Activist Amal Fathy has been ordered detained. (Photo: Facebook)
Egyptian activist Amal Fathy, who was arrested on 11 May after posting a video criticising sexual harassment in Egypt – of which she herself is a victim – to Facebook, will next appear in court on 15 July 2018 after her pre-trial detention of 15 days was extended for the fifth time.
Fathy, who is detained at Al Qanater prison north of Cairo, stands accused of “belonging to a banned group”, “using a website to promote ideas calling for terrorist acts” and “intentionally disseminating false news that could harm public security and interest”.
When Fathy arrived at the Prosecution Office on 4 July, she showed symptoms of acute stress and was unable to walk on her own having lost sensation in her left leg. She was unable to walk normally unassisted. Fathy has a history of chronic depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety, conditions that have only worsened during her detention.
Fathy, along with her husband, Mohamed Lotfy, director of the Index award-winning NGO Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, and their son, were taken into custody during an early morning raid on their home soon after she posted the 12-minute video on 9 May about her experience with sexual harassment and the difficulties of being a woman in Egypt. As an activist, Fathy has also been vocal about human rights violations in Egypt, especially the arbitrary detention of other activists. Lotfy and their son – who Fathy was the primary carer of before her arrest – were later released.
“We stand in solidarity with the members of ECRF, call for the immediate release of Amal and demand that all charges against her be dropped,” Perla Hinojosa, fellowships and advocacy officer at Index on Censorship, said. “Index invites our readers to join two existing campaigns for her release, one by Amnesty International addressing the Egyptian president and minister of foreign affairs, and the other by Amal’s husband Mohamed calling for action from the European Parliament.” [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1531134800432-bdb56a3c-c68b-6″ taxonomies=”147″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100868″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Monday 18 June 2018 — Human rights groups expressed growing concern about Egyptian campaigner Amal Fathy and urged authorities to release her immediately.
Ms Fathy was seized by police on 11 May after posting a video about sexual harassment. Ms Fathy and her husband Mohamed Lotfy, co-founder of award-winning human rights group the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, had their Cairo home raided by armed police in the early hours of the morning, and she, Mr Lotfy and their two year-old son were taken to a police station.
Mr Lotfy and his son were released several hours later but Ms Fathy remains in custody, where her health is deteriorating. Her lawyer has reported that Ms Fathy, a communications student, is suffering panic attacks in detention. Initially detained for 15 days, Ms Fathy’s detention has twice been extended, with no date yet set for a hearing.
The trigger for the arrest was a 12-minute Facebook video in which Ms Fathy complained about having been sexually harassed at a bank and the difficulties of being a woman in Egypt. Ms Fathy has since been charged with membership of a terrorist organisation.
Mr Lotfy is one of the leaders of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, which coordinates campaigns for those who have been tortured or disappeared. Between August 2016 and August 2017, the ECRF documented 378 cases of enforced disappearance, many of them concerning students. In April 2018, ECRF was awarded an Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award.
Index on Censorship, together with international lawyers Doughty Street Chambers and ECRF, last month submitted a complaint on the treatment of Mr Lotfy and his son, and the continued detention of Ms Fathy, to the UN rapporteurs on freedom of expression and human rights defenders.
“We are seriously worried about Ms Fathy and the lack of due process in her case. This continued detention is already having a terrible impact on her own health not to mention that of her young son, for whom Ms Fathy is the primary carer,” said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
Egypt has seen an escalation in violence against women and prominent women human rights defenders and activists are routinely harassed and silenced by the authorities. A 2017 poll named Cairo as the most dangerous major city for women.
The organisations ask Egypt to release Ms Fathy immediately.
For more information, please contact Sean Gallagher at Index on Censorship: [email protected].
Signatories:
Article 19
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article is part of Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist’s Project Exile series, which has published interviews with exiled journalists from around the world.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Egyptian journalist Abdullah Elshamy
“I face probably a life sentence or maybe even worse. The idea of not being able to go back to your own country…is just heartbreaking.”
For a time, journalist Abdullah Elshamy was the face of resistance in Egypt.
After then-army chief Gen. Abdel Fatah el-Sissi led a coup, in July 2013, toppling the democratically-elected president Mohammed Morsi, major street protests against the military took place in Cairo.
Elshamy, who is originally from Beheira in the Nile Delta, was a correspondent working for Al Jazeera at the time. He had only recently returned to Egypt from an assignment in Nigeria to cover the unrest.
