisi regime survives largely thanks to massive support from the United States. Egypt receives $1.3 billion annually in military aid, with an additional $125 million-plus in economic aid. Egypt has long been the second-highest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, after Israel. Its support is delivered through annual Congressional appropriations, subject to verifiable compliance with human rights standards. The U.S. State Department oversees this massive aid package with the Pentagon.

As part of the process, the State Department is required to produce a human rights report on Egypt. Its most recent 72-page litany of horrors includes extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture and cruel, inhuman treatment; life-threatening prison conditions and arbitrary detention. The list goes on. While any rational reading of the report would result in the denial of aid, the State Department routinely invokes a "national security" waiver, authorizing the aid despite the rampant abuses.

"You train their police officers, their army officers," Laila Soueif, Alaa's mother, a math professor and renowned activist in her own right, told the Democracy Now! news hour during an interview in their family apartment in Cairo. "This is a U.S. operation. The helicopters they use to track people in the desert, this is the U.S. This whole Sisi thing is a U.S. security operation. Really, the U.S. can decide, if they want to, that they want the regime to do this or not do that."

Alaa's family has been tirelessly advocating for his release, at great risk. His youngest sister, Sanaa, 28, has already been imprisoned for three years for her activism. "The U.S. has stakes in that regime, stakes in that oppression, and so has responsibility," Sanaa said on Democracy Now!, sitting next to her mother. "It's not leverage. Leverage is as if you're not a stakeholder in this. You are a big part of this. You send $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt every year."

President Biden was photographed with Sisi at COP27, laughing with the dictator. Sisi has also been invited to next month's U.S.- Africa Leaders Summit at the White House. Like any Western-aligned autocrat seeking legitimacy, Sisi is reportedly seeking a one-on-one meeting with Biden.

President Biden should work for the immediate release of Alaa Abd El-Fattah and many more Egyptian political prisoners before granting Sisi a plum White House meeting. Meanwhile, Sen. Patrick Leahy, as one of his proud last acts in office, along with other Senators, should block further Egyptian military aid until Alaa is free.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan.

In a wide-ranging interview recorded in Cairo, we speak with Laila Soueif and Sanaa Seif, the mother and sister of British-Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah, about his health, his case, his family and his hopes for freedom. After visiting him in prison, they describe how El-Fattah started a water strike on the first day of the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh to draw international attention to the country’s human rights violations and protest his seemingly indefinite imprisonment. He paused after collapsing and suffering a “near-death experience” when prison officials appeared reluctant to record his full water and hunger strike. Seif says they set a date to restart his hunger strike, once he regains physical and mental strength. Laila Soueif discusses how El-Fattah helped her raise his two younger sisters when her now-deceased husband was in jail for his own activism. They also describe his relationship with his son, Khaled, who is nonverbal and diagnosed with autism, calling El-Fattah a “patient, kind father.” Recalling his most recent trial, they lay out how he was sentenced to five years in prison last December, and explain how El-Fattah’s lawyers never had access to the case trial or were allowed to argue his case. “There is clearly a vendetta” against El-Fattah, notes Seif, who adds “it’s pointless to talk about the legal procedures [since] each step of it is a sham.” Seif also speaks about the mass imprisonment of other political prisoners and the major influence and responsibility the U.S. has in freeing El-Fattah and others. “This whole operation [in Egypt] is a U.S. operation,” says Soueif, who says she wants El-Fattah freed and deported to the U.K. to keep him safe.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The family of imprisoned British Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah visited him on Thursday for the first time since he ended his full hunger and water strike, which they say occurred after he collapsed inside his prison shower last week. El-Fattah had intensified his strike on the first day of the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh to draw international attention to the country’s human rights violations and protest his seemingly indefinite imprisonment. We go to Cairo to speak with his aunt, Ahdaf Soueif, who was among the visitors and says El-Fattah may resume his hunger strike if the British government does not more aggressively demand his release. “It really breaks my heart to think of him going back on hunger strike when he is so thin and so weak,” but the campaign so far “has left no one in any doubt that Alaa should be free,” she says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

