The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.

com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

THE HUNGER STRIKER VS. THE

DICTATOR
The hunger strike of Egypt’s Alaa Abd El Fattah
overshadows Sisi’s attempt to whitewash his regime’s
human rights record at COP27.
Naomi Klein, Mohammed Rafi Arefin
November 14 2022, 8:22 a.m.

Mona Seif, sister of the imprisoned British-Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, is
joined by supporters during a vigil outside Downing Street in London on Nov. 6, 2022. Photo: Wiktor
Szymanowicz/Getty Images

Many of the tens of thousands of delegates attending the United

1 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

Nations climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, go to these gath-

erings year after year on a kind of autopilot. They update
their PowerPoint presentations, pack their organizational banners,
and brush up their talking points. Next come the same warnings
from the scientists and activists. The slightly tweaked technical solu-
tions from the entrepreneurs. The same pledges and promises from
the political leaders.

Every year, the expectations for what all of this can accomplish dip
lower and lower, while cynicism about the traffic jam of private jets
headed to the summit reaches new heights.

So far, however, this year’s summit, known as COP27, has been any-
thing but routine. That is less because of its content than its location.
It is taking place under the most repressive regime in the history of
the modern Egyptian state, headed by Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who
seized power in a military coup in 2013 and has held on to it through
sham elections ever since. Sisi’s regime is known for its barbarity un-
der the best of circumstances but, like every dictatorship, Egypt’s
rulers are on particularly high alert because of the Iranian uprising —
fearing that, like the Arab Spring in 2011 which leapt across borders
toppling regimes, this moment of spiraling living costs could prove
equally volatile.

All of this has created a highly unusual and tense context for the sum-
mit, with several extraordinary elements.

For one thing, the most

prominent figure at the
summit is not even there:
The most prominent
Alaa Abd El Fattah, Egypt’s figure at the summit is
highest-profile political not even there.
prisoner, whose first name

2 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

became synonymous with the 2011 pro-democracy revolution in

Cairo’s Tahrir Square that ended the three-decade rule of Egypt’s dic-
tator Hosni Mubarak.

Alaa’s words have been quoted in several speeches from the floor; his
sister Sanaa Seif attended the summit’s first week and was sur-
rounded by a press gaggle everywhere she went; and young delegates
have been seen wearing #FreeAlaa T-shirts. On November 10, many
delegates wore white, the color worn by Egypt’s prison inmates, and
raised banners that said, “No climate justice without human rights.
We have not yet been defeated” — an invocation of Alaa Abd El
Fattah’s book, published earlier this year, “You Have Not Yet Been
Defeated.” This has prompted the regime to respond with highly or-
chestrated, heavy-handed counter-demonstrations of its own.

MOST READ

Josh Hawley Won’t How the Murder of Desperate Families

Let Go of His a CIA Officer Was and Gun-Toting
Manhood Used to Silence the Vigilantes
Jon Schwarz Agency’s Greatest Converge in
Critic Arizona After Title
James Risen, Thomas 42 Ends
Risen Ryan Devereaux

The intense focus on Alaa’s case is taking place because the writer
and technologist, behind bars for most of the past decade, chose to in-
tensify his hunger strike to include a water strike, timed with the
first day of the summit. In doing so, he was attempting to force the
regime to choose between two options: free him and let him emigrate
to the U.K. (he is a dual citizen), or let him die in the middle of the
highest profile international event to take place in Egypt under Sisi’s
rule. (It is worth recalling that the uprising that is still raging in Iran

3 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

was sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.)

Sisi appears to have tried a third option: On November 10, Alaa’s sis-
ter Mona Seif posted on Twitter that “we have just been informed by
the prison officers ‘Medical intervention was taken with @alaa with
the knowledge of judicial entities.’” This was interpreted to mean
some kind of forced feeding, which is (yet another) violation of his
rights, as Human Rights Watch has said. On Monday, November 14,
Alaa’s mother finally received, outside the prison gates, a handwrit-
ten note from Alaa confirming that he is alive, has received medical
attention, and has just started drinking water. The letter was dated
two days earlier.

Join Our Newsletter

Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.
I’m in ⟶

All the while, Egypt’s public prosecutor’s office has sent out a barrage
of contradictory claims, absurdly boasting of Alaa’s good health, and
stating that his family has been permitted to visit him as recently as
November 7. In fact, since he intensified his hunger strike, Egyptian
authorities have steadily refused to allow anyone to see Alaa and as-
sess the state of his health for themselves: not his family, not his
lawyer, not the British consulate. The regime continues to ignore and
deny his status and rights as a British national.

The cloud of deflection and misinformation surrounding Alaa’s status

points to the other way that this climate summit is different from the
dozens that have come before: It is nearly impossible to get reliable
information about the host country, about what is happening in the
jails, in the streets, or with its many polluting extraction projects.

4 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

Related

Holding the COP27 Summit in Egypt’s Police State Creates a

Moral Crisis for the Climate Movement

That’s because Egypt is a police state with an estimated 60,000 politi-

cal prisoners behind bars and a media system tightly controlled by
the regime. Because Egyptian civil society faces such extreme repres-
sion, most of the regime’s critics are not able to get into Sharm el-
Sheikh, and many Egyptians who are there have been vetted by the
regime. The critics who do manage to speak out are in extreme dan-
ger, and rights groups warn of a severe crackdown once the interna-
tional attention recedes.

The Sisi regime is watching closely: The official COP27 mobile app,
downloaded on thousands of phones, is being described by security
experts as a “cyber weapon” with extraordinary surveillance capabili-
ties; