Human Rights Strategic Plan: Real Desire or Outward Signal?

Human rights issues in Egypt - especially during the years of Sisi's rule - express a dialectical dialogue between the regime and the outside, in the almost complete absence of the root of the issue: the Egyptian citizen.

On June 14, the “National Human Rights Strategy 2021-2026” was supposed to be announced, and on the same day - for the bad omen - the Court of Cassation upheld the death sentence against 12 opponents of the regime, including a number of leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, in The case of dispersal of the sit-in Rabaa Al-Adawiya Square.

For this reason or perhaps another, the day passed and the strategy was not announced.

Then the Washington embassy - later - was alone in announcing Saturday, June 19, a new date for the strategy, with the participation of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, via video conference.

But Saturday also passed, and the strategy was not launched.

There was no apology, explanation or justification for the delay.

Then it was said after that, that the presidency had ordered it initially to be postponed until July 26, to be released by the president - who is fond of celebrations - himself, in a ceremony worthy of him in the presence of a number of ambassadors from abroad.

Why the Washington Embassy?

Some may ask: a purely internal issue of Egyptian human rights in his country, why is it announced from the beginning in Washington and not from Cairo?!

The question posed is related to other details and contexts.

The national strategy was announced - for the first time - on October 17, 2020, two years after the establishment of the Permanent Higher Committee for Human Rights, and it was tasked with developing an initial draft of the strategy.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said that it "reflects a firm political will to give impetus to national efforts to promote basic rights and freedoms, characterized by a clear vision and strategic direction in planning."

The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ahmed Hafez - at the time - clarified in repeated “political” phrases and ideas that “efforts to advance human rights are based on the president’s directives to pay attention to economic, social, cultural, civil and political human rights as part of the state’s comprehensive development plan, based on a self-conviction of the importance of human rights.” Human rights as an essential component of the modern civil state.

timing context

In the context of timing, which completely contradicts good intentions and subjective convictions, the Supreme Committee suddenly woke up two weeks before the American elections, and set the date for announcing the strategy, at that time the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, was threatening President Sisi that he would not give him blank checks, criticizing the human rights situation in his country .

At that time, the Sisi regime began its movement in 3 tracks, the path of preparing and declaring a human rights strategy, hoping that it would spend time in philosophical explanation and boring theorizing.

In conjunction with a fierce crackdown, it reflects the desire to take full advantage of the remaining weeks of Trump's rule in deepening even more authoritarianism, closing the ports.

According to the Committee for Justice, the authorities have stepped up their crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society organizations.

Last November 19, Jasser Abdel Razek, Executive Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) was arrested at his home in Cairo.

A day earlier, the director of the initiative's criminal justice unit, Karim Enara, had been arrested, and the organization's managing director, Mohamed Bashir, had been taken away on 15 November.

As for the third track, it was to whitewash Sisi's record in the field of human rights by contracting with a number of companies specialized in public relations and pressure groups.

The foreign lobby revealed that the Egyptian ambassador to the United States, Moataz Zahran, contracted with Lobby to improve Sisi's image in the administration of US President-elect Joe Biden, and signed a contract worth $65,000 per month with Bronstein Hayat-Farber. Shrek” on Monday, November 9, the day after Joe Biden delivered his victory speech.

Does Cairo really care?

We are talking here about whitewashing an image and not about a real change in the Egyptian regime’s view of the human rights situation, as the Biden administration’s preoccupation with taking power and the controversy raised by his predecessor, by rejecting the election results, was exploited to rotate hundreds of detainees - who were released with the shock of Biden’s victory The first - pending new cases.

The black narrative confirms that the United States' young allies - at that point in time - became more determined to independence and to chart their own - policy - path, after the failure of the Arab Spring uprising, which was nipped in the cradle, after they almost tasted the bitterness of defeat at its hands and the danger of recluse.

Signals out

We return to the strategy: the announcement of its scheduled date was from Washington... they are the only recipient and the target audience.

As for the person responsible for its status, it is the Permanent Higher Committee for Human Rights: which was established in 2018, headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sameh Shoukry, or whomever he delegates, with the membership of a representative of the following ministries and entities:

Defense, Social Solidarity, Justice, Parliament Affairs, the Interior, General Intelligence, the Administrative Control Authority, the National Council for Women, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, the National Council for Disability Affairs, the State Information Service, and the Public Prosecution.

And for the truth: since then no one has heard of it.

But where is the representative of the National Council for Human Rights in the committee's membership?!

They have already forgotten it, while the names of some of the council members are put into the advisory body "not counting when voting".

While some of the committee's goals emphasized codifying the justification discourse, so that it appears unified.

And the call to activate cooperation with the United Nations and its specialized agencies, to obtain the available forms of technical and financial support!

Which is supposed to be provided to associations and independent NGOs, and in capacity building and training!

As for the vision of the committee's advisory body - consisting of 25 members - it did not differ much from the formulations of its objectives.

A member of the National Council for Human Rights and a member of the advisory body, Professor Nevin Mossad, told the Daily News Egypt that the strategy aims to reflect the real conditions of human rights in Egypt!

And highlight the efforts made on these issues!

As for Ambassador Alaa Rushdi, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and Acting Head of the Technical Secretariat of the Permanent Higher Committee for Human Rights, he revealed the preparation of reports for all the achievements the country has witnessed in the field of human rights!

and sent to embassies abroad.

The Committee's Secretary-General and Assistant Foreign Minister for Human Rights at the time, Ambassador Ahmed Ihab Gamal El-Din, considered it "a road map and an Egyptian self-vision for what we want for Egypt in the near future."

Memorial Massacre Memorial

If all talk about embassies and abroad!

On the other hand, the real situation of human rights in Egypt remained horrific, with all the tragedies that the word implies, and it does not need a detailed explanation.

The Committee for Justice team succeeded in monitoring 1,917 cases of enforced disappearance, in 2020, 155 of which were documented, and the month of September - 17 days before the strategy was announced - topped the list of violations by approximately 23% (451/1917).

In fact, the month of October itself - for the bad omen as well - topped the list of observed violations by about 19% (2522/13261).

Hundreds of thousands of citizens were also referred to exceptional trials, coinciding with the implementation of the President's directives to remove homes and buildings that violate the law, "which led to the removal of more than 36,000 buildings from the end of March to the beginning of July" in the Republic of Fear.

It is strange that July 26 was set as a third date for announcing the strategy in a ceremony attended by Sisi, that is, organized specifically for Sisi, that is, it combines elements of propaganda and dazzling, but for bad omen - for the third time - this date coincides with the mandate requested by Sisi in 2013, to combat what He called it terrorism and potential violence, and while loyalists came out and raised the slogan "Severe, Sisi." On July 27, the army and police committed the memorial massacre, which left 95 people dead, according to the Forensic Medicine Authority, and 200 dead and 5,000 injured, according to the hospital Field in Rabaa.

A consumerist talk, according to some, about human rights, in the light of a republic of fear in which the military eagle landed on people's heads, after eating their livelihood and destroying their dignity.

And allegations based on scenes of demolition of buildings, displacement, removals, solitary confinement, enforced disappearances, deprivation, death and painful torment.