Once a prosperous country and the largest democracy of the Arab World, Egypt is currently under one of the harshest military regimes in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. Even though Egypt was one of the first and most prominent places where the Arab Spring flourished, the General Abdel Fattah al Sisi, who took power in 2014, has shattered every hope for a more democratic future for the country. Since its inauguration after a fraudulent election, al Sisi has waged a ruthless war against its political opponents as well as against those who oppose his rule or disagree with his policies. In this context, independent journalists, human rights supporters and foreign NGOs operate under siege and many among them have been put into prison or even disappeared. In addition, during his rule, al Sisi tightened control over the region of the Sinai Peninsula, where he continues to oppress the local Bedouin population who is fighting to preserve its autonomy.
Henceforth, this report is coming forward to put light on the numerous human rights violations committed by the military dictatorship in the country. In the first chapter, the report underlines the harsh violations vis-a-vis the Bedoul population in the Sinai region. Multiple pieces of evidence, drawn from the reports of various humanitarian NGOs and independent journalists, expose the extent of oppression that the Bedouins deal with and the continuous human rights violations that are perpetuated amid total silence from the international community. Furthermore, in the second chapter, the report crafts the general picture of human rights violations committed from the military junta, starting from the alteration of basic freedoms and finishing to more serious violations that threaten the very existence of various people of different social groups. The final section is composed for a set of different recommendations to the international community, which aim to propose applicable and efficient solutions in order to limit the powers of the military junta and protect fundamental rights of all Egyptians. It is underlined that this effort is not only necessary to preserve and promote the values of international humanitarian law, but also to prevent the biggest arab country in the region to fall once again in chaos, threatening once again the sensitive equilibrium of power in MENA. The report concludes with the relative bibliography.
Chapter 1: The situation in Sinai Region
Summary of the backstory and current situation in Sinai
The Egyptian government has been waging a war in the Sinai region against what he says is Islamist terrorism. Nonetheless, there have been reports of plenty of instances where the Egyptian government, headed by president el-Sisi, has used unorthodox tactics, such as enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and much more.
To summarize the issue, as it is mentioned in the Human Rights Watch Report on the situation occurring in the Sinai:
“Since 2011, the Egyptian military and police have battled ISIS-affiliated militants in North Sinai governorate. Sparsely populated, and with roughly half-a-million residents, this northern part of the Sinai Peninsula that borders Israel and the Gaza Strip has been a historically marginalized territory, separated from the rest of the country by the Suez Canal. Thousands have been arrested, and hundreds have disappeared in the past six years since the conflict escalated in 2013. Tens of thousands of residents have been forcibly evicted or fled their homes due to ongoing violence. This report documents how the Egyptian military and police have carried out systematic and widespread arbitrary arrests—including of children—enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, and forced evictions—abuses it has attempted to conceal through an effective ban on independent reporting. The military has also possibly conducted unlawful air and ground attacks that have killed numerous civilians—including children—and used civilian properties for military purposes. In addition, it has recruited, armed, and directed local militias, which have themselves engaged in serious rights violations, such as torture and arbitrary arrests, often exploiting their position to settle personal scores. Human Rights Watch has previously documented other abuses in Sinai that are not covered in this report, including unlawful mass destruction of homes and the Egyptian army’s forcible evictions of tens of thousands of residents, with little or no help for temporary accommodation and no judicial recourse. For their part, hundreds of fighters with the ISIS-affiliate group Wilayat Sina’, or Sinai Province, have kidnapped, tortured, and murdered hundreds of Sinai residents. They have beheaded or shot those who disagree with their extreme religious views or whom they perceive to be government sympathizers, and they have executed scores of captured government security forces, a war crime. Based on the research done for this report, and previous research Human Rights Watch has published on the situation in Sinai, the report finds that the fight in North Sinai most likely amounts to a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) in which the laws of war apply. The conditions to qualify a situation as a NIAC include severity, intensity, and duration of hostilities, as well as identifiable chains of command for warring parties. Some of the abuses carried out by government forces and the militants, which this report documents, are war crimes, and their widespread and systematic nature could amount to crimes against humanity. Both war crimes and crimes against humanity are not subject to any statute of limitation, and the latter could be prosecuted before international tribunals. The conflict in North Sinai escalated dramatically after July 2013, when then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted President Mohamed Morsy, a top Muslim Brotherhood official who had taken office the year before. Since Morsy’s removal, which prompted nationwide unrest and a brutal response from the army and police, the government has mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers in the area and used heavy weapons, naval vessels, and military aircraft. It has also imposed a state of emergency and a curfew in most of North Sinai, which quickly became the site of frequent attacks on the military and police. The Egyptian military presence in Sinai has not been this large seen since the country’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which strictly limited armed forces in the Sinai Peninsula. However, since 2013, Israel has not only allowed a build-up of Egyptian military presence in the area beyond the treaty stipulations, but also according to media reports and official statements, aided the Egyptian government forces and probably participated in airstrikes against ISIS-affiliated militants. As the conflict has ground on, the toll on local residents has grown. Independent media estimates indicate that at least hundreds of civilians have been killed and injured by all sides since July 2013. Formerly inhabited parts of North Sinai have turned into ghost towns, abandoned by residents fearful of more violence or being forcibly evicted by the army. Governments have an obligation to protect inhabitants of their territories from harm and protect their right to life. They and all parties to a conflict are also obliged to comply with international law. As the United Nations has repeatedly warned and Human Rights Watch has repeatedly documented, not only are abusive counterterrorism measures unlawful, they are also often counterproductive, alienating the very local communities they are allegedly protecting and generating support for extremist and armed groups. Human Rights Watch calls on the Egyptian authorities to protect civilians and uphold its obligations under the international laws of war and local and international human rights laws. The United Nations Human Rights Council and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should also open a commission of inquiry into abuses by all parties to the conflict in the North Sinai, including the Egyptian authorities, their armed forces and their irregular militias, and Sinai Province group. In addition, UN member states should suspend assistance to the Egyptian military and the police, as long as they carry out widespread and serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and fail to hold those responsible for violations accountable. Governments currently transferring weapons to Egypt, including the United States, United Kingdom, and France, have a responsibility to monitor how the arms they export are being used. When they continue to supply arms and other assistance knowing this support is significantly contributing to serious abuses, they may risk being complicit in these violations as well.”
Considering this, it is visible how the Egyptian government is taking part in widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Sinai region, while at the same time lacking accountability for their behaviour. Independent media and other sources of information are often stopped from entering the zone, making it easier for the employment of various gruesome strategies such as the ones being carried out by the el-Sisi government. From the destruction of common residential buildings, to deals with the local militias, the Egyptian government and their military apparatus are making use of every avenue to deal with the situation in Sinai, not taking into account the possibility of violations of human rights and of international humanitarian laws, in parallel with other similar concerns. On top of this, European countries such as France and the United Kingdom are currently aiding and abetting the el-Sisi government with arms sales and, sometimes, with intelligence and logistical support, while the Egyptian leadership is carrying out what can be considered a massacre in the Sinai region.
Government Abuses – Mass Arrests and
Enforced Disappearances
The Human Rights Watch report that assesses the situation in Sinai also makes some considerations regarding the broad array of techniques the Egyptian government is employing in the Sinai. In the beginning of the report, the Human Rights Watch specialists make some worthy mentions of situations surrounding mass arrests and enforced disappearances that are currently taking place in the Sinai region. In this context, the report sheds light on 50 cases that were identified as arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances, with some of the people involved in these instances being missing for several years. Moreover, the portrait that is depicted in the report shows that, specifically in the Sinai region, typical checks and balances and normal judicial procedure is dangerously lacking. The report also shares some details of the situation on the ground in Sinai, stating that the climate there is characterized by the perpetuation of fear and distrust, with the civilians in the area being automatically considered as possible threats by the governmental agents which are assessing the area:
“Since the escalation of the military campaigns in North Sinai in the summer of 2013, security forces have arrested thousands of residents, many of whom were probably arbitrarily arrested. Regular arbitrary arrest campaigns are part of daily life in areas where militants have been most active, residents said, including the cities of Rafah, Sheikh Zuwayed, al-Arish, and their surrounding villages in the northeast. According to locals who spoke to Human Rights Watch, the police and military treated residents of these areas with automatic suspicion. They said that soldiers, sometimes accompanied by Interior Ministry police forces and army-sponsored militia members, traveling in convoys of armored vehicles, regularly cordoned off neighborhoods and moved from house to house, asking for men by name or arresting whoever happened to be present. In no case that Human Rights Watch documented did authorities present a warrant or tell residents why they were making arrests, witnesses said. Typically, arresting officers said they would take someone for routine questioning and return them shortly. In reality, most people who have been arrested have been detained for long periods, sometimes years. Human Rights Watch documented 50 cases of local residents arbitrarily arrested by government security forces. In 39 of these cases, authorities likely forcibly disappeared them. Of those forcibly disappeared, 14 have been missing for at least three years. In none of these cases did prosecutors investigate the disappearance or subsequent alleged torture of detainees. In one case, a young man, whom the army forcibly disappeared for months before moving him to an official prison outside the Sinai, told the prosecutor interrogating him about his months-long disappearance and ill-treatment. He said the prosecutor responded: “Consider it the price you pay for the sake of the homeland.”.”
Regarding enforced disappearances, this Human Rights Watch report illustrates specific instances where photos that were released from the detaining centres show individuals who disappeared from their families being held in the detention facilities:
“Though the authorities generally refuse to officially acknowledge the arrest of detainees or identify their whereabouts to their relatives, both the military and Interior Ministry have released videos and photos, typically on their official social media accounts, showing detained individuals whom the authorities usually accuse of being involved in terrorism crimes. Some of those Human Rights Watch interviewed for this report said they had seen their disappeared relatives in such videos and photos. Human Rights Watch has been able to verify that at least two individuals shown in videos and two photos posted on the Facebook page of the military spokesperson were forcibly disappeared by the army. A former soldier, who served at al-Galaa Military Base, said that another video published by al-Ahram, a state-owned newspaper, showed scores of detainees inside the base.”
In the context of these arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances, the report also provides evidence, based on information from locals, that many children are the subject of these atrocities. Moreover, as it is the typical standard in the procedures taking place in the Sinai, due process is often missing or completely corrupted:
“The army has also arrested and forcibly disappeared children, keeping them in military detention facilities alongside adults and sometimes referring them to military trials or to the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP). Human Rights Watch documented the detention of four children. At least two former detainees Human Rights Watch interviewed said they saw children during their detention in army facilities. One of them was probably extrajudicially executed. The army spokesperson occasionally posted photos of children in the army’s custody on the official armed forces Facebook page. One former detainee at al-Azoly told Human Rights Watch that a photo the spokesperson posted on January 8, 2014, showed a child he met in detention in al-Azoly. The army claimed the child was involved in spying on army checkpoints.”
On top of this depiction of the situation regarding arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances, this Human Rights Watch report also illustrates the role of the Interior’s Ministry on the actions currently being carried out in the Sinai. In fact, the report specifically mentions how the National Security Agency is responsible for such instances:
“While the Egyptian army leads the counterterrorism campaign in North Sinai governorate, Interior Ministry security forces support the army’s activities, especially in al-Arish. Human Rights Watch has documented incidents in which the Interior Ministry’s National Security Agency officers and the regular police arrested, forcibly disappeared, and possibly extrajudicially killed some detainees.”
Moreover, the report also shows how the governmental Security Forces have been partaking in what the report considers as unlawful confiscations and theft:
“Several interviewees told Human Rights Watch that soldiers or militia members stole their possessions, including cash, mobile phones, and gold jewelry during raids on their homes. On other occasions, soldiers or militia members confiscated detainees’ money, cars, and motorcycles and either used them or destroyed them.”
