CAIRO (MEMO) – Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, despite ending the state of emergency by Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in October 2021, the Egyptian government attached emergency decree provisions to other laws, and Emergency State Security Courts continued to prosecute human rights and peaceful political activists.
The rights watchdog said in its annual report in January 2021, the implementing regulations for the associations law formalized extensive and arbitrary restrictions on independent civil society organizations, requiring groups to register by 11 January, 2022, or risk dissolution.
According to the report, the Egyptian authorities used discriminatory morality and debauchery laws to arrest and detain female social media influencers on unjust charges of “undermining family values.”
“President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government, in 2021, continued down its well-trodden path of unrelenting repression,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch.
HRW’s World Report 2022, which reviewed human rights practices in nearly 100 countries, indicates that the Egyptian security forces acted with impunity, routinely conducting arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and torture of real or suspected political activists as well as ordinary citizens.
According to the report, the Egyptian authorities extended repression to advocates abroad by arresting and sometimes “disappearing” family members in Egypt, including the family of U.S.-based human rights defender, Mohamed Soltan.