Egypt: Alaa Abdel Fattah, the best-known political prisoner, went on strike

British-Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abdel Fattah, on hunger strike for seven months, also began a hunger strike on Sunday, his sister announced, while British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he wanted to take advantage of the opening of COP27 in Egypt to discuss the his case with the authorities in Cairo.

“Let’s be very clear. There is not much time left now, 72 hours at best, to release Alaa Abdel Fattah. If (Egyptian authorities) don’t do it, his death will be in all the discussions at COP27,” warned Anies Kalamar, the general secretary of Amnesty International, in Cairo yesterday.

Five hundred kilometers to the southeast, Egypt began welcoming yesterday and will host until November 18 the tens of thousands of participants in the twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Among them, Mr. Sunak must “understand” how “urgent” the issue is: “after COP27, it will be too late”, he stressed yesterday Sunday in a press release issued by Sanaa Saif, sister of Alaa Abdel Fattah , emblematic of the 2011 “revolution” in Egypt, who has also taken up British citizenship.

In a letter to Sanaa Saif, Mr Sunak assured her that Alaa Abdel Fattah’s case “remains a priority for the British government” as he is a “human rights defender and a British national”.

“The United Kingdom’s participation in COP27 offers a new opportunity to raise the issue of your brother’s case with the Egyptian authorities,” he continued, and assured her that “we are absolutely committed to resolving” the matter.

Alaa Abdel Fattah was sentenced at the end of 2021 to serve five years in prison for “spreading false news”. He was imprisoned in 2019. He was taken to prisons during the days of every president of Egypt in the last decade.

A black sheep of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime, Mr. Abdel Fattah stopped eating almost entirely since April 2 in protest at his detention conditions: he was given only a cup of tea and a spoonful of honey a day.

Since Tuesday, she no longer accepts any calories and yesterday “she stopped drinking water”, explained Sanaa Saif.

“He is terribly emaciated. The last time my mother saw him, he looked like a skeleton,” Ms. Saif said in mid-October.

Human rights and climate activists want to draw attention to the plight of the 60,000-plus prisoners of conscience in Egypt during COP27.

Environmental activist Greta Thunberg expressed her solidarity with them via Twitter.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed out that COP27 participants will be closely monitored.

“The authorities have imposed the installation of microphones and cameras in all taxis” in Sharm el-Sheikh, the NGO noted.

Thanks to a mobile phone app that everyone attending COP27 is required to download, Egyptian authorities will have “access to the phone’s camera, microphone and geolocation data”, which can be shared “with third parties”, she added. HRW.

A week before COP27, activists rioted over the arrest on October 31 of Indian climate campaigner Ajit Rajagopal.

As he began a symbolic march from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh, he was arrested and briefly detained, as was a lawyer who went to defend him.

RES-EMP

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