United Nations delegates have gathered for two weeks in the exclusive Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, seeking consensus on tackling catastrophic climate change. Unfortunately, this crucial summit, known as COP27 for the 27th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Convention, is being hosted by Egypt, one of the world’s most repressive governments. Its autocratic ruler, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, was a general when the Egyptian army refused to suppress the January, 2011 Arab Spring mass uprising centered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. After the Egyptian people overthrew the long-standing, U.S.-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak, they held elections and formed a popular government. That didn’t last long. A 2013 military coup followed by a sham election put al-Sisi in power. He enjoys full support from the U.S. government despite being more repressive than Mubarak.

An example of al-Sisi’s brutality is the imprisonment of 40-year-old writer and organizer Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Alaa, who holds joint Egyptian/British citizenship, has been imprisoned for most of the last ten years, targeted for eloquently advocating for democracy and liberation. Alaa was key during the Arab Spring, inspiring people with his words and creating free speech tools on the internet. In the violent Egyptian police state with pervasive surveillance and omnipresent secret police, though, advocating for freedom is a crime. Desperate after a decade of arbitrary and abusive detention, Alaa Abd El-Fattah began a hunger strike over 220 days ago. On November 6th, as COP27 opened and world leaders descended on Sharm el-Sheikh, Alaa escalated his fast, refusing water as well. Without immediate international intervention, Alaa will likely die before the final gavel drops on COP27.

Alaa’s mother, Laila Soueif, has been waiting every day outside the prison where her son is locked up, demanding proof he is still alive. A mathematics professor, she is a renowned human rights activist herself. On Thursday, she was told that her son had received an unexplained “medical intervention.” Human Rights Watch has warned Egypt against “imposing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” and that “hunger striking is a political act.”

Alaa’s lawyer was informed that he could visit Alaa, but, upon arriving at the prison gate, was denied entry.

Alaa’s two sisters, Mona and Sanaa, staged a sit-in at the British Foreign Office in London, calling on the government of newly-installed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to intervene on Alaa’s behalf, and to bring him to the UK. Sunak, who is attending COP27, wrote to the family, “I will continue to stress to President Sisi the importance that we attach to the swift resolution of Alaa’s case, and an end to his unacceptable treatment.” Sanaa, 28, is now at COP27, and has helped bring human rights front and center onto the climate justice agenda. Sanaa, who has spent three years in prison herself, has been threatened with arrest.

President Biden has enormous leverage over the Egyptian government, and is attending COP27. Fifty-six Congressmembers have urged him to demand Alaa’s release. While campaigning in 2020, Biden actually tweeted in support of other imprisoned Egyptian dissidents, writing, “Arresting, torturing, and exiling activists…or threatening their families is unacceptable. No more blank checks for Trump’s ‘favorite dictator.’”

Instead of fist-bumping the US-backed dictator al-Sisi, the way he did with the autocratic head of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman, Biden should demand the immediate release of Alaa and all other political prisoners. Laila Soueif wrote to Biden and other world leaders attending COP27, “If Alaa dies you too will have blood on your hands.”

In 2019, Mada Masr, one of Egypt’s last remaining independent news organizations, published a piece by Alaa, addressing the climate. It also appears in Alaa’s book, “You Have Not Yet Been Defeated”:

“The crisis, for certain, is not a crisis of awareness, but of surrendering to the inevitability of inequality. If the only thing that unites us is the threat, then every person or group will move to defend their interests. But if we meet around a hope in a better future, a future where we put an end to all forms of inequality, this global awareness will be transformed into positive energy. Hope here is a necessary action. Our rosy dreams will probably not come to pass. But if we leave ourselves to our nightmares we’ll be killed by fear before the Floods arrive.”

Alaa Abd El-Fattah should be attending COP27, addressing world leaders—not on the edge of death in an Egyptian prison.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan.

Photograph Source: Lilian Wagdy – CC BY 2.0

For the last weeks I have been frantically immersed in the works of this iconic blogger, technologist, philosopher and activist who is probably the most cause célèbre, throughout Egypt and the entire Arab World. For almost a decade now, he is held in prisons in Egypt predominately because of his intellect that is seen as an ultimate threat to a draconian dictatorship after a traumatic people’s revolution of 2011.

