Alaa Abdel Fattah: The activist jailed in Egypt who is counting his final days
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Hashim Sheikh
- . November 7, 2022
- . Update: November 11, 2022 1:02 am
The life of Egyptian British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah who has been on hunger strike since 2 April, is at imminent risk. Currently jailed in Egypt for spreading false news, he escalated his hunger strike on 1 November by stopping the just 100 daily calorie intake he was previously consuming. Then on November 6, he announced his decision to stop drinking water, coinciding with the beginning of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh.
Alaa Abdel Fattah has spent last nine years of his life while being deprived of his rights and liberty unlawfully. He was arrested in September 2019, then on 20 December 2021, he and human rights lawyer Mohamed Baker were convicted on false charges and were sentenced to five and four years in prison, respectively.
Such is the story of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the activist who might be counting his last days in Egyptian prison. And COP27 in Egypt has brought back world’s focus on the activist who was a part of the 2011 Arab Spring.
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The head of Amnesty International, the global human rights body, on Sunday warned that the critical climate summit COP27 in Egypt “could be stained by the death of the country’s leading rights activist from a hunger and water strike in prison if Egyptian authorities do not release him within days”.
Secretary General of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard said Egypt has maximum 72 hours to save the life dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah. “If they do not want to end up with a death they should have and could have prevented, they must act now,” Callamard said in a press briefing in the capital of Cairo.
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has written to Abdel Fattah’s family and said he would raise the issue with the Egyptian government while he is there for COP27. Rishi Sunak said that Abdel Fattah’s case is “a priority for the British government both as a human rights defender and as a British national”.
