CAIRO (Dispatches) – Three Egyptian journalists launched a hunger strike on Monday in solidarity with jailed British-Egyptian writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah and thousands of other political prisoners, as world leaders arrived in Egypt for the Cop27 United Nations climate change conference.
Cop27 is taking place in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh from 6-18 November, amid tight restrictions on peaceful assembly and free speech.
Eman Ouf, Mona Selim and Racha Azab, announced on Facebook that they had begun a hunger strike, in addition to a sit-in inside the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate in Cairo.
“We demand the immediate release of Alaa Abd el-Fattah [and] the release of detained journalists, whether they are members of the press union or not,” they wrote on Monday.
Meanwhile, the sister of Egyptian-British hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah is in Sharm el-Sheikh to campaign for his release as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and other world leaders are holding the COP27 climate summit.
“I’m here to do my best to try and shed light on my brother’s case and to save him,” said Sanaa Seif, Abd el-Fattah’s sister, after arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh in the early hours of Monday.
“I’m really worried. I’m here to put pressure on all leaders coming, especially Prime Minister Rishi Sunak,” said Seif, who had recently been leading a sit-in outside the British Foreign Office in London.
Sunak has said he will raise Abd el-Fattah’s case with Egypt’s leadership. Abd el-Fattah had informed his family that he would stop drinking water on Sunday in an escalation of his protest.
The 40-year-old political activist rose to prominence with Egypt’s 2011 uprising but has been jailed for most of the period since. Sentenced most recently in December 2021 to five years on charges of spreading false news, he has been on hunger strike for 220 days against his detention and prison conditions.
Egyptian officials have not responded to calls for comment on Abd el-Fattah’s case, but have said previously that he was receiving meals and was moved to a prison with better conditions earlier this year.
Abd el-Fattah’s family said he was only consuming minimal calories and some fiber to sustain himself earlier in the year. After family visits in October, Seif said: “He looks very weak. He’s fading away slowly. He looks like a skeleton.”
Some rights campaigners have criticized the decision to allow Egypt to host COP27, citing a long crackdown on political dissent in which rights groups say tens of thousands have been imprisoned and raising concern over access and space for protests at the talks.
Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces have arrested an engineer who is confined to a wheelchair and forcibly disappeared him three years after his son was arrested.
The Egyptian Network for Human Rights reported that security forces stormed Mohamed Omar’s home at dawn on November 4.
Mohamed is the father of student Amr Mohamed and is unable to move without the help of his family and is in constant need of medical care.
In 2019, whilst at a train station with his father, Amr was surrounded by security forces, handcuffed, blindfolded and taken away.
Hundreds of Egyptians have been arrested in recent weeks in the lead up to COP27.