On Aug. 14 of that year, Elshamy was covering a sit-in near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque when security forces began to open fire. More than 800 people were left dead at Rabaa and one other protest site in Cairo in what Human Rights Watch has called the “world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history.”
Elshamy managed to avoid the bullets, but he and hundreds of others were arrested as crowds fled the area around the mosque. Elshamy was taken to prison and held without trial for months.
Losing hope, in January 2014 Elshamy decided to begin a hunger strike. Over the next several months, he would lose about 88 pounds (40 kg). His case garnered international headlines, especially after he managed to record a dire video from inside jail on the 106th day of his hunger strike and have it smuggled out. “If anything happens to my safety, I hold the Egyptian regime with the responsibility of that,” he said on the video.
Update: In September 2018 am Egyptian court sentenced Abdullah Elshamy in absentia to 15 years in prison.
Efforts by prison authorities to force-feed him and punish him by placing him in solitary confinement failed. In June 2014 Egyptian prosecutors decided to release him because of his declining health. Elshamy was met outside the prison by a throng of family members, supporters and the press.
“I have won,” he told the cameras. “And everybody who is a freedom fighter, either a journalist or anyone doing his work credibly and with honesty has won. This experience has changed my life.”
Elshamy soon moved to Qatar and resumed work for the Qatari-owned al-Jazeera, which Egyptian prosecutors brought charges against him in absentia, as well as against hundreds of others imprisoned after the 2013 demonstrations. A verdict in the trial is expected in the coming months.
Meanwhile, press freedom in Egypt has not improved under el-Sissi, who has been president since 2014. More than 35 journalists and bloggers are in prison in the country, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Now 29, Elshamy lives in Doha and hosts the monthly investigative show “Eyewitness” for Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel. Nearly four years after his release, Elshamy spoke with Global Journalist’s Taylor Campbell about his ordeal and the consequences of exile. Below, an edited version of their interview:
Global Journalist: What happened in the lead-up to your arrest?
Elshamy: Back in 2013 I was working as a reporter for al-Jazeera when the events started taking place in Egypt, the tensions between the president [Morsi] and the army. Just a few days before the military coup took place in Egypt on the 3rd of July 2013, I was asked by management to go from Nigeria where I was stationed, to Cairo, to be able to cover events.
I never had in my wildest dreams [thought] things would end up like that. I mean, I covered more serious and dangerous things. Before this I was in Libya during the [civil] war back in 2011 and I was also in Mali when the [2013] French intervention happened in the north of the country. So it was for me, probably just another round of demonstrations and things would cool down eventually and the politics would work out.
So I went there and I covered the events from both sides. Things went on for several weeks [after the coup] until the army and the police moved in on the demonstrations on the eastern side of Cairo.
On the 14th of August 2013, the army and the police were detaining everyone coming out of [the Rabaa al-Adawiya] area. I was among those arrested.
And from that point, from the 14th of August 2013 until the 18th of June 2014, I was put in detention without trial.
GJ: How did being a journalist affect your time in prison?
Elshamy: At the beginning, they didn’t know I was a journalist because I tried not to mention that. I feared there might be a severe response if they found out.
When the authorities [learned] I was a journalist it didn’t actually change much. It made them put more restrictions on my time in prison. They monitored the letters I got and the visits from my family. But at they put me among the demonstrators that were arrested on that day. They insisted I was a criminal, not a journalist.
There were I would say, focused attacks on me because when they found out I was a journalist at al-Jazeera, relations between Egypt and Qatar were not the best. I was harassed by the guards because they thought of me as a spy.
Nothing made sense at that point…I was not the only journalist in prison. One of my colleagues [Mahmoud Abu Zeid, better known as Shawkan], is a freelance photojournalist who was detained on the same day with me, and up until this day he is in prison.
Shawkan is a freelance photojournalist detained in Egypt since 14 August 2013, he was my cell mate and he doesn’t deserve death as the prosecution demanded. #MyPicForShawkanpic.twitter.com/PK9SvSpeRJ
GJ: Tell us about the hunger strike and how it led to your release.
Elshamy: The last week of January 2014 I decided I was going on a hunger strike, because I was in prison at that point for five months and nothing was happening in terms of my release. My lawyers gave several documents to prove I was [at the protest] doing my work. They’d requested I be released on bail.
When I decided that I was going on hunger strike, the prison authorities at the beginning…they made fun of the whole thing. But then when it was March and I was losing weight and my health was not the best, the Ministry of Interior thought that they would start to intimidate me into giving up on the whole thing.