Making use of information provided by locals, the report extracted some intel that corroborates their statement – that the Security forces take part in illegal confiscations and other such activities, using checkpoints and routine inspections as a justification. The report illustrates some specific instances, such as one where a civilian’s house was raided, he was later detained, and when he got home many of his possessions had disappeared. Situations like these – and it does not seem that they are rare – shed light on the menacing practices that the governmental services are enacting in the region. The situation depicted in the report shows total lack of accountability and oversight, almost a lawless land, where the Egyptian forces act on desire, self-evaluation and without any legal justification or standing.
Extrajudicial Killings and
Killings at Checkpoints
The following pages will make mention of the situations regarding extrajudicial killings and killings at checkpoints that are currently being perpetrated by the el-Sisi government in the Sinai area. For a situation to be considering under the umbrella of the term “extrajudicial killings”, according to the definition brought by the United States’ Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), there are some specific criteria that must be met. For example, in this context, for a situation to be considered an extrajudicial killing, it must be deliberate – a criteria which automatically excludes situations such as accidents (Drinan and Kuo 1993 pp. 612-613). On top of this, “the killing must not be “authorized by a previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.” and as such, typical executions that are characterized by the normal judicial procedure are not considered to be extrajudicial killings (Drinan and Kuo 1993 pp. 612-613). On top of this, killings that take place between soldiers are also not considered extrajudicial killings (Drinan and Kuo 1993 pp. 612). Notwithstanding, the killings that are described below seem to completely fit under what extrajudicial killings are:
“Human Rights Watch documented 14 cases of extrajudicial killing of detainees in North Sinai, in addition to at least six cases that Human Rights Watch published prior to this report. In one case, the military arrested two brothers from their home in al-Arish, the capital of the governorate, in February 2015, and took them to Battalion 101, the largest military base in North Sinai. Two days later, one of the detained men’s relatives said he received word that bodies had been discovered by the road near the entrance to al-Raysan, a remote village south of al-Arish. When the relative arrived there, he said he found vehicle tracks and the bodies of the two men, one with bullet wounds to the back and face, and the other to the head. The next day, detainees who had just been released from Battalion 101 came to offer their condolences and told the relative that soldiers had taken the two brothers out of their cell on the morning of their death and loaded them into a convoy of Humvees. All the main roads in North Sinai are tightly controlled by dozens of army checkpoints and military installations. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that soldiers at the checkpoints sometimes shot at approaching individuals and civilian vehicles that posed no apparent security threat. Human Rights Watch documented three of these likely unlawful killings. Witnesses also described how the curfew imposed in North Sinai since October 2014 did not allow emergency medical aid to be provided. Even outside curfew hours, ambulances took a long time to arrive at their intended destination because of delays at army and police checkpoints.”.
Adding to this climate, the report also depicts other instances, such as the extrajudicial killings – or rather, executions – that take place in the detaining centres. In these locations, there are reports of army officers practically mocking the detainees (who, let it be said, have a high probability of being detained without any typical judicial processing), telling them they will be released, just to literally murder them on sight:
“Witnesses described how the army carried out extrajudicial killings of detainees. On the day an execution was planned to occur, soldiers removed detainees from their cell, usually late at night or around dawn, telling them they were going to be released. Rather than release them, security forces transported the detainees to uninhabited areas of North Sinai and shot them dead, leaving the bodies behind, in many cases after photographing them with planted weapons. Afterward, the official military spokesman would release a statement, sometimes including images of the bodies with the weapons, claiming the slain detainees were militants killed in clashes.”
To add to this situation, the Human Rights report assessing the activities in the Sinai also provides what seems to be material proof of the killings in the form of video evidence. The video depicts army officers and militia members executing detainees at gunpoint, including what it seems to be a child:
“In April 2017, Human Rights Watch reported on a leaked video, apparently authentic, that showed the army carrying out executions in Sinai.191 The video showed a group of soldiers, including a Military Intelligence officer and a militia member, participating in what appeared to be the execution of at least two blindfolded detainees, probably including a child, and perhaps as many as eight others, by shooting them to death from point blank range and then placing weapons next to their bodies.”
These executions, like many other situations, are justified by the army which says that the executed people were dangerous terrorists. In fact, the report shows how the Egyptian governmental forces manipulate the whole picture, placing weapons close to the bodies, to try and portray a situation where they are acting in accordance with the law and even making the people in the region safer:
“In December 2016, before the video was leaked, the army posted an official statement on Facebook with images of the slain individuals and weapons placed next to them, claiming they were “armed terrorist elements” killed in a security raid. Activists in North Sinai reported that the two of the victims were brothers, ages 16 and 19, whom the army had arrested from Rafah and forcibly disappeared in July 2016.”
In the same context but on a different note, this Human Rights Watch report makes some claims regarding the lack of accountability and investigations on the area. In fact, this is one of the most pertinent subjects, considering that it seems to be one of the most common threads connecting the whole situation in the Sinai. For example, if one picks on each title from the sections mentioned here, namely, – mass arrests and enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and killings at checkpoints, ill-treatment, torture and death in detention and ultimately the abuses partaken by the ISIS affiliate in the Sinai –, the current analysis seems to conclude that these events had no real-world consequences in terms of legal measures. The Egyptian army acts without relevant oversight, constantly committing felonies that range from theft to executions, and the consequence from the abuses the ISIS group in the region carries out are mainly the perpetuation of the conflict. On top of this, there is also the role of pro-government militias, which will be discussed later one, and that can also be characterized by the same standard considering the absence of accountability.
Specifically concerning the instances surrounding the presence of extrajudicial killings:
“None of the victims’ families Human Rights Watch interviewed said that prosecutors investigated the killings of their relatives. Families felt intimidated by security forces and therefore accepted hospital burial permission forms and police reports that identified “bullets from an unknown source” as the cause of their relatives’ death. Those interviewed said they had to agree to this cause of death in order to obtain burial permissions, seek medical treatment for their relatives, or sometimes receive compensation. One family said they buried their relative without permission or a death certificate.”
In respect of the events occurring in checkpoints, besides the situations already mentioned superficially, the report dives into other specific instances that shed some light on the procedures taking place in the various checkpoints across the Sinai. In these cases, there are evidence of civilians being shot without characterizing any apparent threat, and of the total vacuum of medical assistance, due to the medical personnel’s fear that they too could be shot by the checkpoint enforcers:
“Eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that soldiers stationed at army checkpoints on major roads in North Sinai, which are tightly controlled by dozens of checkpoints and military installations, sometimes shot at approaching individuals and civilian vehicles that posed no apparent security threat. Human Rights Watch documented three cases of likely unlawful killings at checkpoints and during raids based on three interviews detailing these incidents. (…) In the three incidents Human Rights Watch documented, witnesses said that emergency medical aid could not be delivered to assist victims because hospitals were afraid to send ambulances, fearing army personnel at the checkpoint would also shoot at them. Witnesses also said the curfew the government has imposed from early evening to early morning on most of North Sinai since October 2014 has restricted the movement of emergency personnel. In a few incidents, local newspapers reported ambulances also being shot by “unknown gunmen”.”
Treatment, Torture, and Death in Detention
Under this context, the United States’ Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) (1992) also provides a relevant definition. Specifically considering torture, the TVPA defines this concept as:
“(1) the term “torture” means any act, directed against an individual in the offender’s custody or physical control, by which severe pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering arising only from or inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions), whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on that individual for such purposes as obtaining from that individual or a third person information or a confession, punishing that individual for an act that individual or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, intimidating or coercing that individual or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind; and mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resisting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another individual will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.”
Moving forward, still under the same subject, the Human Rights Watch report which we are using here as a means to analyse the current situation in the Sinai region, identifies some instances of situations which can be considered, as the chapter suggests, as ill-treatment, torture, and death in detention. As such, drawing from testimony from close relatives of people involved in these situations, this report records about 10 cases where detainees were not only abused, but tortured, and the subject of harsh non-human treatment while detained. More specifically, the report mentions detaining facilities characterized where inmates are kept in overcrowded cells and without access to basic needs:
“The military detained most of those arrested in North Sinai at three sites: Battalion 101, located in al-Arish; Camp al-Zohor, a converted youth and sports center in Sheikh Zuwayed; and al-Azoly, a military prison inside Al-Galaa Military Base, the headquarters of the Second Field Army in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. Residents arrested by the police are typically transferred to the North Sinai governorate headquarters of the Interior Ministry’s National Security Agency, also in al-Arish. Far removed from any judicial oversight, detainees at these sites lack basic rights and sometimes are subject to abuse. In this report, Human Rights Watch documented 10 cases in which detainees or their relatives said they had been physically abused, including by beatings and electric shocks, almost always by soldiers in uniform. They described how this abuse, which in many cases appeared to amount to torture, occurred while they were forcibly disappeared—i.e., when their detention was kept secret from relatives or lawyers— and kept in overcrowded cells without adequate food, clothing, clean water, or healthcare. Former detainees described seeing children as young as 12 detained in these conditions with adults. Very few of the former detainees, whose time in custody ranged from weeks to months, were ever charged or appeared before prosecutors, as Egyptian law requires. Those who did only saw prosecutors after authorities transferred them to official detention facilities outside the Sinai or to military courts inside Al-Galaa Military Base for trial. Due to fear of being re-arrested and tortured—and possibly being extrajudicially killed—no former detainees have filed a complaint with the authorities about their treatment. Former detainees said they witnessed the death of three other detainees in custody because of ill-treatment and lack of medical care. Interviewees said that some military officers working in North Sinai torture detainees until they supply interrogators with the identities of so-called “terrorists” or “takfiris,” the Arabic word for extremists who believe in excommunicating fellow Muslims and which the Egyptian authorities use broadly to describe all militants. One man detained in Camp al-Zohor recalled the words of an interrogator who seemed to admit that the military’s brutal tactics yielded deadly mistakes. “It’s true that in army [detention] some people are taken wrongly, and others die,” the interrogator said. “But we also fight takfiris, and arrest [many] of them.”.”
The Egyptian government is thus accused of severe mistreatment against civilians in the army detention centers in its fight to catch the Takfiris. Torture included flogging and electric shocks. Some interviewed by the Human Right Watch witnessed a lack of access to sufficient food and clean water, adequate clothing, and healthcare, and did not receive any judicial review of their detention status. The military detains most of those arrested in North Sinai at three main sites: Battalion 101, located in al-Arish; Camp al-Zohor, a converted youth and sports center in Sheikh Zuwayed; and al-Azoly, a military prison inside al-Galaa Military Base which is the headquarters of the Second Field Army in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. Those arrested by the Interior Ministry were usually held in the National Security Agency’s headquarters in al-Arish. Cells in the detention centers were often overcrowded, sometimes filled with dozens of detainees at a given time, some of whom were injured or in poor health. Witnesses said that most of the individuals carrying out the torture and mistreatment were army officers and soldiers in uniform. “Othman,” an activist from North Sinai who was once detained in Battalion 101 for a week in late 2013, gave details to Human Rights Watch on his detention conditions. The report contains many poignant testimonies of victims of atrocious treatment. This is in clear conflict with the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which prohibits violence to life and limb, including murder in all its forms, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture and torment. Report shows the example of a young man called Younes that died under torture in the army’s custody in Battalion 101 around mid-May 2017 and whose body was never found. Another example is given through the case of al-Bateen died when soldiers beat him on the head. The army treats human beings as if they were animals, disregarding the risks of death or damage to the health of the detainees. The Egyptian government is thus responsible for the degradation of the living conditions of human beings, which is contrary to international law. It thus affects the physical integrity of people, through lack of access to sufficient food and clean water, adequate clothing, and healthcare and torture, sometimes causing detainees to die. But torture in all its forms, lack of food, restricted access to toilets, neglect and the screams of other tortured detainees also cause significant mental damage, also prohibited by the above-mentioned Geneva Convention. Both these aspects, physical and mental harm, are prohibited by the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War “in all circumstances”. In other words, the frantic pursuit of an enemy mingling with the crowd, as is often justified by Egyptian forces in their fight against the armed Islamist group, is no justification for the mistreatment of prisoners. As mentioned at the article 3 of the Geneva Convention we are referring to, attacks on the dignity of individuals, including humiliating and degrading treatment are prohibited, and beating multiple prisoners in front of other prisoners and limiting the access to toilets falls into this category. Finally, in the same article, we can read that the wounded and sick will be collected and cared for. He mentioned above the lack of access to medicine of all kinds, but the report also includes the testimony of an inmate describing a 65 years old paraplegic man, who spoke “sluggishly” in prison, apparently due to poor health, who received absolutely no help from the military who, according to another prisoner, left him for dead shortly after his arrival. All these accusations are extremely serious and call into question the responsibility of the armed forces, and therefore the Egyptian government.