Abd el-Fattah’s book “You Have Not Yet Been Defeated,” brings forth personal essays, theories on technology, notes, poems and deeply heartfelt reflections on prison life, all combined to give an essence of urgency, defiance and an air of resistance that refuses to budge in-spite of all the incredible injustices. His ideas and his utter veracity make him a symbol of hope in an Egypt that has suffered incredible misery and political shenanigans after a disheartening militaristic takeover following the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and his 30 years dictatorship. Alaa is the not only a symbol of hope but also the symbol of change for Egypt itself and the evolution of civil society in the larger Arab world.

Since most of his texts were smuggled out during his numerous detentions in Egyptian prisons, the collection gives us a sense of an awakening to the militarism, torturous barbarity of a post-Arab Spring Egypt. They are no delusions of grandeur. The work brings together the fraught conditions he and many are dealing with. The sequence of events and experiences are dizzying to say the least. Abd El-Fattah supported initiatives that advanced citizen’s awareness, citizen’s participation, real investigative journalism on social media against the political apathy that was and is so dire across Egypt.

First arrested for his blog, which he and his wife Manal Bahey El-Din Hassan were actively instrumental in cementing mass participation and resistance on a mass scale. The blogs called Manalaa and Omraneya are basically the first Arab blogs to gather workers, students and youth and paved the way for the eventual confrontation that actually took place against the Mubarak dictatorship in 2011. Manalaa even won the Deutsch Welle’s Best blog and The Reporters Without Borders prize, six years before Arab Spring itself.

One moment he is the voice on al Jazeera live informing the world how thousands of demonstrators are in-front of the Egyptian Parliament demanding freedom, reform and revolution. The next moment he is in Silicon Valley at RightsCon delivering the keynote address on the perils of digital monopolisation regarding modality of communication and human rights. Not long after that he is thrown into a prison cell and denied any significant contact to the outside world.

In a letter to his family, he wrote:

“If one wished for death hunger strike would not be a struggle. If one was holding on to life out of instinct then what’s the point of a strike. If you are postponing death only out of shame at your mothers tears, then you are decreasing the chances of victory. I have taken a decision to escalate at a time I see as fitting for my struggle for my freedom and the freedom prisoner of a conflict they have no part in or they are trying to exist from. For a victims of a regime that is unable to handle its crises except with oppression, unable to re-produce itself except for incarceration. The decision was taken while I am flooded with your love and longing for your company. Much love, until we meet soon. Alaa”

How can we seriously talk about environmental shifts when Egypt, once the intellectual light of the Arab world, continues to rest on the lowest level of human index of global development, on human equity, on education, on intellectual property, on scientific achievements, on patents, on gender equality, on human rights. Seriously?  As Naomi Klein so aptly put it “This COP is more than just green washing a polluting state, its green washing a police state.”

What kind of country are we really talking about here, when a society is not even able to critically look at itself? When a State actually does not make any attempt or even think about reversing its own control mechanisms and will stop incarcerating those who wish to change to core of that given society for the better? How can we even attempt to find solutions when one of the brightest and most critical minds in Egypt is languishing in prison for no apparent reason but simply because he actually questions the status-quo where it needs to be dismantled on all levels? Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has been on a hunger-strike for over six months and is on the verge of death. He represents thousands of prisoners of conscious in Egyptian cells today. We cannot go on with hope against hope or even hope abandoned, phrases I am reminded by the words of Nadezhda Mandelstam who wrote her poignant texts regarding Stalin’s terror throughout the 1930s.

