Egypt has launched a new crackdown on human rights groups, questioning staff and ordering asset freezes over accusations they took foreign funding to destabilize the country after the 2011 uprising that ended former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.
Egyptian rights activists said they are facing the worst assault in their history in a wider campaign to erase the freedoms won in the 18-day revolt that began on Jan. 25, 2011.
Some said they are working from home in anticipation of arrests as the noose tightens on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have faced growing pressure since the burst of activism that accompanied the Arab Spring uprisings that toppled autocrats from Tunisia to Yemen.
It is not clear how many groups will be investigated in the case that has so far affected staff or management from at least six of Egypt’s best-known rights groups.
They include Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), and Gamal Eid, founder of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information.
An investigating magistrate has banned both men from traveling abroad and ordered their assets frozen pending an April 20 court decision.
EIPR associate director Heba Morayef expects that freeze to be extended to the group as a whole, potentially forcing its office to close.
“I think some in the security agencies see human rights organizations as part of this global conspiracy to sow chaos, and that is actually in the asset freeze order,” Morayef told reporters. “This would be the biggest blow to human rights organizations in 30 years.”
Egyptian Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali, who oversees the NGO sector in Egypt, did not respond to a written request for comment this week. There was also no comment from Egypt’s prosecutors, who have banned reporting of the legal details of the case.
Since toppling then-Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has overseen a crackdown on opposition in which hundreds of Brotherhood supporters were killed and thousands jailed.
The net has widened to include liberal and secular activists at the forefront of the 2011 revolt. Many are behind bars, charged with violating a 2013 law that prevents a repeat of the protests that helped unseat two presidents in three years.
Al-Sisi portrays himself as a bulwark of stability in a region that has slipped into chaos since the 2011 revolts, prioritizing security over civil rights.
NGOs have felt exposed since late 2011, when authorities raided 17 pro-democracy and rights groups, accusing them of joining a foreign conspiracy against Egypt.
In 2013, a court ordered the closure of several foreign pro-democracy groups, including US-based Freedom House, and gave jail sentences to 43 NGO staff, including 15 US citizens who had fled the country.
A case against dozens more Egyptian NGOs and lawyers was never closed, but remained largely dormant until this year.
None of the NGO staff summoned for questioning have been formally charged.
Egyptian law allows prosecutors to freeze assets, ban travel and remand suspects in custody for extended periods without charge.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema