The recent developments also come as a direct response to our activities in the field of international advocacy, and in particular our meetings with a number of diplomatic missions, the most recent of which was a meeting held at EIPR’s headquarters on November 3rd with 13 ambassadors and accredited diplomats, who discussed ways to improve human rights conditions in Egypt.
Files: Freedoms of assembly and association
In an unprecedented escalation for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a security force arrested Mohamed Bashseer, the Administrative Manager at EIPR from his home after midnight on Sunday the 15th and detained him for more than 12 hours
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) condemns the verdict passed in absentia by the Fifth Circuit of the Criminal Court (terrorism felonies) with 15 years’ imprisonment for Bahey El Din Hassan, founder of Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), and one of the pioneers of Egyptian human rights work throughout its history.
INCLO calls on police in the USA to adopt clear regulations on the use of force and less-lethal weapons in the context of protest which conform with the recent UN Guidance on Less Lethal Weapons.It is well established that the use of violence by some protesters does not suspend the right to protest of all those gathered and it doesn’t provide a license to escalate police responses and use of excessive or deadly force.
It is worth noting that the State Security Prosecution has recently developed a habit of throwing a lot of people who are mainly targeted because of their political inclinations into large cauldron cases with a long list of accusations and a huge number of defendants; defendants who do not necessarily have any links or anything in common, and on charges of incidents that are not only unrelated but that do not even have any intersection time or area wise.
Gasser Abdel-Razek, EIPR’s executive director, attended today a civil society business lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, his foreign minister, Jean-Yves La Drian, and other members of the delegation accompanying the French President during his visit to Egypt.
What happened in Dimshaw Hashim is not a unique case, but a recurrent pattern in a number of governorates that has been going on recently, manifested in closing a number of existing churches and them being unable to settle their legal status.
The 28th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, May 3 each year, marks the first anniversary of the Egyptian authorities’ massive campaign to block press and media websites, which reached 98 blocked sites, according to the latest survey by the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE).
The persistent legal harassment—the closure of the Nadeem Center will not be the last incident—will not deter Egyptian rights organizations from steadfastly exposing the current regime’s abuses and its violations of citizens’ fundamental human rights. We will continue to conduct research, monitor, and raise awareness in service of human rights principles and in defense of those victimized by draconian laws designed to forcefully shutdown the public sphere and all outlets for peaceful expression of opinion.
Parliament began to debate the bill and approved 40 of its 89 articles yesterday in record time. It is scheduled to resume debate on the remaining articles on November 15. We also condemn parliament’s treatment of civil society as an enemy to be defeated through secret plots and laws.
