Egypt: public resentment increases and authorities respond with surge in executions

Emad Mekay, IBA Middle East Correspondent, CairoTuesday 26 January 2021

The Cairo-based EIPR put the number of those killed at 53. They appealed to the authorities to stop further deaths and warned that such a sharp increase doesn't serve justice or rule of law in the 100-million people country.

‘Handing down and implementing wholesale death sentences, at this progressive pace, does not achieve justice and is not deterrent to crime,’ said the EIPR, one of only a handful of rights groups still allowed to operate in the country, since the military re-took power in 2013. A few days later, the group's administrative manager Mohammed Basheer was arrested from his home at dawn. He was later accused of joining a terrorist organisation and spreading rumours about the country.

Government sympathisers say that those executed in October were, contrary to what rights groups claim, ‘terrorists’ and that their death came as a bid to stabilise the country by preventing radical Islam from taking over Egypt, the region's most populous country, or threatening the West later on. The government insists it is in a battle on behalf of the rest of the world against radical groups.

Cairo further denies accusations by rights advocates that its legal system has been ‘politicised’ and insist the death sentences were undertaken following due process.

The country's military first took over in 1952 after toppling King Farouk and stayed in power until 2011, when they were pushed aside in the initial wave of street protests during the Arab Spring. The country elected its first ever democratically-chosen president, Mohamed Morsi, who stayed in power for only one year before then military chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi ousted and arrested him, citing worries about the stability of the country.

But the October executions came amid a spike in anti-Sisi protests over his deeply unpopular decision to order home demolitions of houses built without enough official permits. The protests coincided with other protests in September, that came after calls for demonstrations against decades-long corruption by the ruling military, from exiled military contractor Mohamed Ali. Although the protests that materialised were limited, the government responded by launching a sweeping campaign of mass arrests, utilising social media images to go after protesters and detaining them from their homes, often at dawn.

Neil Hicks, Senior Director for Advocacy at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), said the increase in executions is designed to send a message to the Egyptian public not to revolt against the regime. ‘The surge in the number of executions in recent weeks is shocking, but it is consistent with the Sisi government's use of intimidatory state violence since coming to power in July 2013,’ says Hicks. ‘Since then, mass killing of protesters, as in Raba'a Square in August 2013, extra judicial killings, disappearances, detention without trial or after grossly unfair trials and widespread use of torture have become commonplace. Egyptians have been subjected to severe violations of human rights by their government at an unprecedented level, the executions are part of the same policy or rule by fear.’

International rights groups say that under Sisi, Egypt became one of the ten worst countries for executions and death sentences, as the former military general sought to root out opposition to military rule and thwart potential public street protests. Many of those recently executed were arrested for demonstrating against the government or political activism. ‘Egypt’s mass executions of scores of people in a matter of days is outrageous,’ said Joe Stork, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch (HRW). ‘The systematic absence of fair trials in Egypt, especially in political cases, makes every death sentence a violation of the right to life.’

Of those executed in October, HRW found that at least 15 men were accused of ‘political violence’ which often refers to having political opposition or attending street protests against the ruling military.

HRW described the proceedings as ‘grossly unfair trials’, because the bulk of death sentences were issued by the so-called ‘exceptional’ military or terrorism courts.

‘Those arrested for alleged political violence frequently face a host of abuses including enforced disappearances, torture to extract confessions, and no access to lawyers,’ HRW said in a statement after the October mass executions.

The Sisi government routinely does not announce executions beforehand, or even inform prisoners’ families until after they have already been put to death.

Local reporting has been shy with minimal information coming out on the issue. Families and activists have called out the executions, though, in statements and dramatic social media posts that prompted international reaction.

Anne Ramberg, Co-Chair of the IBA's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), told Global Insight that she is increasingly alarmed by Egypt's rights situation.

‘During 2020 the tendency was deeply concerning, especially in light of the over 2,500 prisoners who are waiting for their death penalty to be carried out,’ she says. ‘A large number of prisoners have been sentenced to death. There is a sharp rise in the number of death sentences’.

Ramberg warns that ‘human rights are not protected in Egypt’ and that ‘there is no rule of law and access to justice.’

‘Terror, extrajudicial executions, people being detained, including minors, are means to increase fear and deter the population from protesting. There have been strong reactions though, lately. The United Nations has expressed severe concern with regard to the situation in the country,’ Ramberg says.

And despite the close relationship between former United States President Donald Trump, who once described Sisi as ‘my favourite dictator,’ there are indications of increasing impatience in countries that backed Sisi.

The same month of the executions, 55 US legislators wrote a letter calling on Egypt to end its rights violations. ‘As the second largest recipient of US foreign military financing, US lawmakers have a special responsibility to press the Sisi government to free political prisoners and end its systematic human rights violations,’ they said in a statement.

Concern was also rising in Europe. Dozens of members of the European Parliament and 138 members of national parliaments across Europe wrote to the Egyptian government complaining of the deteriorating rights situation.

In March 2020, the IBAHRI criticised Cairo after veteran Egyptian rights activist Bahey eldin Hassan, General Director of the CIHRS, was sentenced in absentia to three years’ imprisonment and a financial fine. ‘The IBAHRI is becoming increasingly concerned at the apparent use of secret applications to court where not even the defendant is heard, nor are they vouched-safe of the secret order made by the court against them,’ it said in a statement.

Egyptian officials and the state-run media insist that the outside world doesn't understand the threat of terrorism or the possibility of instability that may befall the country without such harsh measures.

Hicks says that Cairo plays, unopposed, on Western fears much to its advantage. ‘The Egyptian government has been skillful in framing its conduct as somehow necessary in the fight against terrorism and has also played on European fears of migration,’ he said.

Ramberg says that the Egyptian government's use of the term ‘terrorism’ to justify total disregard of rule of law was in fact invitation for further chaos. ‘We have learned from history that terrorists do not hesitate to commit serious crimes even with the risk of receiving a death sentence,’ she says. ‘Secondly the terror that the current president in Egypt is performing will most probably lead to strong reactions, violence and even terrorism.’

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