These ill-treatments are a fortiori not allowed when it concerns innocent civilians. Once again, the argument of the group incorporated in the crowd is invoked to justify the quasi-roundups organized in the north of Sinai. But let’s remember here that, according to the United Nations Geneva Convention, persons not taking a direct part in hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and persons who have been rendered hors de combat by sickness, injury, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely. It is easy to prove that many of the detainees in these detention camps are mostly ordinary Sinai residents. This type of summary arrest is widespread in this conflict, and there are many examples. For instance, according to the Daily News in 2015, “Seventy detained Sinai residents were released from Azouli military prison after having been randomly arrested recently.” The expression “randomly arrested” speaks for itself, disagreeing with the principle of international law of discrimination in military maneuvers. In other words, each action must be carried out with a distinction between combatants and the civilian population, as discussed in the International Humanitarian Law (IHL), also referred to as the Laws of Armed Conflicts, which is increasingly recognized as the application of human rights in conflict areas and times. Here the Egyptian government makes no distinction between Islamist fighters and the population of northern Sinai, subjecting the latter to the same atrocities as enemy warriors, if any. The preservation of the lives of citizens is the priority of the United Nations International Law of Conflict, and Egypt, by violating it, is not only violating the CGVI but also the IHL.
A video also leaked in 2017 and broadcast on the Mekameleen TV channel (close to the Islamist movement) showing the Egyptian army killing men in northern Sinai. In this video, an Egyptian army soldier can be seen shooting a teenager at close range. The bodies of five other men who appear to have been killed earlier also appear in the footage. According to the army spokesman, they were “terrorists” killed in counter-terrorism operations in northern Sinai, Egypt. However, it can be seen in the video that at least two of the men killed were unarmed at the time they were shot, and analysis of the entire footage indicates that the weapons were placed next to their bodies by the military to pass them off as fighters killed in a shootout. Failure to prosecute and convict the perpetrators will perpetuate widespread impunity for crimes committed by the security forces and provide a green light for further human rights violations. These killings amount to extrajudicial executions, crimes that Egypt and the International Criminal Court must investigate, prosecute and punish those responsible. Otherwise, international law would lose its deterrent force and would not prevent such acts from occurring again in the future.
The use of non-official and pro-governmental militias
The army, which had not operated in North Sinai for decades before the recent escalation of violence and therefore lacked local intelligence, began in 2015 to recruit local residents into irregular militias that have since played a major role in abuses, according to Sinai residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch. Indeed, they seem to be responsible of the arrests of the civilians in North Sinai, and to enjoy their allies through immunities and abuse of power. Called manadeeb (delegates) by the authorities and gawasees (spies), molathameen (the masked ones), or “Battalion 103”—a play on the name of the Battalion 101 military base—by North Sinai residents, this irregular militia performs a function that blends intelligence gathering with police action. The militias operate at the direction of the military, which gives them uniforms and weapons and often a place to live on military bases, and they play an important role in the army’s arrest campaigns. Residents said militia members often use these campaigns as a means to settle personal disputes or to further their own business interests. They have also participated in torture and extrajudicial killings.
The exact size and make-up of the militia is unknown, but many of those Human Rights Watch interviewed said it was common to see militia members accompanying army convoys and pointing out individuals for arrest. Residents told Human Rights Watch that the army paid militia members and appeared to recruit men who had criminal records. Media reports show that authorities promised some of those militia members they would cancel their in-absentia convictions in order to encourage them to support the army. According to the first article of the Hague regulation, 4 conditions are applying to armed forces, not only armies but every combatant, that must be respected: to be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, to have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance, to carry arms openly, and to conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. Obviously, this is difficult to well understand the commandment chain here, because the government is denying all implication in the arming of these citizens. The creation of such militias was publicly opposed by many prominent leaders of different Sinai clans who thought that arming civilians could result in more local tensions. A 2017 report by the government-sponsored National Council of Human Rights described civilians taking up arms to support the army as “sparking concerns.” The army has not released any statements officially acknowledging the existence of such militias despite their visibility, and the government has not issued any decrees regulating them. But news reports have said that the army was arming some clans in Sinai to fight against Sinai Province. Their actions also do not seem to conform to international law and its tenants, as these militias are accused of perpetrating the same abuses as the army. Militia members themselves have carried out the worst abuses, such as the extrajudicial killing of detainees shown in a leaked April 2017 video. Two former army officers who spoke with Human Rights Watch said that executions such as those were a regular occurrence. The militia use their connection to the military to settle their civil disputes by force in an illegal manner, leading to summary arrests or executions without trial.
On occasion, militias were also involved in combat missions. Some prominent clan leaders played major roles in fights against Sinai Province. Salem Abu Lafi, a prominent leader of the Sinai Tribes’ Union and a member of al-Tarabeen clan had previously been arrested in 2008 and charged with killing a police officer in Sinai. He managed to flee for several years. Later, he sided with the army in their battle against the Sinai Province militant group until he died in a combat mission against them in May 2017. Lafi’s killing was widely covered in Egyptian pro-government newspapers, who described him as the “martyr” who faced ISIS. Pictures circulated by Egyptian newspapers showed an army officer greeting Lafi while apparently in the field in Sinai. The militias also employ spies to encourage police and army raids to arrest targeted individuals.
The militias are additionally accused of being heavily involved in the torture and killing of citizens, according to witnesses and video footage reviewed by Human Rights Watch. Limited information is known about the fate of alleged militants captured by pro-army militias. But in one incident, the Sinai Tribes’ Union published a video saying it burned alive a Sinai Province member they captured, claiming that that the militant participated in the same act previously against a policeman. A Facebook page named “Sinai Mawtiny,” meaning, “Sinai My Home,” described its administrators as “young people from Sheikh Zuwayed” who “love their homeland” and published footage that included alleged extremists confessing on video. Two Sinai activists told Human Rights Watch they believed that militia members who live on the army bases run this page and others similar to it. Even if they are not officially members of the army, if they commit the same crimes, militias will be subject to international law in the same way as regular armed forces. We have already explained how torture is a violation of human rights and the laws of war through the Geneva Convention, and these militias also participate in it.
Four families told Human Rights Watch that they paid money to bribe militia members to provide information on the whereabouts of their detained relatives or release them, constituting a form of racket. A young man said to Human Right Watch that army forces stopped him at a checkpoint near the city in late 2013. The officers arrested him and two friends accompanying him after militia members checked their IDs and told the officers to do so. They sent the man and his friends to Battalion 101, where he was held for almost 10 days. The army released his two friends after two days. While in detention, the man talked with one of the militia members, who claimed to know a senior officer in Camp al-Zohor. The militia member told the man that he could get him released if he paid money. The man’s family paid around 23,000 Egyptian pounds (around $2,900 at that time), and he was subsequently released. There are many examples of serious accusations of totally illegal arrests and detentions to extort money from innocent people. The right to personal liberty is defined by Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which lists the conditions under which a deprivation of liberty is considered arbitrary, including: unlawful ground for arrest, arrest without informing the individual of the reasons for the arrest, non-respect of procedural rights, and failure to present a judge to the individual in question within a reasonable time. It is also considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which prohibits unlawful detention and denial of access to a fair trial. In times of conflict or tension, arbitrary detention can be the tool of a large-scale policy of intimidation, constituting a severe violation of human rights.
In conclusion, in the eyes of international law, militias constitute armed forces which, although informal, are subject to the same law as regular armed forces. The Egyptian government should first formally acknowledge the use of such forces and take responsibility for their actions before the international community. Second, the militias have been guilty of abuse of power over the population and of war crimes against civilians, which constitutes a major violation of international law and must not go unpunished, otherwise such acts may be repeated in the future. Through these militias, the Egyptian government allows itself unjustifiable actions by the national army, which allows it a wider margin of action and to exceed the limits of the law in discretion. This impunity must end. The individual actions of some militia members in pursuit of personal business should also be criminalized by the international criminal court, including unlawful detentions, violence and killings of civilians, making these actors war criminals. A former officer interviewed by Human Right Watch has declared that the group members are known and have criminal records or were thugs. And most of them are of low social status because of drug addiction, because their tribes renounced them due to their past behaviour. So they couldn’t find a safer refuge than the military cover they’re working through. The militiamen are thus recruited on their social profile of “deviant” without any other escape route guaranteeing their fidelity and diminishing their reticence towards the accomplishment of questionable acts.
Unlawful ground and air attacks
Human Rights Watch interviewed individuals from 15 families who said they witnessed 15 incidents in which the army damaged or destroyed their properties or killed or injured relatives in attacks that happened, to their knowledge, without any clashes or militant activities in the area around their homes. In a few additional cases, families said that militants operated close to where they lived, and ongoing clashes resulted in the army shelling their houses. None of the individuals Human Rights Watch interviewed said that they received a warning to evacuate the area before shelling occurred. In the shelling incidents documented in this report, 11 children, 6 women, and one man were killed, and 6 children, 4 women, and 3 men were injured. A former Egyptian government official who worked in North Sinai from 2012 to 2015 said that army shelling of civilian houses was routine, especially by artillery. “They launched the artillery, and it fell sometimes 500 meters away from the target. Residents were always scared,” he said. In other words, the army openly violates the principle of discrimination between civilians and combatants, fully assuming to injure and kill citizens. According to the article 51, paragraph 5b IHL, the principle of proportionality must be understood in such way that the programmed operations will have to avoid losses “which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected”, even if the neutralization of the opponent military advantage can’t be countered without the civilian collateral victims. Human Rights Watch has found no record of the army ever having acknowledged any civilian casualties from ground shelling or airstrikes. But the army or the government did offer monetary compensation to 9 of the 15 families Human Rights Watch interviewed, and three of them were also offered temporary housing. The compensation ranged from a three thousand Egyptian pounds to larger sums of money. Officials, including hospital employees, army personnel, and police officers, would instruct relatives of victims throughout the process, and from the beginning when victims were received in hospitals to sign official documents that the casualties resulted from shelling “from an unknown source.” Prosecutors never investigated any of the cases Human Rights Watch documented. For those who initially insisted on reporting that the army carried out the shelling that killed, injured, or damaged relatives or property, the army would intimidate them to change their accounts.
According to a Human Rights Watch review of Egyptian newspapers between 2015 and June 2018, local media reported over 100 residents killed and 250 injured by “shelling from an unknown source.” This included over 75 women and more than 100 children. Sinai activists and families interviewed said that “shelling from an unknown source” was the only form allowed for newspapers to report on civilian casualties by army shelling.
