Human rights in Egypt
[3] Other complaints made (by Human Rights Watch) are of authorities harassing and detaining "relatives of dissidents abroad" and use of "vague 'morality' charges to prosecute LGBT people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence.
In Egypt's most recent presidential election, el-Sisi won 97% of the vote after "all credible challengers withdrew, citing personal decisions, political pressure, legal troubles, and unfair competition.
The U.S. Department of State's "2019 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" listed the following perceived human rights issues in Egypt: Significant human rights issues included: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents and terrorist groups; forced disappearance; torture; arbitrary detention; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; political prisoners; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; the worst forms of restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including arrests or prosecutions against journalists, censorship, site blocking, and the existence of unenforced criminal libel; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, such as overly restrictive laws governing civil society organizations; restrictions on political participation; violence involving religious minorities; violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons; use of the law to arbitrarily arrest and prosecute LGBTI persons; and forced or compulsory child labor.
[12] In March 2023, Human Rights Watch released a report stating that the Egyptian authorities refused to provide identity documents, such as passports, national IDs and birth certificates, to critics living abroad.
The report revealed that Sanaa was taken to the office of the Supreme State Security Prosecution in Cairo, where the prosecutors questioned her over the charges of "disseminating false news", "inciting terrorist crimes" and "misuse of social media".
[31] According to ABC News, in July 2020 Egyptian authorities arrested 10 doctors and six journalists to stifle criticism about the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt by the government led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
As per human rights organizations, the Abdel Fateh Al Sisi government, under a law sanctioned by Beblawi, arrested thousands of civilians on political grounds, including US citizens like Mustafa Kassem, who succumbed during his imprisonment in January 2020.
[49] The Egyptian student, Patrick Zaki, who was arrested at the Cairo airport for allegedly spreading fake news on social media platforms that caused unauthorized protests, was offered Italian citizenship by their government via a senate voting.
[51] On 1 June 2021, HRW alongside 62 other organizations called on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to immediately end the crackdown on peaceful dissent, freedom of association, and independent groups.
[53] In November 2021, an investigation by Amnesty International concluded that Egyptian authorities were complicit in the crackdown on the factory workers who were demanding job security and higher pay through a peaceful strike.
[57] Human Rights Watch published a report in March 2023 revealing that the Egyptian authorities were refusing to provide critics living abroad with their identity documents, including passports, birth certificates, and ID cards.
Although in 1999 President Mubarak issued a decree making repairs of all places of worship subject to a 1976 civil construction code, in practice Christians report difficulty obtaining permits.
Before the last attack in February, a Sinai armed group of ISIS broadcast a video message threatening the lives of Copts and claiming responsibility for bombing of a Cairo church in December 2016 that killed at least 25 people.
On 22 February 2017, Nabila's son in law, Sameh Mansour, was told by his neighbor that two masked men came to his home and knocked on his door while he was out making arrangements the burial of his two relatives murdered by ISIS.
[90][91] In October 2005, Egyptian state police opened fire on Sudanese refugees camping outside the UNHCR office in protest of their neglect and conditions in the country, killing 134 and wounding over 400.
[96] Mortada Mansour, a prominent lawyer and a Sisi loyalist, during a TV interview in 2016 publicly made racist insults towards Ahmed El Merghany, a Nubian football player.
[101] According to a report in the British Medical Journal BMJ, "[t]he issue came to prominence...when the CNN television news channel broadcast a programme featuring a young girl being circumcised by a barber in Cairo.
In the debates leading up to the ban, a gynecologist at Cairo University, said that "Female circumcision is entrenched in Islamic life and teaching," and, "called on the government to implement training programmes for doctors to carry out the operation under anesthesia.
The women claimed that they were sexually abused during routine searches by the police or prison guards and/or by state-employed doctors ordered to conduct invasive physical exams and virginity tests.
[108] In June 2021, Egypt ordered a 10-year sentence to Haneen Hossam and Mawada al-Adham, social media celebrities, for "undermining family values and principles" by publishing "indecent" videos.
[115] In 2018, the Ministry of Social Solidarity provided financial aid to over 1.6 million people to help fund childhood education in order to decrease the amount of child labor.
In November 2020, the Italian prosecutors Sergio Colaiocco and Michele Prestipino placed five members of Egypt's security forces under official investigation for their alleged involvement in disappearance and torture of the Regeni.
He described the network of overcrowded Egyptian prisons as "lacking respect for human dignity.” His detention, alongside other activists, came amid a crackdown on political dissent, which also targeted critics of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
[142] In January 2022, The Guardian reported on the basis of leaked videos that Egyptian officers at al-Salam First police station in Cairo had been torturing and inflicting violence on the detainees with near total impunity.
The organization also documented that torture and other ill-treatment are routinely used in Egypt, which include electric shocks, suspension by the limbs, indefinite solitary confinement in inhumane conditions, sexual abuse and beatings.
In a years-long campaign by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to eliminate opposition to the government, thousands of political prisoners were held without trial for offenses as minor as liking an anti-government Facebook post.
[149][150][151][152][153] An investigative report by Reuters news agency published in March 2019 cited figures provided by the Egyptian Interior Ministry's statements from 1 July 2015 to the end of 2018: "In 108 incidents involving 471 men, only six suspects survived... That represents a kill ratio of 98.7 percent.
According to Kate Vigneswaran, senior legal adviser at the International Commission of Jurists’ Middle East and North Africa programme, the killings described by Reuters “constitute extrajudicial executions".
[169] The move has been described as staking out "a middle path" between a harder stance against human rights violations and support for Sisi's "committed, albeit ruthless" opposition to "militant Islam".
Instead of responding to calls to close the decade long Case 173 and lift arbitrary travel bans imposed on innocent people, the country's courts are repeatedly rejecting appeals by human right defenders against the restrictive measures against them.