Honestly speaking, if there is going to be any shift in our dealing with the environmental catastrophes that are facing us, then naturally there must be a conscious shift in dealing with the humans who inhabit this planet. If we even attempt to count the amount of people imprisoned across the globe just for being conscious, the numbers are shockingly high. It is safe to say that human rights seem to be an expandable issue these days. The 21st century is cynically bored, where unlike the bygone days of 1970s when the Helsinki Accord, a détente between East & West was constructed. The declaration on human rights that was signed there, gave at least hope and a tinkling of consciousness. Thirty-five countries upheld, on paper at-least, the right of choice, of free political thought and the right of individual conscious. Today, almost 48 years on, our world seems so drastically changed that really one wonders how we even can start to address issues of environmental catastrophes, when so many are languishing in horrific conditions. And in most cases, these are the very people who can bring intelligent, necessary and needed solutions to the table.

In looking at the current state of affairs, there is absolutely no serious organism for self-empowerment in the current Egyptian socio-political model. The political debates, if one can call Abdel Fattah al-Sissi’s mode of governance that, in the Egyptian context lacks a theoretical frame that incorporates any critical assessment and evaluation of the post Arab spring experience. How to restructure the relations between the State, the market and other organised sectors of society for its citizenry? An open and actually critically informed study on what could be a possibility of a potentially post-capitalist potentialities are simply non-existent and even specially non-discussible. After the debacle of Mohamed Morsi, the central logic of the Egyptian State was its refusal to recognise the inherent need for a thorough process of transformation. Instead, the structural apparatus of the State continued to be dependent of foreign aid to massively bolster the Egyptian military and or fund wasteful outdated and hideous mega-projects to further bolster the State Apparatus by ensuring spending on a new capital for example and building the largest military governance administrative complex in the entire world, larger even than the Pentagon in USA or Nicolae Ceaușescu gross “Peoples Palace” in Bucharest.

Where is the moment to apply the same international standard on human rights and where is the desire to expand on something parallel to the Helsinki Accords? It often appears as though on all levels standards applied globally vary if one is dealing with the Northern hemisphere and when it comes to the Southern, like all norm of economic abuse and manipulation but the value of individuals is still up for grabs in the Global South.

The so-called notion of transition here is obviously framed in the context that the “old” State will never die, and that the new structural State can never appear regardless of any revolutionary actions. Now I ask the question, how can an old establish dictatorial system, that systematically oppresses thousands upon thousands (if not millions) can offer any fresher new environmental solutions when the very mindset is deadly against the likes of women and men who are actually informed about the way reality should shift for the betterment of not only their own citizenry but humanity at large. Yes, I know I sound naive, yes, but the case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, is simple and yet so obviously unjust. I mean to arrest a guy because he wants his society to be freer, more open, more just and to develop further in the 21st century. Really?

The contempt of democracy, the relationship of the State to religion and justice – the so- called liberal mainstays of our liberal democracy – have been reformulated in the draconian Egyptian context – to fit the militaristic paradigm. Thus, since democracy is the rule of majority, this means our State must serve as an instrument of promoting the interest of the majority, that in the al-Sissi promotional manifesto means the use of pseudo democratic tools (facade) to encourage sub-psychological promotion of fear and paranoia against those very factions that question the legitimacy of his dictatorial rule. It also means that the liberal state doctrine of Mosque and State is hypocritical, since it the State that supposedly protects the rights of religious minorities (like Copts, Shia, & Jews) then it must be somehow abandoned and the Egyptian State must serve the religious majority. Hence any or all protests that deviate any norms of militarism are labelled either anti-Egyptian.

Achieving justice in the context of al-Sissi, is formulated specifically to the masses as though Egypt is somehow rectifying the historical injustices done to the Sunni majority by the Coptic’s, Shia, Jews and all those so-called alien invaders, intruders and conspiracy mongers who continue to enjoy privileges of being protected by the State. Many reformed activists who had opposed the former regime felt themselves tied to sectional demands as the majority of the revolutionaries concentrated on the actual struggle in Tahir Square.

In the UK multiple political organisations are demanding the release of political prisoners. Fifteen Nobel laureates are demanding the immediate release of Alaa Abd el-Fattah for the COP27 “….to devote part of your agenda to the many thousands of political prisoners held in Egypt’s prisons.” Fifty-six US law makers have asked President Biden to demand for his release.