At the start of “Sinai 2018” operation in February 2018, the Egyptian military posted a video to its social media accounts that showed US-manufactured CBU-87 cluster bombs, each containing 202 BLU-97 bomblets, being loaded on to Egyptian aircraft. They said the operation is aimed at “ending terrorism” by targeting armed groups and their weapons stockpiles in northern and central Sinai. The Egyptian army posted this file on its official Twitter account, showing what it claimed were improvised explosive devices planted by “terrorist elements.” But Amnesty International analysed the video and came to the conclusion that only the Egyptian army could launch such weapons. The video shows a type of American-made ammunition that the Egyptian army has, which can only be deployed from a certain type of aircraft, which the Egyptian air force uses. Cluster bombs are among the most vicious weapons of modern warfare, inherently indiscriminate and capable of killing and maiming civilians for years after deployment. This type of weapon is forbidden by the Treaty of Oslo in 2008. This treaty bans the manufacture, development, purchase and stockpiling of such weapons.
As of January 1, 2019, Egyptian officials have not responded to requests from the Cluster Munition Coalition or its chair, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others to confirm or deny that the country’s armed forces are using cluster munitions in northern Sinai. Egypt has not acceded to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. According to Cluster Munition Monitor, Egypt continues to produce and stockpile cluster munitions, while there is evidence that it transferred cluster munitions to Syria in the past.
In most of the cases of civilians affected by army shelling that Human Rights Watch documented, victims claimed there were no clashes or military targets nearby. Under international humanitarian law, all sides can only target military objectives. Targeting civilians or civilian objects, indiscriminate attacks that fail to distinguish between military and civilian targets, and disproportionate attacks, where the damage to civilians or civilian property outweighs any military advantage gained, are all prohibited.
None of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch was investigated independently. But in some cases of shelling that hit civilians, army officers or officials from the North Sinai governorate have proactively approached victims’ families and offered them compensation or medical care, perhaps following internal investigations. However, the army never publicly acknowledged any wrongdoing. President al-Sisi has previously said that the government was compensating families of those who “fell by mistake.” Nevertheless, we have proven the inaccuracy of this statement, the families are not sufficiently compensated for the damages suffered, which shows the hypocrisy of the regime.
Article 53 of the GCIV prohibits the destruction of civilian dwellings and makes it compulsory to compensate the victims of such acts if, however, the damage to the dwellings was unavoidable in the course of military operations. Here, the very inevitability is in question in the destruction of the Sinai, but compensation is clearly not enough. In other words, the Egyptian government is not only guilty of violating the private property of civilians under international law, but also by failing to provide reparation to the victims. Moreover, protection against the destruction of dwellings is a customary principle, i.e. even states that have not signed international texts prohibiting destruction are obliged to comply with this rule.
In theory, the occupants of the targeted residence have 48 hours to contest the demolition notice, but most do not do so because they think it is futile or are too afraid of reprisals from the army or the even less scrupulous pro-government militias. But the States, if they must respect the GCIV, must also make it respected by the other States. In other words, states around the world should call the Egyptian government to order diplomatically to uphold international law.
Massive demolitions and population displacements
Another aspect of the Egyptian government’s international law violation is embodied by the demolitions and forced evictions of civilians during the armed conflicts in North Sinai. Human Rights Watch said the 17th of March 2021 that this constituted “violations of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, and likely amount to war crimes”.
We can read that “between late 2013 and July 2020 the Egyptian army likely destroyed at least 12,350 buildings, mostly homes, in the conflict-ridden North Sinai governorate, most recently in the al-Arish area. The army has also razed, ruined, as well as closed off approximately 6,000 hectares of farmland, mostly since mid-2016”. The government has provided little information beyond broad claims in the media that the evictions and demolitions were needed for security in the protracted fight with the armed group Wilayat Sina’, but satellite imagery analysis enabled Human Rights Watch to assess the demolitions and their probable causes, estimate farmland loss, monitor the construction of security installations and evaluate the development of new official and non official resettlement sites. In other terms, it appears to constitute a clear violation of the laws of war, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention (CGIV) which prohibits population displacement “whatever the reason”. The only exception is if these displacements occur in military necessity to secure the population concerned. But here the information get by the watchdog clearly proves that is was not the case, and that this demolitions only serve the government interest to improve its military capacity to fight against Wilayat Sina’.
The city most affected by this demolition campaign is probably Al-Arish, according to two distinct dimensions. First, the Al-Arish airport has been closed to serve as an Egyptian forward military base. The minister of civil aviation issued Decree 962 of 2015 allowing the Air Forceuse of designated areas in the al-Arish airport “pursuant to attached memo and maps”. But since December 2017, the airport became the target of many terrorist attacks including rocket fires, severely wounding the minister of defense and interior. Following that attack, President al-Sisi announced on January 19, 2018 a plan to forcibly evict residents and demolish all farms and houses within a five-kilometer circle around al-Arish airport to create a security buffer zone. But once again, the presidential speech has been betrayed. Satellite imagery recorded in July 2020, shows an almost-finished security wall surrounding the airport buffer zone stretching 3 km to the east, 8.5 km to the west, 8.5 km to the south and 1.5 km to the north, encompassing an area of 170 square kilometers, more than what was initially announced. If the initially announced perimeter of 5 kilometers was valid to justify the security of the surrounding inhabitants, it is no longer the case with this freedom taken by the power. The demolitions of houses in this greatly expanded perimeter blithely exceed the limits set by the CGIV and therefore constitute a serious breach of the law of war.
Since late 2017, the military has razed property to create a buffer zone in the city of al-Arish and to complete another in Rafah. It has also destroyed hundreds of homes outside these buffer zones. Much of the destruction proceeded without formally designating the coordinates of the areas to be razed, without giving specific reasons, and without setting a fair compensation process. Human Rights Watch analyzed dozens of satellite imagery, recorded between December 2017 and July 2020 showing that the army demolished roughly 5,500 buildings in and around al-Arish city, mostly in 2018, but thousand were demolished prior to December 2017. Over 2,000 of those buildings were outside the security perimeter (the five kilometres initial one). Nearly 4,000 of the 5,500 buildings were destroyed between December 2017 and July 2020, mainly to build the buffer zone surrounding the al-Arish airport south of the city, used in recent years for military purposes. Around 80% of the buildings, mostly homes and commercial buildings were demolished after the announcement of the security operation in al-Arish airport, February 9, 2018. Additionally, the military destroyed more than 800 shacks, primitive homes, that some of the poorest evicted residents built as they were offered no alternative temporary housing. The demolitions orchestrated since 2018 attest to a real increase in the Egyptian government’s activities in this area, and thereby represent an aggravation of the violations of the Geneva Convention by exceeding the declared limits of the authorized perimeter. The pursuit of political vengeance and the escalation of violence to drive the Islamists out of northern Sinai is being carried out in secrecy at the expense of the residents, ordinary citizens who are being deported into illegal settings.
As Egypt’s military campaign escalated in North Sinai, the military has increasingly— particularly since mid-2016—razed farmlands and agricultural areas in al-Arish, Sheikh Zuweid, and Rafah. Progovernment media reports, and official statements frequently claim that armed militants fire from and hide in farms. But the reality can not conform to the claims of these media, especially if we believe the satellite images collected by Human Rights Watch. The group analyzed over eight years of satellite imagery, from between August 2013 and August 2020, to assess farmland losses in the areas of al-Arish and Rafah, revealing systematic patterns of destruction resulting from of military operations in North Sinai. In some cases, farmland and agricultural areas have been razed by heavy military equipment such as tanks. In other cases, the farmlands were simply destroyed by fire. These expropriations and destructions of private properties are obviously not part of an operation to secure civilians, but are intended, once again, to allow the Egyptian military to establish facilities for war purposes and launching grounds for operations. Once again, the example of Al-Arish stands out. Over 2,600 hectares of farmland in and around al-Arish city were destroyed or damaged by the army, mostly between August 2016 to August 2019. The army also razed, ruined and closed off 3,500 hectares of farmland in and around Rafah, particularly between August 2016 and August 2019. These operations are therefore systematized and follow clear orders, confirming once again the involvement of the Egyptian government in these war crimes against its own population. Violations of the GCIV are multiplying, far from being an isolated exception, undermining the security of the inhabitants of Sinai.
The seriousness of the situation is also due to the lack of clarification of the plan to reallocate land to the expropriated people. In 2015, the government said it had begun building a “New Rafah” city west of the demolished city to accommodate displaced residents. Prime Ministerial Decree 2021 shows a designated area of approximately 2.25 square kilometers, about 2.8 percent of the evicted Rafah area. In July 2020, General Shousha said that the government would provide apartments to Rafah evictees “soon.” Satellite imagery recorded on December 10, 2020 shows 41 blocks of apparently uninhabited multi-story buildings and an additional 30 under construction. Photos published in local media in December show ongoing construction and vacant buildings. In addition to harming the security of its inhabitants, the Egyptian government is not able to compensate the victims of its own actions to the extent of the damage suffered, thus making itself complicit in a form of property theft. In addition, part of the land designated for New Rafah lies within the security perimeter along Rafah/al-Arish road, which Decree 233 of 2016 designated as military property. December 2020, satellite imagery shows that demolitions have increased dramatically since July in areas nearest to New Rafah, several military posts have been built around it, and additional farmlands razed, which casts serious doubt on any likelihood that residents will live there in the foreseeable future. In March 2019, President al-Sisi issued Decree 132 designating about 11 square kilometers to build “New Baer al-Abd” city, west of al-Arish. Human Rights Watch found no sign of new construction there in satellite imagery recorded in February 2021. This project is probably once again nothing more than window dressing, a declaration with no additional effect that does not contribute to compensate the expropriated citizens.
Whether in peacetime or war, international human rights law generally prohibits forced evictions and home demolitions unless in exceptional situations and with proper consultation, enough notice, fair compensation, and redress mechanisms, all of which the Egyptian government has largely failed to provide. The government rejects the view that the situation in North Sinai amounts to an armed conflict governed by the laws of war even though the evidence strongly suggests it does. However, international human rights law applies at all times, including in peacetime and during conflict and guarantees strong protections against forced evictions, displacement, and dispossessions.
Chapter 2: Al- Sisi and violations of human rights
2013-2021
Security Forces and Degrading Prison Conditions
Since President Abdelfatah Al-Sisi took control of Egypt after the coup in 2013, there has been a dramatic increase in political repression in the country. The regime has focused on strengthening their position of power and they have used repression by the security forces as one of the main tools for achieving this objective, as they have tried to use it to silence any form of opposition coming from political parties or from the civil society (Mandour, 2021). The regime has been able to use excuses like counterterrorism in order to use ever more severe policing tactics in order to silence criticism, due to the fact that many of the detentions that have been carried out have had the excuse of affiliation or sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood. There have been clear evidences, reported for instance by Human Rights Watch in its report in 2017, which show that officers belonging to the National Security Agency have routinely carried out tortures and forced disappearances without facing any major consequences, for instance between August 2015 and August 2016, 912 victims of enforced disappearance had been reported by the independent group the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (HRW, 2018; UPR Working Group, 2019).
Not only that but, the majority of those who have suffered forced disappearances have also endured torture during this period, for instance HRW had reported that between January and October 2016 around 433 detainees claimed that police or prison officers mistreated or tortured them while they were in custody, according to a count by the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture. In addition, it was reported that National Security officers in Alexandria forcibly disappeared and tortured 20 people, eight of whom were children. The National Security Officers argued that these people were connected with a protest and an alleged arson attack on a garage and a traffic police vehicle (HRW, 2018; UPR Working Group, 2019). The torture techniques that were carried out during these detentions were among other beatings, prolonged painful stress positions, and electrocutions, which were used to coerce confessions out of the detainees. What is even worse is that, as it has been reported by HRW that prosecutors very seldom investigated torture claims and rarely never dropped torture-tainted confessions (HRW, 2019). What is more, the Egyptian authorities have routinely used pretrial detention as another useful tool to carry out forced detentions which silence any possible criticism, which was the case for instance with writer Hisham Gaafar who was arrested in October 2015 and later charged with alleged crimes related to “national security”. His pretrial detention had not only severely extended the two-year maximum for pre-trial detention, but during this time he had also been subjected to solitary confinement and other inhumane conditions (HRW, 2018; UPR Working Group, 2019).
