Gamal Eid | Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

Posts Tagged ‘Gamal Eid’

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has shut down

January 11, 2022

On 10 Jan 2022 one of Egypt’s last independent human rights organisations has closed down, according to a statement by the group, citing government persecution. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/C6490073-ED93-793A-C5DB-3C931BB470D3

Egypt’s government has engaged in a widespread crackdown on dissent for years that has stifled many of the country’s civil society groups and jailed thousands

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information [ANRI], an Egyptian organisation, was founded in 2003 by a team of lawyers and activists. It documented violations against citizens, journalists and political prisoners in Egypt and the region. It also followed the increasing government intimidation and targeting of human rights workers and others. But laws that made many of ANHRI’s operations illegal have forced the organisation to shut down, Executive Director Gamal Eid said in the statement on Monday. See e.g. https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/12/31/egyptian-human-rights-defender-gamal-eid-assaulted/. As a lawyer, Eid represented some of the most prominent secular detainees. A court ordered his assets frozen and has banned him from travelling since 2016.

He said the group’s workers had been arrested, intimidated and physically assaulted by security forces.

“We continue to be lawyers who have a conscience, and as individual, independent human rights defenders will work side by side with the few remaining independent human rights organisations, independent human rights defenders and the entire movement calling for democracy,” he wrote.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/10/egypt-leading-rights-group-closes-citing-government-persecution

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/egyptian-rights-group-closes-cites-government-persecution/2022/01/10/7348be54-7226-11ec-a26d-1c21c16b1c93_story.html

Posted in Human Rights Defenders | 1 Comment »
Tags: Al-Jazeera, ANRI, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, closure, digest of human rights awards and laureates, Egypt, Gamal Eid, Human Rights Defenders, human rights lawyers, repression

Egyptian human rights defender Gamal Eid assaulted

December 31, 2019

On 30 December 2019 Front Line Defenders and others reported that Egyptian human rights defender Gamal Eid was assaulted outside his home on Sunday, 29 December 2019 by up to a dozen men. They beat him and when neighbors tried to intervene, they were threatened at gunpoint. After, the men dumped paint on Gamal Eid and threatened him to stop his human rights work. The human rights defender recognized one of the men as a “state security officer” who was with the men “giving orders and saying this is that he should be ‘disciplined’.”

Gamal Eid is a renowned lawyer and advocate of freedom of expression in Egypt. He is the founder and director of the Arab Network of Human Rights Information (ANHRI), which was established in 2003 to promote freedom of expression, campaign against censorship in the Middle East and North Africa, and provide legal assistance to journalists and internet activists.

According to the ANHRI website, this is the fourth attack on Gamal Eid this year and comes amidst a wider crackdown on Egyptian civil society and human rights defenders. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/09/18/egypt-court-freezes-assets-of-rights-defenders-and-ngos/]

Following the attack, Gamal Eid released a statement: “I think they do not want to repeat the scandal of torturing Julio Regeni to death, so they resorted to attacking me one time after another, to punish me, silence me and stop me from doing human rights work and my frequent criticism of the gruesome human rights violations, but again, silence and collusion are not our choices.”

https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/gamal-eid-assaulted-outside-his-home

Egypt: Rights activist Gamal Eid brutally attacked by security forces

Posted in Front Line, Human Rights Defenders | 1 Comment »
Tags: Arab Network of Human Rights Information, assault, Egypt, Front Line (NGO), Gamal Eid, Human rights defender, IFEX, intimidation, violence

Controversial U.N.decision to hold conference on torture in Egypt

August 20, 2019

Yousef Saba reported for Reuters on 15 August 2019 that human rights defenders criticized a United Nations decision to hold a conference in Cairo on torture (“Defining and Criminalizing Torture in Legislation in the Arab Region”) with an Egyptian state organization. “It’s illogical for a country where torture is systematic to host a conference on torture,” said Mohamed Zaree of the non-government Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2017/10/10/breaking-news-egyptian-defender-mohammed-zaree-laureate-of-the-martin-ennals-award-2017/] “Egypt must be excluded as a place, or as the Egyptian regime, from hosting any forum or event related to human rights,” Zaree said.