“The last nine years of his life have been stolen from him.” Alaa Abd el-Fattah is indeed fighting with his only weapon: his body, his brain, his stance, his courage and through a hunger strike of over 60 days, he will not even take water as a form of demonstration. A dire protest on the opening of COP27 Global charade in Sharm El Sheikh for the world to finally wake-up and take a hard look at itself and at human realities in a real Egypt and not some delusional fantasy of imaginary pharaohs.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ibrahim Quraishi.

Egyptian authorities have arrested hundreds in a crackdown on dissenting voices ahead of COP27, the U.N. climate conference which starts Sunday in Sharm El-Sheikh. Fifteen Nobel laureates have signed an open letter asking world leaders to pressure Egypt into releasing its many political prisoners, including human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who plans to intensify his six-month hunger strike by forgoing water on the opening day of the climate summit. “He’s organizing all of us from his prison cell,” says Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A growing global chorus of human rights organizations, Nobel Prize winners, and climate champions is calling on world leaders to pressure the Egyptian government to free dissident Alaa Abd el-Fattah—who is currently on a months-long hunger strike—and other political prisoners ahead of the COP27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, arguing that the fights for climate justice and democratic freedoms are inextricable.

In a letter to the head of the United Nations, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, and other key officials set to attend the climate talks starting Sunday, 15 Nobel Literature Prize winners demanded that the world leaders prioritize the "many thousands of political prisoners held in Egypt's prisons—most urgently, the Egyptian-British writer and philosopher, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, now six months into a hunger strike and at risk of death."

"Unless political freedoms are defended, there will be no meaningful climate action. Not in Egypt, nor anywhere else."

Last December, Abd el-Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison for spreading "false news" after he shared a Facebook post highlighting the torture of another prisoner.

"We urge you to use the opportunity that is now in your hands to help those most vulnerable, not just to the rising seas, but those imprisoned and forgotten—specifically in the very country that has the privilege of hosting you," the Nobel laureates wrote in their letter. "A just transition cannot solely be concerned with bringing down emissions, but must seek a re-construction of the status quo away from exploitation and coercion."

"If the world's leaders gather in Egypt and leave without even a word about the most vulnerable, then what hope can they have?" they added. "If COP27 ends up a silent gathering, where no one risks speaking openly for fear of angering the COP presidency, then what future is it that will be being negotiated over?"

The letter was sent after Abd el-Fattah informed his family in a letter that he intends to stop drinking water beginning November 6, the first day of the climate summit in a country whose government is notorious for repressing dissent.

"I have decided to escalate, at the appropriate time, my struggle for my freedom and the freedom of all prisoners," he wrote, sparking increasingly urgent calls for his immediate release.

In a social media post on Tuesday, author and climate advocate Naomi Klein asked, "If international solidarity is too weak to save Alaa, what hope do we have of saving a habitable home?"

"With the lights flickering in so many democracies around the world," Klein wrote in a column for The Intercept last month, "the message activists should bring to the climate summit, whether they travel to Egypt or engage from afar, is simple: Unless political freedoms are defended, there will be no meaningful climate action. Not in Egypt, nor anywhere else. These issues are intertwined, as are our fates."

Renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben similarly warned that the continued imprisonment of Abd el-Fattah "will make a mockery of the climate talks."

U.S. President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister RishiSunak "have the power to stop this," McKibben wrote on Twitter. "Intervene NOW."

Rights groups have been sounding the alarm for weeks over Egypt's crackdown on peaceful demonstrations ahead of the closely watched COP27 summit, a critical opportunity for world leaders to commit to more ambitious climate action as the devastating impacts of runaway warming become clearer by the day.

In a statement on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted that "Egypt is hosting COP27 following years of intensifying restrictions on human rights and environmental groups in the country, amounting to one of the harshest government clampdowns in decades."

Richard Pearshouse, HRW's environment director, lamented that "before delegations have set foot in Egypt, authorities have already shown their true colors by clamping down on any Egyptian who dares to call attention to the dire human rights situation in the country."