Egyptian Security Forces have also been able to routinely avoid major consequences even when the incidents in which they were a part of had resulted in illegal killings. Even when the officers have been convicted, they have been able to afterwards, wither win the acquittals or obtain shorter sentences through appealing the initial verdict, for instance in February 2017 Egypt’s highest appeals court ordered a retrial for an officer who had sentenced 15 years for shooting and killing political activist Shaimaa al-Sabbagh at a peaceful protest that had occurred in 2015. However, this incident was photographed and videotaped, which raises the question of why there was the need for a retrial. Nevertheless, this is not the only example of this, as for instance in October 2017 the same court also ordered a retrial for two officers who had been sentenced for torturing lawyer Karim Hamdy to death in a police station in 2015. Even the judges and other members of the judicial system who tried to change these dynamics suffered the consequences, for instance two judges, Husham Rauf and Assam Abdi al-Gabber, faced disciplinary proceedings, due to the fact that they have tried to advocate for a law, which would have prohibited torture (HRW, 2018).
This repression carried out by the security forces has entered a severely negative spiral, which has resulted in the situation continuously worsening. The situation got to such a position during the period immediately after the coup that several NGOs tried to get help from the International Community in order to revert the situation. The non-partisan Working Group on Egypt send a letter to then US President Barack Obama asking for support as they stated that” President Al-Sisi’s campaign against civil society takes place against the backdrop of unprecedented abuses by Egyptian security forces, including extrajudicial killings, the detention of tens of thousands of political prisoners, the widespread documented use of torture, and the forced disappearances of hundreds of Egyptians. The killing of Italian student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured body appeared on a roadside near Cairo a week after his abduction in late January, has come to international attention, but many Egyptians have shared his fate since President al-Sisi came to power.” (Abrams, 2016). What is more, even Prince Zeid of Jordan, who was also UN High Commissioner for Human Rights demanded a clear change from what the Egyptian civil society had been suffering and that the Egyptian government should stop hindering the ability of NGOs to carry out their job on the ground as he stated that: “This looks like a clampdown on sections of Egyptian civil society and it must stop,” “NGOs who have played a valuable role in documenting violations and supporting victims will see their activities completely crippled if this continues. This will stifle the voices of those who advocate for victims” (Abrams, 2016).
Between 2014 and 2018 Al-Sisi´s government tried to silence any criticism coming from civil society organisations, through the use of force like torture. Not only that but, they have also been able to vilify human rights actors, as the regime was able to portray them as traitors and foreign agents. However, the regime was able to do this during this period due to the fact that it did not face any major criticism from the international community. Therefore, this has resulted in an increasingly difficult position for any reform to happen. (Mandour, 2021; Mansour, 2018).
Since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi secured a second term in a largely unfree and unfair presidential election in March 2018, his security forces have escalated a campaign of intimidation, violence, and arrests against political opponents, civil society activists, and many others who have simply voiced mild criticism of the government. This is because, according to the Human Rights Watch (2018), the Interior Ministry’s National Security Agency (NSA) continues to operate with near-absolute impunity. Judicial authorities have investigated very few officers and even fewer have been prosecuted for abuses, including enforced disappearances and torture. Prosecutors continued to use detainee confessions despite credible allegations they were coerced through torture. It is indicative that the Stop Enforced Disappearance campaign has documented 1,530 cases from July 2013 to August 2018. At least 230 of those occurred between August 2017 and August 2018. The whereabouts of at least 32 of those disappeared in 2018 remained unknown as of August 2018.
What is more, in late January and February of 2018, security forces carried out a series of arbitrary arrests in an escalating crackdown against al-Sisi’s peaceful political opponents ahead of the presidential vote. The arrests included those who called for boycotting the process, such as the 2012 presidential candidate and the head of the Strong Egypt Party, Abd al-Moneim Abu al-Fotouh. Following his arrest, a court placed Abu al-Fotouh and others on the country’s terrorism list. He remains in pretrial detention despite a heart condition. Security forces also arrested two potential presidential candidates: former Gen. Ahmed Shafiq, whom authorities placed for weeks under de facto house arrest, and former army chief of staff, Sami Anan, who remained in prison at time of writing on trumped up charges. In May 2018, Egyptian police and NSA forces carried out another wave of arrests of critics of President al-Sisi in dawn raids. Those arrested included Hazem Abd al-Azim, a political activist; rights defender, Wael Abbas; Shady al-Ghazaly Harb, a surgeon; Haitham Mohamadeen, a lawyer; Amal Fathy, an activist; and Shady Abu Zaid, a satirist. Another series of arrests launched in August included former ambassador Ma’soum Marzouk, who called for a public referendum on whether al-Sisi should resign. It in 2018, more than 20.000 political prisoners were living in overcrowded detention centers, considered fertile ground for Islamist radicalization (Roll, 2018).
In 2019, the police and National Security Agency continued to routinely carry out systematic enforced disappearances and torture with impunity. Torture practices have also affected well-known activists such as Alaa Abdel Fattah and Israa Abdel Fattah. Authorities kept thousands of prisoners in abysmal conditions, where overcrowding and insufficient medical care have been systematic and may have contributed to the deteriorating health and deaths of scores of detainees. Former President Mohamed Morsy, whom the army forcibly removed in 2013, died on June 17 in a Cairo courtroom following six years of lack of medical care and near-absolute isolation in prison. In November, two United Nations experts said that such conditions “may have directly led” to his death and “may be placing the health and lives of thousands more prisoners at severe risk.” Authorities did not conduct any independent investigation into his death. (HRW, 2020)
In 2020 the government crackdown worsened as the Interior Ministry’s security forces and National Security Agency (NSA) forcibly disappeared, arbitrarily arrested, and tortured dissidents, including children. In April, authorities disappeared for days Marwa Arafa and Kholoud Said, then detained the two women on unsubstantiated charges of joining a terrorist group and spreading false news. The NSA arrested at least 10 health workers for criticizing the government response to Covid-19 including the lack of protective equipment and testing. In late May, authorities arrested and held incommunicado journalist Shaima’ Samy for charges of “spreading false news. In June, the NSA arrested Sana’ Saif when she tried to report being physically assaulted outside Tora Prison where her brother, jailed activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, was being held.
The Interior Ministry subjected the families of dissidents abroad to collective punishment, including arrests and prosecutions. In June, security forces arrested five cousins of Mohamed Soltan, an American-Egyptian rights defender. The raids were apparently in reprisal for Soltan filing suit in a US court in June under the Torture Victim Protection Act against former Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawy, related to Soltan’s 2013 arrest and torture during nearly two years of detention.
As for the prison conditions, Deutsche Welle (2021) reported that “ten years after the Arab Spring uprising overthrew the former military president, prisons in Egypt are just as bad as ever”.
Death Penalty
Since July 2013, the Egyptian criminal courts have sentenced over 800 people to death. Nonetheless, the Cassation Court, which is Egypt’s highest appellate court, has overturned many of those sentences and ordered retrials. However, in 2017, the Cassation Court upheld death sentences of around 22 persons, who remained on death row, while 103 more death sentences awaited final court decisions. Military courts issued over 60 death sentences of civilians since July 2013 and 19 of those sentences were confirmed by the Supreme Military Court of Appeals in 2017 raising the number of civilians executed in military courts to 25 (HRW, 2018).
Even though Egypt ranked sixth in highest numbers of executions and third in the largest number of death sentences in the world in 2017, in September 2018 alone, a Cairo Criminal Court ordered 75 death sentences, in a mass trial, stemming from the Raba’ dispersal events in August 2013. (HRW, 2018)
According to the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), as of September of the same year, at least 29 Egyptians remained at imminent risk of execution after losing all of their appeal chances. Between December 2017 and March 2018, CIHRS had documented the execution of 39 individuals, most of them civilians, whom military courts convicted. Military trials of civilians in Egypt are inherently unfair as all officials in military courts, including judges and prosecutors, are serving members of the military.
Nevertheless, the situation did not change the following years. Civilian and military courts sentenced hundreds of individuals to death in 2019, often in mass trials in cases that stem from alleged political violence or planned violence. According to the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, an independent Czech-based group, as of June 2019, authorities executed at least 15 prisoners in three cases on political grounds. Military and civilian courts of appeal upheld at least 32 death sentences, raising the number on death row to 74, the majority of whom were charged with political violence. In February, nine UN experts condemned the “arbitrary executions” of nine of those executed “on the basis of evidence allegedly obtained under torture,” following “what appears to be a seriously flawed trial.”
Egyptian courts continued to impose the death penalty for a wide range of crimes, including cases of alleged political violence and terrorism in which defendants’ claims of forced disappearance and torture almost always went uninvestigated by judges. According to the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, during the first half of 2020 Egyptian military and civilian courts issued 171 death sentences and upheld the sentences of 10 others, including 7 in a political case. From January to late October, authorities executed at least 83 persons, 25 of whom were charged in cases involving political violence, according to numbers compiled by Human Rights Watch and the Egyptian Front for Human Rights (HRW, 2020). Amnesty International in 2020, also reported that “The Egyptian authorities have embarked on a horrifying execution spree in recent months, putting scores of people to death, in some cases following grossly unfair mass trials” and that “These executions are particularly appalling given the well documented and systematic breaches of fair trial rights in Egypt”, with courts often relying on torture-tainted ‘confessions’ (Amnesty International, 2020). In fact, in April of 2021, Amnesty International’s annual death penalty report revealed that the number of recorded executions in Egypt tripled in 2020 making it the world’s third most frequent executioner after China and Iran. (HRW, 2021)
Death penalties continue to escalate and have not stopped until today. As of April, after an unfair trial, Egyptian authorities executed nine people, including an 82-year-old man, sending a clear political message to those who do not support the authorities of the regime. (Amnesty International, 2021)
However, as Amnesty confirms, it is important to note that the death toll numbers are likely to be an underestimate, as Egyptian authorities do not publish statistics on executions or the number of prisoners on death row; nor do they inform families or lawyers in advance of executions.
Freedom of Assembly
Al-Sisi’s regime has also tried to hinder freedom of assembly in the country since he got into power. In order to achieve this objective, he has used different methods, for instance he tried to maintain a decree which was established in 2013 and that effectively banned all anti-government protests (HRW, 2017). However, the government had to face a legal challenge from the Supreme Constitutional Court because of this. Nevertheless, this did not stop the police and other security forces from making it as difficult as possible for assembly and protests to take place. Not only that but, there have been reports that in 2016 the Egyptian police made various large, pre-emptive raids and arrests were even made on two occasions when they anticipated protests (HRW, 2017).
In December 2015, there were an important number of arrests made in various governorates, as a significant amount of people were accused of planning protests timed for the January anniversary of the 2011 uprising, which showcases another clear example that the police had made a habit of acting preemptively against any protests which would criticise the current regime. Furthermore, the days previous to this anniversary the police made several raids in apartments located in the downtown of Cairo (HRW, 2017). Not only that but, several of these raids were done without warrants and various activists were detained during them, like Taher Mokhtar, a doctor who had advocated for better detention conditions., further showing the extremely weakened state that the rule of law had during this time in Egypt. Moreover, these cases offer another great example of how Al-Sisi’s regime had used different excuses to go against the opposition. An official at the National Security Agency even told Reuters “We have taken several measures to ensure activists don’t have breathing space and are unable to gather, and several cafés and other meeting places have been closed, while some have been arrested in order to scare the rest.” (HRW, 2017).