The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will co-host the regional conference with the government’s National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) on 4-5 September. Some 80 participants, both government and non-governmental, from 19 Arab countries are expected to attend. U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville, who in February had said torture was endemic in Egypt, told Reuters: “It is a fairly standard type of event.”…

Gamal Eid, director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, said the idea of Egypt hosting such an event was a joke. “More ironic is that this is through the National Council (for Human Rights), the role of which is to always polish the government’s image and complicity in the human rights situation,” he said. NHCR president Mohamed Fayek will give a welcome address at the conference’s opening ceremony, according to an agenda seen by Reuters….In 2017, Egypt raided and shut down the Nadeem Center, which documented alleged human rights abuses and treated torture victims.

In the meantime on 19 August 2019 the NGO EuroMed Rights announced that it has declined the invitation and in an open letter addressed to UN High Commissioner, Ms Michelle Bachelet, EuroMed Rights expresses its deep reservations about the decision to hold this conference in Egypt, a country where torture is systematically practised by the security forces, and in collaboration with the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights, which acts under the auspices of the government. The letter recalls that detainees and prisoners in Egypt are frequently subjected to abuses which amount to torture, including electric shocks, beatings, suspension by limbs and rape. Read full letter here

https://kfgo.com/news/articles/2019/aug/15/rights-groups-criticize-undecision-to-hold-conference-on-torture-in-egypt/927888/

Posted in EMHRN, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, MEA, OHCHR | 1 Comment »
Tags: anti -torture, Arab region, Egypt, euroMed Rights, Gamal Eid, human rights conference, Mohamed Zaree, National Council for Human Rights (NCHR Egypt), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Reuters, Rupert Colville, UN

Macron’s meeting with human rights defenders in Egypt and follow up

January 31, 2019

Emmanuel Macron lunched with Egyptian human rights defenders in Cairo on 29 January at the end of a three-day visit (for names see below). On Monday, the French president had visibly annoyed his Egyptian counterpart Abdul Fattah al-Sisi at a press conference, by saying that Sisi ought to restore civil rights and liberties for the good of his country. “Stability and lasting peace in Egypt go hand in hand with respecting individual rights and liberties within a state of law,” Macron said. “A dynamic, active, civil society remains the best rampart against extremism.” In response, President Sisi that “Egypt will not rise up with bloggers… Egypt will develop with efforts and patience.”

The French leader was even more forthright with French journalists in Cairo on Sunday night. He had given Sisi a list of political opponents including “journalists, homosexuals, men and women who have convictions” when Sisi visited Paris in October 2017. “Only two of them were freed,” Macron said. “That’s not enough. And things have got worse since.”

On Tuesday, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies issued a statement providing details about the meeting. It said that Mohamed Zaree told Macron that “France must ensure that French weapons and communication technologies are not being used in Egypt against rights activists and peaceful political dissidents.” Zaree also told Macron that he and 30 of his colleagues are banned from travel and ” stressed that it was vital for the international community to refuse to sanction any attempt to amend the Egyptian constitution to eliminate presidential term limits, on any pretext.” [see also: https://www.voanews.com/a/human-rights-honor-goes-to-egyptian-banned-from-travel/4064632.html; https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2017/10/10/breaking-news-egyptian-defender-mohammed-zaree-laureate-of-the-martin-ennals-award-2017/]

That the State does not have to do all the criminalisation of HRDs itself was shown a day after the meeting with the HRDs, when Egyptian lawyer Tarek Mahmoud filed a legal complaint against the heads of four of Egypt’s human rights organizations for “threatening national security”, according to local media reports. The complaint was filed on Wednesday against Mohamed Zaree, the director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), Gamal Eid, the executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Mohamed Lotfy, the executive director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, and Gasser Abdel-Razek, the executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). Tarek Mahmoud said in the complaint that the four men “provided French officials with false information on the political conditions in Egypt”. Mahmoud added that they were “insulting the Egyptian state and undermining the country’s national security, and collaborating with the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group to achieve its goals of bringing down the Egyptian state.”

The Irish human rights group Frontline Defenders has presented a report on Egypt’s Attack on Labour Rights Defenders to French media in the run-up to Macron’s visit (with focus on the ill-treatment of workers at the Alexandria shipyard.).

