- Egypt: Free By Day, Prisoner By Night: The Sinister Tactic To Silence Opponents Released From Prison
For the past two years, he has lived in a cell in the Tora prison in Cairo, waiting for a trial that never came. The preventive detention of Shady Habash, a 24-year-old filmmaker and photographer, expired this Saturday at the same time as his life. His only crime was directing the video clip of a song mocking the Egyptian President, former army chief Abdelfatah al Sisi. The umpteenth death in custody in the crowded and infected Egyptian prisons once again reveals the serious human rights violations committed by the military regime.
"After 800 days in prison, the photographer and music video director Shady Habash has died in Tora prison for unspecified health reasons," confirmed from his European exile Ramy Essam, the singer of the song that brought him to the jail. Two years ago, on the eve of the presidential election turned electoral farce, Essam launched "Balaha" (Date, in Arabic), the nickname with which his opponents call Egyptian President Abdelfatah al Sisi, cleverly extracted from the character of a movie local characterized as a compulsive liar.
Habash was then in charge of recording the video clip scenes, which became a viral phenomenon in a country under strict censorship. The young man was arrested in March 2018 and charged with "membership of a terrorist group," "spreading false news," "abuse of social media," "profanity" and "insult to the military." Charges commonly used to persecute local dissent, from politicians to intellectuals and journalists.
The artist died this Friday without having known a verdict and after exceeding the maximum period of preventive detention. " Shady fell very ill in the cell . His colleagues asked for help for some time but the guards and agents did not intervene until his last breath," said Abdelrahman Ayash, the lawyer who represented him in the unfinished judicial process. "He was arrested solely for directing a music video against Al Sisi in February 2018," he confirmed.
According to Essam, Habash "had nothing to do with the content of the song" and limited himself to producing the video clip, as he had done with dozens of other projects in the Middle East. The author of the topic, Galal al Behairy, was sentenced in August 2018 by a military court to three years in prison. "Balaha" shoots Al Sisi, the military man who orchestrated the July 2013 coup d'état, and has since sent tens of thousands of opponents to jail, relentlessly expanding his power.
"May the Lord send you and your boys to the darkest prison. (...) I wish you could rot there," dedicates the melody to the field marshal. "Four years have passed without a trace. (...) You lived in gardens while we did it in prisons. (...) They stole our land and promised you a grape. They took our Nile and gave you a tap", he outlines the lyrics with unlimited doses of censorship to a controversial mandate, marked by repression , economic hardship and allegations of corruption.
Solidarity between opponents
His sudden death behind bars has unleashed a wave of solidarity among the battered community of Egyptian opponents. "He was from the club of the bravest and kindest. He never hurt anyone. May God have mercy on him," Essam has dedicated to him from Sweden, where he lives after escaping from Egypt. Since then, the young man - a face of the soundtrack that sounded in the Cairot square of Tahrir in 2011 and that came to suffer torture by the army - has put to the outrage of a generation frustrated by the failed transition to democracy.
His death is a new knock on the situation in the prisons of the most populated country in the Arab world. A recurring theme among human rights organizations. "In some cases, conditions are close to those of the Middle Ages when abuse, torture, food deprivation and sanitation were typical characteristics of prison life," denounced a report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. . Since the assault, 650 people have died in custody.
In January Mustafa Kasem, an Egyptian-American citizen, died behind bars after a long hunger strike. He was arrested in August 2013, after the brutal eviction of the Islamist encampments in which more than a thousand people perished, and he had no political affiliation. In September 2018, he was sentenced to 15 years on charges that he always denied.
After his death, the Egyptian regime organized press trips to the country's main prisons to try to mitigate criticism. The visits, prepared with care by the authorities, ended up leaving scenes that raised the sarcasm of local social networks. Amnesty International has called for the immediate release of thousands of political prisoners , concerned about their health in the midst of the advance of Covid-19. Al Sisi pardoned 4,000 prisoners last month but the dissidents did not include dissidents. Enforced disappearances have not ceased. Among the latest victims are two women , Marwa Arafa and Julud Sayed, head of the Alexandria Library translation department.
Al Sisi has applied zero tolerance with criticism of his controversial mandate and his often absurd public statements, meat of the jokes so of the Egyptian taste. In 2015, a 25-year-old lawyer was sentenced to three years in prison for broadcasting on Facebook a harmless photo montage in which the president appears wearing the borrowed ears of Mickey Mouse. A year later, comedian Shadi Abu Zaid was arrested for handing out condom balloons to policemen in Tahrir on the anniversary of the protests against Hosni Mubarak.
Abu Zaid has since remained behind bars. More than 60,000 people have been imprisoned since the attack in a climate of absolute terror that has stifled all public liberties. In a detailed report published this Sunday, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, Amnesty International denounces the unprecedented attacks on journalists in Egypt. The document details government censorship; the persecution of the most uncomfortable reporters; interference in newsrooms; the purchase of private means by the security apparatus; and blocking hundreds of web pages.
Last October Habash, in his last letter from prison, bitterly narrated the agony he was attending. "For the past two years, I have tried in my own way to resist everything that happened to me, to be able to get out of prison being the same person you had met but I cannot continue," he wrote. "Resistance behind bars means resisting yourself, protecting yourself and your humanity from the impact of what you see and live on a daily basis. It means avoiding losing your mind or slowly dying from being thrown into a room two years ago and being forgotten without knowing when or how you can get out. "
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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