Nevertheless, this was not the only case in which the police seriously overstepped in the population’s freedom of assembly, for instance after an unexpected mass demonstration on April the 15th 2016 against President Al-Sisi’s decision to cede two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, several activists started to plan a follow-up protests ten days later, however, the police made around 382 arrests in the days leading up to and during the dispersal of the second protest, many from their homes or downtown Cairo cafés. What is more, according to HRW the police even stopped people from riding public transport or walking in the street. They also inspected mobile phones without warrants, and arrested phone owners if they found anti-government images (HRW, 2017).
In 2017, President Al-Sisi continued with his course of action as he signed parliamentary amendments to the 2013 protest law with the purpose of meeting a Supreme Constitutional Court ruling. Nevertheless, even though this may have sound as a step in the right direction, this amendment did not affect the incredible restrictions that the law had previously put in place as for instance peaceful gatherings remain effectively banned and even penalised. These actions are clearly showcased in other events, which were carried out during 2017 as security forces rounded up activists preemptively, ahead of anticipated protests, for instance at in April, these forces arrested around 190 political activists, mostly in home raids, before the mid-June parliamentary approval of the controversial government decision to cede two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. Even though Al-Sisi pardoned a total of 705 prisoners in March and June, most of whom had been convicted in cases related to peaceful protests, these events portray the lack of freedom of assembly which Egypt experienced during the first half of Al-Sisi’s regime (HRW, 2018).
Even though the government has not released the implementing regulations of the 2017 NGO law, it has issued numerous decrees based on it. In November of 2018, President al-Sisi ordered the law revised but the government did not announce a timeline for such revision. Prosecutions in the protracted “Case 173 0f 2011” into nongovernmental organizations’ foreign funding continued, despite calls from the United Nations, United States, and European Union to end them. At least 28 leading rights activists have been banned from leaving the country as part of this case and could be arrested at any moment while 10 individuals and 7 organizations have had their assets frozen. (HRW, 2019)
President Al-Sisi continued also in the next year, to warn against anti-government protests and gatherings. Authorities rounded up more than 4,400 people in a mass arrest campaign following rare anti-government protests on September 20. Those arrested include well-known figures, such as political science professors Hazem Hosni and Hassan Nafaa, as well as journalist and politician Khaled Dawood and human rights lawyer Mohamed al-Baker.
Over 160 activists or perceived dissidents were arrested or prosecuted by authorities for voicing criticism before the constitutional referendum in April. In June, authorities arrested and searched the homes of scores of activists and accused them of joining, aiding, or funding a “terrorist” group. The case, known as the “Hope Coalition” case, involves activists who were allegedly planning a new political coalition to contest the 2020 elections. Detainees include well-known leftist activists Ziad al-Elaimy and Hossam Mo’nis. Authorities unfairly banned 83 defendants in the case from travel and froze their assets. (HRW, 2020)
The situation resumed likewise in 2020 when Egypt detained dozens of politicians and activists, including Ziad al-Elaimy and Hossam Mo’nis, for planning a new electoral coalition to contest the 2020 parliamentary elections. In late June, Interior Ministry forces besieged the doctors’ syndicate building and forced its members to cancel a press conference to address government harassment of doctors in connection with Covid-19. Authorities arrested at least 10 healthcare professionals who challenged the official narrative on the pandemic or criticized the lack of equipment at work (HRW, 2021). Moreover, in September and October according to Amnesty International (2020) authorities responded to small and rare protests with unlawful use of force, mass arrests, censorship and random security checks. Security forces used tear gas, batons, birdshot and on at least one occasion live ammunition to disperse protests. They also raided homes in a violent manner to arrest suspected protesters, killing at least two men and injuring others. Hundreds of protesters and bystanders were arrested and detained pending investigations into “terrorism” and protest-related charges.
Freedom of Association
Continuing with the trend, the current Egyptian regime has also tried to undermine this freedom since they got into power after the already mentioned coup. It has been reported that in 2016 the Egyptian parliament and the country’s authorities took what have been categorised by some as unheard-of steps to restrict independent human rights work by NGOs, even threatening their very existence, for instance in September of that year in Cairo a criminal court in the city approved a request from a panel of investigative judges which wanted to freeze the assets of three organisations, as well as the personal assets of five people who founded or led prominent human rights groups. This was not the first action carried out by these judges, as they previously had already banned at least 12 NGO directors, founders, and staff members from travelling outside Egypt. These activists said the travel bans would be followed to the filing of criminal charges against them for illegally receiving foreign funding (HRW, 2017).
Al-Sisi was able to do this thanks to his amendment in 2014 of article 78 of the penal code, which allows NGO workers to receive up to a 25-year sentence if a judge determines that they received foreign funding for “pursuing acts harmful to national interests” or other broad reasons. Not only that , but in November of 2017, the Egyptian Parliament approved a new law, which looked to regulate the actions carried out by the different NGOs in Egypt, for instance this law could eradicate the independence from the NGOs, as their work could be vetoed by a decision of a council, which would be mainly formed by members of General Intelligence Service and Interior and Defense Ministries, if it is considered to “harm national security, public order, public morality, or public health,”. Not only that but with the law the Egyptian regime could have the power to even dissolve NGOs, if they committed a particular infraction. The law would punish anyone violating the law with a prison term of between one and five years and they would also receive a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 Egyptian pounds (US$3,160-$6,300). The other newsworthy issue about this law is that it was passed without any prior consultation with the Egyptian civil society. In addition, in 2017, the Egyptian local authorities also ordered the closure of the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture
(HRW, 2017; HRW, 2018).
In October 2017, the Egyptian government had already carried out some investigations into the work of different NGOs, which were involved in Case 173 of 2011, also known as the “foreign funding” case. The authorities banned 27 members from traveling outside the country, as well as a criminal court ordered to freeze the assets of 10 activists and 7 NGOs, some of the activists who were involved in this case were Mohamed Zarea, deputy director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, who was released after paying a 30,000 Egyptian pounds bail (US$1,700), Mostafa al-Hassan, head of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, and Abd al-Hafiz al-Tayel, director of the Egyptian Center on the Right to Education, who were also released after paying each a bail of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,130) (HRW, 2018).
Freedom of Expression
It comes as no surprise that since the new regime took power in Egypt it has significantly focused on controlling the freedom of expression of its population in order to stop a surge of criticism in the public sphere. In 2015 the government passed two laws, which seek to curtail the freedom of expression in public, due to the fact that they use the excuse of national security and counterterrorism efforts in order to enable the State to maintain a repression of dissenting voices. The Egyptian government is able to do this as, for instance the concepts of terrorism and activities listed as potential crimes are defined in the 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law No. 94 in a very broad and vague way, for instance it defines “terrorist activities” as “damage to national unity and social peace”, therefore enabling the Egyptian authorities to find a way to go against citizens, notably journalists and human rights defenders who show criticism against the regime. In addition, the Egyptian regime has used these laws to categorise several political opponents as terrorists. There are various clear examples of this law used for these objectives, like for instance in April 2017, the Egyptian human rights activist Mohamed Ramadan Abdel Basset was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison for criticising president Al-Sisi on Facebook, due to the fact that these posts were considered a “terrorist act”. Not only that but the Articles 40 and 41 of this law, enables the Egyptian authorities to carry out detentions without a warrant of suspects in terrorism cases for 24 hours, these detentions can even be extended to up to seven days, which violates the right of detainees to due process. Also, with just a request from the Attorney General to the Court of Appeal is enough to include a person or entity on the official terrorist list, without the need for major evidence to support this claim. This has severely negative effects for this person or entity, due to the fact that once they have been put on the terrorism list, they are not entitled to directly contest or appeal the decision. This has resulted in a huge number of people being placed in these lists, as there are currently more than 2000 people officially listed as terrorists by the Egyptian State, for instance in 2018 according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Egyptian government placed two independent newspapers, Al-Borsa and Daily News Egypt, and two independent news websites, Misr al-Arabiya and Cairo Portal, on the terrorist entities lists. This action resulted in their assets being frozen and brought the four outlets under the administration of the government-owned Akhbar al-Youm newspaper (Committee for Justice et al, 2019; HRW, 2018). What is more, the 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law also enables the Egyptian Senate to prevent the suspect from contacting his/her family or lawyer, therefore facilitating incommunicado detentions. Article 8 of this law gives immunity to the security forces whenever they use excessive or undue force while enforcing this law. Thus, this article clearly violates the right to protection under the law for any person who may be subjected to undue force. Moreover, several human rights groups, which have worked in Egypt have documented several cases of security forces using excessive force with complete impunity, due to the fact that they argued that the detainees were carrying out” terrorism crimes” (CFJ et al, 2019).
The Egyptian government has continuously used these tools to go against journalists in order to silence them, as they have been able to use these counterterrorism excuses to inhibit them from delivering open criticism against the government. This has resulted in many journalists having faced attacks against their human rights, like for instance censorship violating their right to free expression, prolonged provisional detention, imprisonment after unfair trials, unjustified raids and confiscation of their equipment, and even physical attacks. For example, the Egyptian government has also been able to use Article 35 of the 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law No. 94, which for instance prohibits the publication of information on terrorism operations that differs from the official State narrative. If media outlets and journalists differed from these parameters, they would be subjected to individuals and media outlets to heavy fines (CFJ et al, 2019; Mansour, 2018).
Egypt remains one of the worst jailers of journalists in the world with roughly 20 journalists behind bars. Egypt’s press freedom deteriorated further, ranking 161 out of 180 countries according to Reporters Without Borders. On August 18, President al-Sisi approved a new law regulating the internet called the Anti-Cyber and Information Technology Crimes Law (Cybercrime Law). The Egyptian parliament had passed the law on July 5, granting the government broader powers to restrict freedom of expression, violate citizens’ privacy, and jail online activists for peaceful speech. In late July, parliament also passed a new law regulating the press, the Media Regulation Law, which further restricts journalistic freedoms, allows censorship without judicial orders, and levies severe monetary fines for violating the law’s articles, in addition to prison sentences for cases related to “inciting violence.” Despite objections from Egypt’s Journalists’ Syndicate, parliament approved the law largely unamended.
Egyptian authorities have been using counterterrorism and state-of-emergency laws and courts to unjustly prosecute bloggers, activists, and critics for their peaceful criticism. Some cases have been transferred to the Emergency State Security Courts, a parallel judicial system operating since October 2017, under the state of emergency that the government claims are being used only against terrorists and drug traffickers. These courts do not guarantee a fair trial and their decisions are not subject to appeal.
Hundreds of news and rights organizations and political websites remain blocked in Egypt without judicial orders, including Human Rights Watch’s website (HRW, 2019). This is mainly due to the fact that existing legislation has loopholes and vague provisions that impose limits related to national security, public interest, social peace and national unity. As Fathy (2018) notes: “the law, the architecture and the social norms are unduly restrictive of freedom of expression online”.
In 2019, Egyptian authorities continued to severely punish peaceful criticism against the government and to routinely silence journalists, bloggers, and social media users. Since 2017, authorities have blocked an estimated 600 news and political and human rights websites, as well as social media sites and secure communications apps, without judicial authorization. More news and political websites were blocked before the constitutional referendum in April.
The Supreme Council for Media Regulation, a government entity established pursuant to the abusive new 2018 media law to monitor and control media, issued in March and September two sets of by-laws that impose drastic restrictions and disproportionate penalties without judicial oversight for any media outlet, including websites and social media pages, that do not abide by the council’s rules. Under these rules, which among other things prohibit “insulting state institutions,” “generalization,” and “harming state interests,” the council has censored newspapers, websites and TV shows.
Egypt was among the top three worst jailers of journalists in the world, with roughly 30 journalists behind bars, many charged with “spreading false news.” (HRW, 2020)
In 2020, Egypt resumed to detain dozens of politicians and activists, including Ziad al-Elaimy and Hossam Mo’nis, for planning a new electoral coalition to contest the 2020 parliamentary elections. In late June, Interior Ministry forces besieged the doctors’ syndicate building and forced its members to cancel a press conference to address government harassment of doctors in connection with Covid-19. Authorities arrested at least 10 healthcare professionals who challenged the official narrative on the pandemic or criticized the lack of equipment at work. In addition, on 24 June, security forces raided the office in the capital, Cairo, of the al-Manassa independent news site and briefly detained its editor-in-chief Noura Younes and a month lateron 25 August, a terrorism circuit court sentenced the director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Bahey el-Din Hassan, in his absence, to 15 years’ imprisonment on charges of “insulting the judiciary” and “disseminating false news” for tweeting about human rights violations in Egypt (Amnesty International, 2020)
Authorities also continued to silence journalists, bloggers, and critics on social media amid escalating use of the repressive 2018 cybercrimes law and have blocked hundreds of news and human rights websites without judicial authorization since 2017. Journalists Solafa Magdy, Hossam al-Sayed, and Mohamed Salah remain in pretrial detention on charges of “joining a terrorist group” and “spreading false news” since November 2019. According to international groups monitoring press freedoms, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Press Institute, the number of journalists behind bars in Egypt at a given time in 2020 was between 30 and 60, one of the highest in the world (HRW, 2021).
Nevertheless, as Roll (2018) underlines: “State repression is by no means only directed against political opponents, but also the entire non-governmental civil society. There are hardly any human rights activists who have not been either arrested or at least charged”, therefore, “the regime is suppressing those very actors who advocate the fight against corruption, state transparency and the establishment of procedures based on the rule of law”.
Freedom of Religion
The Egyptian government has not particularly strived to maintain the freedom of religion in the country, for instance, in 2016 the Egyptian parliament passed a law on church building, which focused on maintaining the already established restrictions on the contractions and renovations of churches, thus clearly discriminate against the Christian minority that lives in the country. This law allowed the governors of the different regions to prohibit the construction of any churches. Not only that, but this law also did not provide any form to appeal this decision made by the governors. In addition, it also contained provisions like one that stated that authorities could deny construction permits if granting them would be considered to present a problem to public safety. In other words, decisions on church construction could be influenced by the actions of violent mobs who have attacked churches in the past, for instance in 2016 anti-Christian violence, which was sparked by the possible construction of a church, resulted in one person dead, several injured, and numerous Christian properties destroyed. Egyptian authorities have continued to showcase their inability to protect Christian minorities from sometimes fatal attacks. Not only that, but these authorities placed “reconciliation sessions” that allowed the perpetrators of these actions to escape prosecution. These actions carried out Christians come in direct contrast to the protection that the Egyptian government has offered to Muslims, even to radical ones, as in February 2016 a court sentenced four Christian children to five years in prison for posting a video online in which they mocked the Islamic State. Nonetheless, this prosecution has not only been carried out against Christians as several human rights groups that operate in Egypt documented unlawful harassment of other religious minorities, including Shia Muslims and atheists, which included arbitrary travel bans and summonses for interrogations (HRW, 2017).
What is more, the Egyptian authorities have also failed to protect religious minorities in the country from attacks from extremist religious groups like for instance ISIS, which in 2017 directed bombings at two churches in the cities of Tanta and Alexandria, which killed around 45 people. In May 2017 in the governorate of Minya, ISIS claimed an attack on a bus carrying Coptic passengers who were travelling to a monastery and that killed 29 people (HRW, 2018).
Egypt’s Christian community, which comprises roughly 10 percent of the population and is the largest Christian minority in the Middle East, has suffered legal and social discrimination for decades. Authorities have regularly failed to protect Christians from sectarian attacks and to prosecute perpetrators. In one incident of sectarian violence on August 31, mobs ransacked and looted five homes in Minya’s Dimshau Hashim village, after rumours circulated that Christian villagers were planning to build a church. Authorities pressured victims to accept a government-mediated “reconciliation” that allows perpetrators to evade prosecutions, while authorities offered no concrete future protections to the worshippers and their families.
The restrictive Law 80 of 2016 on the construction of churches allowed for conditionally legalizing a small number of churches that were operating without an official permit, but restrictions remain largely in place. Over 90 percent of over 3,700 churches and buildings still work without a permit and lack legal protection. The rights group Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) documented the closure by the authorities of 14 churches. Authorities continue to arrest those who describe themselves as non-believers or atheists and jail them under “insulting religions” charges (HRW, 2019).
Christians, the largest religious minority in Egypt, continued to face systematic discrimination on societal and institutional levels. The government recognizes only Islam, Christianity and Judaism as official religions. Minorities such as Baha`is and nonbelievers face discriminatory obstacles in obtaining IDs and vital documents, such as marriage and death certificates.
Discriminatory laws continue to impede building and renovating non-Sunni Muslim houses of worship. Egypt’s 2016 discriminatory church-building law has achieved little in removing obstacles and sectarian violence around building churches. According to pro-government newspapers, of about 6,000 churches and service buildings that lack legal recognition, only 1,027 were given conditional permits as of July, three years after passage of the law (HRW, 2020).
On June 21, an appeals court in Alexandria upheld the three-year prison sentence of blogger and activist Anas Hassan and a fine of 300,000 EGP ($19,000) for “insulting religion” and “misusing social media.” According to the EIPR, Hassan was prosecuted for managing a Facebook page called “The Egyptian Atheists” that authorities said published “atheistic ideas” and “criticism of the divinely revealed religions.”
A week later, a State Security Misdemeanour Court in Sharqia Governorate sentenced two young men to a year in jail for promoting the Shi`a doctrine of Islam. State Security court decisions cannot be appealed. Restrictions on church building remain largely in place. Four years after the issuance of Law 80 of 2016 on the construction of churches, the government has only conditionally legalized 1,638 churches that were operating without official permits, roughly 25 percent of church buildings that applied for legal status (HRW, 2021).
Social and Labour Rights
The Egyptian government was able to use a $12 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund, in late 2016 in order to reduce the floatation of the Egyptian pound. This resulted in the Egyptian pound nearly halved its exchange value from $0.112 to 0.057 and inflation reached almost 35% (HRW, 2018).
During the first half of Al-Sisi´s tenure, Egypt suffered an economic crisis, which also had effects like constricting space for workers’ mobilisation. What is more, during this time workers’ strikes remained criminalised in the Egyptian law. Nonetheless, Egyptian authorities arrested or charged at least 180 workers for peaceful workplace strikes and protests in 2016 and 2017. These protests were mostly over bonuses and delayed wages. In 2017, for instance, Egyptian security forces arrested at least eight Tax Authority workers and independent union leaders before suspected protests. Not only that but, independent trade unions also remained effectively banned. The parliament approved in December 2017 a new trade unions law, which maintained several of the restrictions that were currently instituted, as well as. It continued not to recognise independent unions (HRW, 2018)
Authorities held in May the first trade union elections in Egypt in 12 years. However, while state officials claimed the elections were transparent and fair, results only reflected the former status quo, with the government-affiliated Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) emerging from the process effectively in control of the unions. The Center for Trade Union and Workers Services, the oldest independent labour rights group in Egypt, said that the elections were marred by violations such as the exclusion from the electoral process of hundreds of candidates not aligned with the government.
The elections were held on the backdrop of a new trade union law that parliament passed in December 2017 after the International Labour Organization (ILO) put Egypt back on its blacklist over the country’s failure to issue a new trade union law in keeping with ILO Convention 87 concerning the right of workers to organize. However, in the view of trade unionists and labour activists, the law “was only issued to win favour with the International Labour Organization,” and it kept in place several restrictions on the right to organize. Authorities also arrested dozens of people who peacefully protested in May in response to increases in Cairo’s subway fare prices. (HRW, 2019)
Violence and Discrimination against Women, Girls, and LGBT People
The Egyptian government has tried to hinder the amount of violence, especially against girls, as for instance in august 2016 the government passed an amendment to a law which prohibited female genital mutilation (FGM). This new law increased the penalty that someone would face if they carried out this procedure, as they would have to face a prison sentence of between five and seven years, which could be prolonged up to 15 years if the procedure resulted in permanent disability or death. Nevertheless, these objectives have not been particularly fruitful as prosecutors have only been able to achieve one conviction since the law was passed in 2008, even though it has been widely reported that FGM is still a practiced procedure in Egypt. What is more, even though it can be argued that the Egyptian government has tried to carry out positive steps in this aspect, women in the country have continued to face serious discrimination in various facets like equal access to divorce, child custody, and inheritance (HRW, 2017).
The current Egyptian regime has not promoted the rights of the LGBTW community, instead since they came to power in 2013, they have continued to campaign focusing on intimidating, tracking and arresting members of this community. Not only that but, the Egyptian police have regularly carried out extremely derogatory acts like forced anal examinations in prosecutions of those suspected of homosexual sex. The advocacy group Solidarity with Egypt LGBTQ+ reported that they had recorded around 114 criminal investigations involving 274 LGBT individuals between the end of 2013 and the end of 2016. Also, 66 of these investigations involved the use of social media by the Egyptian authorities (HRW, 2017). In 2017 the Egyptian security forces arrested 75 gay and transgender activists after some of them raised a rainbow flag at a concert in Cairo (HRW, 2018).
Since 2018, the government has failed to adequately protect women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence, and, in some cases, even punished them for speaking out on this issue. On May 9, activist Amal Fathy posted a video on her Facebook page in which she spoke about the prevalence of sexual harassment in Egypt and criticized the government’s failure to protect women. The next day, pro-government and state-owned media outlets initiated a smear campaign against Fathy and then on May 11, authorities arrested her. On September 29, a criminal court sentenced Fathy to two years’ imprisonment for “publishing false news,” as well as a fine of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (US$560) for making “public insults.” She continues to face charges in a separate case on trumped-up allegations of belonging to a terrorist organization.
Other women’s rights groups and women’s rights activists continue to face trial for their women’s rights activism including Mozn Hassan, head of Nazra for Feminist Studies, and Azza Soliman, head of the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, who remain under travel bans.
Though amendments to the penal code introduced harsher penalties against female genital mutilation (FGM) in August 2016, application of the law is still flawed. In May, the Task Force to Combat FGM issued a statement condemning the extremely lax efforts made to advance the National Strategy Against FGM (2016-2020) and the law’s inadequate protection of girls’ lives a Simultaneously, in 2019 Egypt continued to stall on a law that would tackle domestic violence. UN Women group, which works for women’s empowerment, estimated that almost a third of Egyptian women experienced intimate partner physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. Despite the 2016 penal code amendments criminalizing female genital mutilation (FGM), prosecutions of perpetrators remained rare and FGM remains widely practiced throughout the country, with an estimated four out of five genital mutilations performed by doctors in professional medical environments.
Authorities prosecuted and banned from leaving the country leading women’s rights activists, including Mozn Hassan, head of Nazra for Feminist Studies and Azza Soliman, head of the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance. Egypt continued to repress lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, in recent years prosecuting dozens of people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.nd health.
Furthermore, Egypt continued to prosecute dozens of people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Unlike other countries in the region, Egypt has taken no steps to ban forced anal examinations of people accused of homosexual conduct (HRW, 2019).
In 2020, Egyptian authorities carried out an extensive campaign of arrests and prosecutions against women social media influencers, in violation of their rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and non-discrimination. Between April and time of writing, authorities arrested at least 15 people, including 11 women and a 17-year-old girl, on vague charges of violating “public morals” and “undermining family values.” Courts sentenced five of them to two and six years in jail. The prosecutions are based on videos and photos the women shared on social media apps showing themselves dancing and singing. Security forces arrested the 17-year-old girl after she published a video saying she was raped and assaulted by a group of men.
