The Egyptian Human Rights Forum (EHRF), in partnership with the Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR), has submitted a detailed report to the UN Human Rights Council for Egypt’s 4th Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The submission exposes Egypt’s systematic use of transnational repression to silence human rights defenders (HRDs) and dissidents abroad, undermining efforts to address the regime’s human rights violations.
The report highlights the Egyptian authorities’ orchestrated strategies, including:
– Legal and Judicial Escalation: Fabricated charges, inclusion on terrorism lists, and opaque trials before exceptional courts targeting HRDs and dissidents.
– Denial of Identification Documents:Arbitrary bureaucratic obstacles imposed by Egyptian consulates that leave HRDs and their families stateless and vulnerable to exploitation.
– Surveillance Abroad: Systematic monitoring of HRDs’ activities internationally, with instances of deportations and heightened risks for activists.
– Reprisals Against Families: Harassment, detention, professional sanctions, and threats targeting the relatives of HRDs to suppress dissent.
– Defamation Campaigns: State-controlled media’s stigmatisation of HRDs, particularly LGBTQ activists, portraying them as threats to national security and morality.
Despite receiving 31 recommendations during Egypt’s 3rd UPR in 2019 to cease restrictions on HRDs, protect civil society, and end retaliatory practices, Egypt’s government continues to escalate its transnational repression efforts.
The submission calls on the Egyptian government to:
- Terminate any pending cases or charges against human rights defenders and organizations, and formally commit to refraining from any security or judicial harassment.
- Work towards annulling politically motivated in absentia convictions against HRDs in exile, and allow charged HRDs, both within and outside Egypt, to legally access their case files and any ongoing investigations if they exist.
- Remove HRDs from terrorism lists and immediately cease any legal consequences arising from their inclusion on these lists. And stop the repeated summoning of HRDs to National Security offices, where they are interrogated about their activities both within and outside of Egypt, with the intent of intimidation and information gathering.
- Immediately cease the arbitrary withholding of official documents and identification papers, and ensure the provision of essential consular services to HRDs, all Egyptians abroad, their children, and families.
- Uphold the right of return for exiled HRDs and political activists without subjecting them to security harassment or legal prosecution, and without conditioning their return on concessions or restrictions on their work. such an agreement might include the official bodies responsible for human rights in Egypt, as well as international bodies trusted by and acceptable to Egypt.
- Comply with the principle of the individuality of punishment; if any crime is proven against a defender in Egypt, no harm should come to his family, relatives, friends, and neighbors and they should not be threatened or used to pressure the defender to cease his work.
- affirm Egyptian authorities’ commitment to international frameworks to which it is a party which regulate mobility rights, the return to one’s homeland, and freedom of movement to and from one’s home country.
- Cease the ongoing campaigns of slander against human rights defenders and other well-known international organizations such as UN agencies that defend their rights for simply discussing violations targeting these dissidents.
This report underscores the urgent need for accountability and the reinforcement of international protections for human rights defenders. It is a pivotal appeal to hold Egypt responsible for its continued violations and to safeguard the fundamental rights of HRDs and their families worldwide.