It eventually came to the point where the prison’s manager, an assistant of the minister himself, came to see me and said: “This is not good. What are you doing? You are young, your health isn’t going to take it.”
Eventually, when they found out that I wasn’t giving up on the hunger strike, I was sent to a maximum security prison for the next five weeks before my release.
That was the hardest part of the whole prison experience because I only saw my family once in those five weeks. I was kept in a solitary confinement cell. I wasn’t allowed to see anyone. Even when I was given time to walk out of my cell, it was at the end of the day while all the other inmates in the ward were not present. It was psychological pressure. They thought maybe this would break me down.
GJ: How is life for you now?
Elshamy: Although I was released four years ago, I’m still being tried in absentia. I cannot go back to Egypt. I risk being arrested and it’s kind of a dead end for me at this point. As the trial approaches its end, I face probably a life sentence or maybe even worse. The idea of not being able to go back to your own country is just heartbreaking.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/tOxGaGKy6fo”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship partner Global Journalist is a website that features global press freedom and international news stories as well as a weekly radio program that airs on KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate, and partner stations in six other states. The website and radio show are produced jointly by professional staff and student journalists at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the oldest school of journalism in the United States. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook). We’ll send you our weekly newsletter, our monthly events update and periodic updates about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share, sell or transfer your personal information to anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”6″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”2″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1542640554551-b7c870c1-3f87-6″ taxonomies=”22142″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100566″ img_size=”full”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”74586″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”88957″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”100560″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]International human rights lawyers Doughty Street Chambers have lodged a complaint to the United Nations on behalf of Egyptian campaigner Amal Fathy, her husband and their son after the family was seized by police.
Ms Fathy and her husband Mohamed Lotfy, co-founder of award-winning human rights group the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, were arrested by police in the early hours of May 11. Their Cairo apartment was raided by armed police, searched and Ms Fathy, Mr Lotfy and their two year-old son Zidane taken to a police station.
Mr Lotfy and Zidane were released several hours later but Ms Fathy remains in custody. The trigger for the arrests was said at the time to be a short 12-minute Facebook video posted by Ms Fathy in which she complained about having been sexually harassed at a bank and the difficulties of being a woman in Egypt. Ms Fathy has since been charged with membership of a terrorist organisation.
“Unfortunately, the case of Mr Lotfy, his son, and Ms Fathy, are not isolated, nor in many ways surprising,” said Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC, one of the lawyers acting for the family. “Over the past several years, many Egyptian human rights defenders, bloggers and journalists have been subjected to state harassment, disproportionate police and judicial treatment, and arbitrary curtailment of their most fundamental rights.”
Ms Fathy is a communications student and former activist and actress who is active on social media, especially Facebook, where she advocates and expresses her views on ongoing issues in Egypt especially on women’s rights.
Mr Lotfy leads the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, which coordinates campaigns for those who have been tortured or disappeared. Between August 2016 and August 2017, the ECRF documented 378 cases of enforced disappearance, many of them concerning students.
Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC and Jonathan Price of Doughty Street Chambers have submitted their complaint on the treatment of Mr Lotfy and his son, and the continued detention of Ms Fathy, to the UN rapporteurs on freedom of expression and human rights defenders. The complaint has been lodged jointly with ECRF and freedom of expression organisation Index on Censorship, which in April awarded ECRF one of its Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowships.
“We have grave concerns given the inevitable lack of due process for Ms Fathy. We also have serious concerns for her wellbeing given the likelihood of prolonged detention, away from her young son, and for the wellbeing of Zidane himself, removed from his primary carer,” said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
Egypt has seen an escalation in violence against women and prominent women human rights defenders and activists are routinely harassed and silenced by the authorities. A 2017 poll named Cairo as the most dangerous major city for women.
The organisations have asked the rapporteurs to:
gather, request, receive and exchange information and communications from the Egyptian Government in relation to this case;
publicly make concrete recommendations to the Egyptian authorities on their duty to adhere to their international obligations; and
issue an opinion finding that Egypt has failed to adhere to its own obligations, and violated the rights of the complainants, under international law.
For more information, please contact Joy Hyvarinen at Index on Censorship: [email protected]. [/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”97988″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2018/04/campaigning-fellow-2018/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
ECRF is one of the few human rights organisations still operating in a country which has waged an orchestrated campaign against independent civil society groups. Find out more about the 2018 Freedom of Expression Awards Campaigning Fellow.
