Egypt rights activists in COP27 spotlight worry about day after

Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt (AFP):

The UN climate summit in Egypt has afforded local rights defenders rare visibility, but some fear a backlash after global attention shifts away from President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime.

With little promise of speedy united action to tackle the climate crisis, many headlines out of COP27 have focussed on the plight of Egyptian activists, most prominently jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah.

“We needed this,” Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said at a press conference that he noted would have been “impossible” in Cairo.

As dozens of world leaders converged on the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh this week, some made mention of rights in Egypt and several directly called for the release of hunger striker Abdel Fattah.

But, more generally, Bahgat said, the international community has in recent years “forgotten” the country while repression increased following the 2011 Arab Spring revolution.

The Arab world’s most populous country now holds 60,000 political prisoners behind bars, rights groups say, a charge the government denies.

“This is something that is on every Egyptian activist’s mind, and has been since the buildup towards COP,” Bahgat said. “Of course we know there is a risk of reprisal. That was the decision we had to make.”

For him, “it was a calculated risk” that required “contingency plans” should anything go wrong “before, during or after COP”.