"In the days ahead, countries should make good on longstanding promises to prevent the most devastating impacts of climate change," said Pearshouse. "At the same time, they should reaffirm to Egypt's government and other authoritarian administrations that independent environmental activism is indispensable for the robust climate policies the world so urgently needs."

"Governments attending COP27 have a responsibility to call out Egypt's rhetoric around tolerance and openness as what it is, empty and meaningless, and to urge Egyptian authorities to end rights restrictions," he added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The family of imprisoned Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been staging a sit-in outside the British foreign office to demand the government help release him. El-Fattah, who was recently granted British citizenship, has been on hunger strike for over 200 days to protest being held in harsh conditions during his seemingly endless jail sentence in Egypt. “We’re not sure how much time is left. We’re not sure how much his body can take,” says his sister, Sanaa Seif.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The family of imprisoned Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been staging a sit-in outside the British foreign office to demand the government help release him. El-Fattah, who was recently granted British citizenship, has been on hunger strike for over 200 days to protest being held in harsh conditions during his seemingly endless jail sentence in Egypt. “We’re not sure how much time is left. We’re not sure how much his body can take,” says his sister, Sanaa Seif.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We speak with climate author and activist Bill McKibben, who is pushing for the climate movement to demand the release of Egyptian prisoner and human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah ahead of the next U.N. climate conference, which will be hosted in Egypt. McKibben says releasing El-Fattah to the U.K., which has agreed to house him, would be “the easiest of gestures” by Egypt, whose authoritarian leader met Saturday with President Biden. “The spread of authoritarian governments around the world is one of the things that’s making it difficult to deal with the existential challenge that climate change [presents],” says McKibben.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“President Biden’s stated priorities of security and stability are nearly impossible without an informed citizenry,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Factual, independent reporting touches people’s daily lives, keeping disinformation from sowing chaos and extremism. Too many journalists in the region are imprisoned or killed for probing the root causes of instability and for applying a critical lens that holds leaders to account. This must end. There is no better way to champion free and independent media than for the president to demand accountability in places where it is under threat.”

During this trip Biden is expected to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who, according to U.S. intelligence, was implicated in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden will also meet with Israeli authorities who refuse to launch a criminal investigation into the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, whose government routinely imprisons journalists. Egypt was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists in CPJ’s 2021 prison census.

CPJ reiterates previous calls on the Biden administration to immediately take these basic actions to defend journalists and press freedom:

• Grant the family of slain Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, their request to meet with the president during his trip. 
  
• Call for the immediate release of the dozens of journalists in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia, including Alaa Abdelfattah (Egypt), who has surpassed 100 days on a hunger strike. 
  
• Call on Saudi authorities to lift travel bans on formerly imprisoned journalists and dissidents, including Raif Badawi, and on Egypt to cease its post-release harassment of journalists such as Egyptian photojournalist and CPJ International Press Freedom Award honoree Mahmoud Abou Zeid (Shawkan), who is still being forced to spend  nights in police custody in spite of being released from prison on March 4, 2019.

The United States is a founding member of the Media Freedom Coalition, a grouping of 52 countries that have pledged to advocate for media freedom domestically and internationally. 

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

Calls are growing for the release of imprisoned Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who launched a hunger strike on April 2 to protest the harsh conditions he is held under at Cairo’s Tora prison. Abd El-Fattah, who became a leading voice of the Arab Spring revolution, has been in and out of prison for nearly a decade for his human rights activism. His family recently obtained U.K. citizenship for him in the hopes of pressuring Egyptian authorities to release him, and they warn that his condition is rapidly deteriorating behind bars. We speak to his sister, Sanaa Seif, who was also imprisoned on similar charges of disseminating “false news” before being released in December. “Now is a critical time where it finally might be possible for Alaa to be free,” says Seif. “What keeps us going is that we as a family want to survive and want to unite in peace.” We also speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is joining Seif on a U.S. tour with Alaa’s new book, “You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.” As the pair advocate for Abd El-Fattah’s immediate release, they also discuss more recent government crackdowns on prominent Egyptian voices, such as TikTok influencer Haneen Hossam. “It seems that prison is the government’s answer to any problem with a citizen,” says Kouddous.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.