A group of women judges and lawyers from Arab countries sent a letter to Justice Hamed Abdullah, the head of the Egyptian Supreme Judicial Council, on the10th of September to express their grave concern about the detention of Yara Sallam
Programs: Civil Liberties
Desperation seems to have struck with thousands of political prisoners, punished for their political choices, forced to witness and experience gross human rights violations in detention facilities, and denied access to fair trials.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights demanded the immediate repeal of the protest law as unconstitutional.
A report that chronicles and analyzes cases of defamation of religion between 2011 and 2013 is now available in English under the title of “Besieging Freedom of Thought: Defamation of Religion Cases in Two Years of the Revolution.”
The report documents and analyzes defamation of religion cases that took place in various Egyptian provinces and the types of social and legal intimidation facing the accused. It finds increasing prosecution and intimidation aimed at curbing freedom of opinion, belief and expression by unofficial social actors. In most of these cases, the victims were ordinary citizens and not necessarily well-known commentators or public figures, as it used to be in the past two decades. Moreover, prosecutions were not limited to members of religious or communal minorities.
Policies of all modern political administrations employed different authoritarian tools against challengers to teachings of the official religious institutions thus infringing on the rights of Muslims who don’t wish to follow the state’s interpretation of religion.
The Ministry of Education has recently announced a change in the curricula of at least 30 text books according to news reports.
The three journalists got prison sentences that ranged from 7 to 10 years in the infamous AJE trial. The trial was criticized for the lack of concrete evidence and due process.
The meeting, held at the cabinet building, was held at the request of Bahey eddin Hassan following the sudden announcement by the Ministry of Social Solidarity of a new repressive draft law on associations.