——

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/macron-pivots-towards-focus-on-human-rights-abuses-in-egypt-1.3775181

https://egyptianstreets.com/2019/01/31/human-rights-advocates-accused-of-spreading-false-news-after-meeting-with-macron/

Posted in CIHRS, Front Line, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, MEA | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Cairo Institute for Human Rights, diplomatic pressure, Egypt, Emmanuel Macron, France, Front Line (NGO), Gamal Eid, Gasser Abdel-Razek, Human Rights Defenders, MEA laureate 2017, Mohamed Lotfy, Mohamed Zaree, Tarek Mahmoud, travel ban

Egypt court freezes assets of rights defenders and NGOs

September 18, 2016

Human rights activist Gamal Eid says the case is politically motivated revenge [Asmaa Waguih/Reuters]

An Egyptian court has approved a freeze on the assets of five prominent human rights activists and three non-governmental organisations in a case related to accepting foreign funds without government authorization. Saturday’s decision paves the way for criminal proceedings against the defendants, who have been accused of “pursuing acts harmful to national interests”. They face life sentences of up to 25 years each if found guilty. The rulings can be appealed.

Gamal Eid, a vocal critic of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, is among those affected by the order of the Cairo Criminal Court. “We know from the start the case is political and the aim is revenge against NGOs that expose the state’s abuses,” said Eid, the head of the Cairo-based Arab Network for Human Rights Information.

The assets of Hossam Bahgat, the founder and former director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, will also be frozen. The court also froze the assets of three organisations and their directors; the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and its director Bahey el-Din Hassan, the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre and its director Mostafa al-Hassan, and the Egyptian Right to Education Centre and its director Abdelhafiz Tayel. Bahgat, Eid, and nine others are also banned from travel in connection to the case that has been going on since 2011.

Amnesty International described the court order as a “shameless ploy to silence human rights activism”. Egyptian rights activists say they are facing the worst assault in their history amid a wider campaign to erase freedoms won in a 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. Independent United Nations experts said in April that Egypt is closing down domestic NGOs and putting travel bans on their staff in order to obstruct scrutiny of human rights issues. See earlier posts: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/egypt/

Source: Egypt court freezes assets of rights defenders and NGOs – News from Al Jazeera

Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 3 Comments »
Tags: Abdelhafiz Tayel, Al-Jazeera, Bahey eldin Hassan, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Egypt, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, foreign funding, freezing assets, Gamal Eid, Hossam Bahgat, Human Rights Defenders, Mostafa al-Hassan

Monday 25 April: what will happen in Egypt?

April 25, 2016

Brian Dooley, Director of Human Rights First’s Human Rights Defenders Program, wrote in the Huffington Post that today, Monday 25 April 2016, could be a watershed day for Egypt‘s military leader. This day is a national holiday Egypt which marks the 1982 withdrawal of Israeli troops from Sinai. President Sisi‘s agreement to hand over the two uninhabited islands of Tiran and Sanafir in the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia may put a spark into the constantly simmering discontent in the human rights movement.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Front Line, HRF, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, UN | 2 Comments »
Tags: Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Bahey eldin Hassan, Ban Ki-moon, Brian Dooley, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, demonstrations, Egypt, FCO, foreign funding, Gamal Eid, Giulio Regeni, Hossam Bahgat, Malek Adly, Nazra for Feminist Studies, Sanaa Seif, Yasser El-Qot

Egypt: doctors protest police brutality but no human rights defenders can come and tell about it

February 15, 2016

While human rights organizations and the media around the world were remembering Egypt‘s Tahrir Square [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/five-years-after-tahrir-square-there-is-stability-in-egypt-but-do-not-ask-at-what-price/] the space for demonstrations in Egypt itself was minimal. But a huge exception was made on 13 February 2016 when some 10.000 people gathered at noon in front of the Doctors Syndicate in Cairo. Heartening to see that the doctors have the courage to take up the case against police brutality. But you are unlikely to hear about this from an Egyptian human rights defender in person as they are systematically banned from traveling. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in AI, FIDH, Front Line, HRW, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, OMCT | Leave a Comment »
Tags: demonstration, Esraa Abdel Fattah, Gamal Eid, Heba Morayef, Human Rights Defenders, Kareem Hamdy, medical profession, Mohamed Lotfy, NGOs, Omar Hazek, police brutality, Tahrir Square, torture, travel ban

Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards