for its “repugnant” human rights record.. Rights Watch denounces a joint European candidacy with Egypt to head an international forum | Hurriyat News

Human Rights Watch strongly criticized the European Union’s decision to enter into a joint candidacy with Egypt to chair the “Global Counter-Terrorism Forum”, and called on Brussels to reverse this decision because of Cairo’s “repugnant” human rights record.

“Given Egypt’s abhorrent record of human rights violations in the name of combating terrorism, the European Union must seriously reconsider its action,” the New York-based organization said in a statement.

And the Egyptian Foreign Ministry announced in a statement last Sunday that “Egypt and the European Union intend to run during the meeting of the Forum’s Coordinating Committee,” which will be held next March.

The ministry indicated that since 2017, “Egypt co-chairs, with the European Union, the capacity-building working group for the East African region within the framework of the Forum.”

Black hole

In its statement, Human Rights Watch said that “since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in 2013, Egypt has become a black hole for human rights.”

The organization referred in particular to the security campaigns against human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, opposition politicians and activists, in addition to the imprisonment of tens of thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Egyptian government classifies as “terrorist” since the end of 2013.

The Egyptian president constantly rejects these accusations. In a meeting with foreign journalists on the sidelines of the International Youth Forum in Sharm El-Sheikh, which was held between January 10 and 13, Sisi directed his speech to human rights organizations, saying, “Do you love our people more than us? Do you fear for our country more than we do? .. We are our country.” You can’t find food… Are you ready to help us?”

Sisi regularly reiterates his human rights vision: providing health care, education, and electricity is more important than the right to assembly, which is practically banned in the country.

Last October, Sisi abolished the state of emergency in force in the country for years, and thus suspended the emergency law and exceptional courts.

International human rights organizations estimate the number of prisoners of conscience and politics in Egypt at about 60,000.

Amnesty International and 20 other NGOs describe the human rights situation in Egypt as “catastrophic” and point out that there are “peaceful activists, human rights defenders, lawyers, university professors and journalists imprisoned simply for exercising their right to freedom of opinion, peaceful assembly and association.”