The National Security Agency in August 2020 arrested four witnesses to a high-profile 2014 gang rape case (known as the Fairmont case), and two of their acquaintances, weeks after independent women’s rights activists exposed the case online. Three witnesses were shortly released but continued to face prosecution. Authorities had encouraged witnesses to the rape to come forward, but then accused them of consensual same-sex sexual conduct, “inciting debauchery”, personal drug use, and “misuse of social media”. According to sources, the authorities attempted to force the witnesses to change their testimonies and ill-treated them in detention. They also reportedly forced one woman to undergo a “virginity test” and two men arrested in the case to undergo anal examinations. These are cruel and degrading practices that can rise to the level of torture. Pro-government media subjected them to a coordinated smear campaign.
The Egyptian #MeToo movement became re-energized in 2020, as victims and survivors of sexual violence posted their accounts online, leading to a few arrests by authorities.
On September 5, al-Sisi approved amendments to the Criminal Procedural Code to ensure anonymity and protect the identities of victims. But lawyers voiced concerns that the amendments did not provide protection for witnesses. Serious gaps remain in Egypt’s laws relating to sexual violence and treatment of survivors including a weak definition of rape and lack of a comprehensive violence against women law.
Additionally, authorities continued to subject people accused of homosexual conduct to forced anal examinations, which are cruel and degrading and can rise to the level of torture. In March, Malak al-Kashef, a transgender woman, was arrested from her home and accused of “joining a terrorist group.” She spent four months in pretrial detention in a male prison where she was sexually harassed and abused before being provisionally released in July. Hossam Ahmed, a transgender man, was also arrested in March and ordered detained on terrorism accusations.
In January, a TV anchor was sentenced to one year in prison for interviewing a gay man on television. Egypt censored gay-themed scenes from the film Bohemian Rhapsody, starring Egyptian-American actor Rami Malek (HRW, 2020).
Egypt continued to arbitrarily arrest and detain people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity and subjected them to torture and ill-treatment in detention, including forced anal examinations. For instance, in June, Sarah Hegazy, an LGBT rights and feminist activist, took her own life in exile in Canada. Hegazy left Egypt out of fear for her life after authorities detained and subjected her to ill-treatment in prison for three months in 2017.
In March, during its third Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council, Egypt rejected recommendations by several states to end arrests and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Egypt responded that it “does not recognize the terms mentioned in this recommendation.”
For several months, Egyptians living with HIV, including gay men, faced obstacles to accessing HIV treatment as they feared retrieving their medication from fever hospitals, the only centers where people living with HIV can access lifesaving medications after the government designated them as treatment centers for Covid-19 (HRW, 2021).
Refugee Rights, Disability and Health Rights
Egypt has always been a country of transit for many refugees and asylum seekers. In September 2017, for instance the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) stated that 211,104 persons from 63 nationalities were registered as refugees and asylum-seekers in Egypt, mostly from countries like Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and South Sudan (HRW, 2018).
The Egyptian government introduced a law, which focused on combating irregular immigration in late 2016. This resulted in a misdemeanour court for minor offences sentenced 56 defendants to terms ranging from 1 to 14 years in one mass trial. The defendants faced smuggling charges related to the 2016 capsizing of a boat off the coast of Rashid on the Mediterranean coast, which killed over 200 migrants (HRW, 2018).
In June 2017, the Egyptian police arrested dozens of Uyghur students, a Chinese Muslim minority, some of whom were registered as refugees or asylum seekers with the UNHCR. The arrests seemed to have been at the request of the Chinese government, which ordered the Uyghur students abroad, to return home. The government deported some of them to China, where they faced a high risk of torture. As of October, a lawyer confirmed that authorities released at least 60 of the students and allowed them to leave to a country of their choice whereas 16 of them remained in custody (HRW, 2018).
In February of 2018, Egypt passed a new law on the rights of persons with disabilities, 10 years after it ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. At time of writing, the government had yet to adopt by-laws required for implementation. Egypt also passed the country’s first comprehensive law for health insurance for citizens in January and legalized the situation of some scores of churches that the government had previously not approved for building. Yet restrictions on freedom of religion remain largely in place. In 2017-2018, Egypt achieved substantial progress in fighting the endemic Hepatitis C virus through a national health program that included treatment care and new steps for systematic screening.
As for the refugees and migrants, according to Amnesty International, Egyptian authorities continued to arbitrarily arrest and detain refugees and migrants. For example, between January and September 2020, security forces arrested and detained at least 14 Syrians, 29 Sudanese people and one Guinean person in police stations in southern Egypt for irregularly entering or staying in Egypt. In November, security forces violently dispersed two peaceful protests by Sudanese refugees and migrants over the murder of a Sudanese child. Security forces arrested dozens of protesters and subjected them to beatings, racial slurs and other ill-treatment.
Key International Actors
President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has been able to strengthen its power in Egypt and carry out the different attacks against the rights of his opposition in Egypt in part thanks to the impunity that the International Community has shown in regard to these human rights violations. One of the powers who especially helped Al-Sisi during the first half of his tenure in power was France under President François Hollande, due to the fact that in 2016 both countries signed various deals, which focused on diverse activities like building a military telecommunications satellite, extending the Cairo metro, and financing a wind farm and solar power plant among other. Not only that, but during that year France also delivered the first of two Mistral class helicopter carriers to Egypt, which were part of an Egyptian purchase of French military equipment also included a FREMM-class frigate, four Gowind-class corvettes, and 24 Rafale fighter jet (HRW, 2017).
The Egyptian government has also received important economic support from its allies, for instance in 2016 the United Arab Emirates promised $4 billion of aid to Egypt. The Egyptian regime had already received $20 billion either granted or loaned by other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council after the 2013 coup (HRW, 2017).
What is more, even though in some occasions the United States government has shown some criticisms of Egyptian human rights abuses, like in 2016 when United States Secretary of State John Kerry criticised the Egyptian government’s decision of reopening the investigation into the funding of local Egyptian NGOs, saying he was “deeply concerned by the deterioration in the human rights situation in Egypt in recent weeks and months”, the US has not carried out enough criticism that would force the regime to change their attitude. Instead on several occasions it was reinforced, for instance at a meeting between President Al-Sisi and Donald Trump during the United Nations General Assembly, two months before the latter was elected, Donald Trump expressed “strong support for Egypt’s war on terrorism” and pledged that his administration “will be a loyal friend, not simply an ally”. Not only that but, Egypt has continuously received economic and military aid coming from the US, as more than $47 billion in security assistance since the 1970s have gone to Egypt, including around 20% of all U.S. Foreign Military Financing funds in fiscal year 2017 (Dunne, 2017; HRW, 2017).
The European Union has also been particularly complicit with the actions carried out by the current Egyptian government, especially due to the fact that Member States see Egypt as a crucial ally for controlling migration and helping with security and regional problems. In addition, Egypt has some economic leverage over the EU, since it is one of the most important clients that the EU has in the arms-sale sector (Dworkin, 2020).
Recommendations
There are several recommendations, which the Egyptian government should take into account in order for the protection of the human rights of its population to be better ensured. Firstly, the government should look to make amendments to all the different legislations, which have used counterterrorism and national security excuses for silencing critics and curtailing the fundamental liberties of a significant amount of the Egyptian population. This is particularly the case of the 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law No. 94 and the 2015 Terrorism Entities Law No. 8; therefore, the Egyptian government should look to ensure that all their different laws go in accordance with the standards of international law and especially that they respect the human rights of the Egyptian population. Not only that but, in order to ensure that laws in the future, will not go against human rights like the 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law No. 94 and the 2015 Terrorism Entities Law No. 8 have done, amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure should also be made, thus ensuring that due process rights, including for cases related to terrorism and national security will be secured in the future (UPR Working Group, 2019).
What is more, the Egyptian government should also try to solve the injustices that it has committed in the past. One way of doing this is by immediately releasing and trying the different individuals who have been in preventive detention for over two years. In addition, the regime should make an effort and ensure that the duration of pre-trial detentions complies with articles 142 and 143 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Egyptian regime should also Ensure that trials and precautionary measures comply with due process rights enshrined in the ICCPR. Not only that but, the government should lift all travel bans and police surveillance methods which they have used against human rights defenders, activists, journalists and anyone being prevented from free movement simply due to the exercise of their right to free expression. Ensure that all current and future travel bans are issued through transparent judicial procedures and appeal processes are independent and fair (UPR Working Group, 2019).
Nevertheless, this is easier said than done. In order for the Egyptian government to change its attitudes towards human rights abuses, there needs to be an important amount of pressure coming from the International Community, especially the US. The US needs to ensure that their aid is not used towards further hindering the human rights in Egypt. What is more, it has been argued that the U.S. government should implement the recommendations contained in the April 2016 General Accountability Office report calling for strengthening end-use monitoring and human rights vetting, which the government of Egypt has often blocked. What is more, the US should also try and change the bilateral security assistance relationship with Egypt in order to showcase that security and human rights are very intrinsically connected for the US. In addition, the US should either maintain or expand the percentage of security assistance that can be withheld based on human rights conditions and remove the waiver for national security interests (Dunne, 2017).
The international partners of Egypt have to immediately halt all military and security assistance to Egypt and condition its resumption on evidence of an end to serious violations, including war crimes in North Sinai, and credible steps to investigate and prosecute such crimes. European Union member states in particular should uphold the August 21, 2013 Foreign Affairs Council decision of halting arms transfers to Egypt and revising all such licenses, especially France and Germany. It is clear that the system of monitoring weapons is no longer sufficient to ensure their proper use, in terms of defense, and it therefore seems a priority to stop providing the country with weapons. The international community must also put diplomatic pressure on the Egyptian government to submit to international law and open the field to international observers and investigators to report on the situation. Prosecution of individuals who perpetrated such war crimes must of course take place.
To this end, the UN Human Rights Council should establish an international investigation into violations and abuses committed by all parties to the conflict in North Sinai. The investigation should also include the Office of the Prosecutor General for its failure to hold perpetrators accountable. The protection of human rights must be made effective again by fighting against extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions; torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The Council of the United Nations must go there to investigate and under no circumstances let these crimes go unpunished to promote the universal values of human rights.
As for the Egyptian government, it must immediately release the illegally detained prisoners and childrens in a procedure in cooperation with the United Nations in order to avoid any further deviation. Legitimate prisoners held in militia jails or secret prisons must be deported to official prisons where they will receive satisfactory conditions of detention. Clear and transparent procedures for compensating victims of wrongful detention or damage to or destruction of their homes must be put in place to redress the harm inflicted by the military. Dialogue must be genuinely re-established with the people of North Sinai, rather than promoting mass repression. Committees could be formed, or at least representative bodies that could represent the interests of the inhabitants and establish communication with the government in Cairo. Currently, indiscriminate and indiscriminate military operations, opaque compensation policies and unheard families of victims contribute to a total loss of dialogue between the state and its citizens in the region, which must be corrected as soon as possible at the risk of creating the opposite effect of what was intended, i.e., reinforcing hatred towards the government and encouraging support to Islamist groups. The government must understand that it is in its own interest, even a strategic one, to treat the public with the respect it deserves. Egypt must also investigate nationally isolated individuals committing abuses against citizens so that they can be sentenced on national soil. It also seems necessary, in view of the acts perpetrated, to ensure the training of Egyptian soldiers in the fundamental principles of international law and the law of war as well as to raise their awareness of the values of human rights. If this is not already the case, these values must be integrated into their training or training courses must be offered for this purpose.
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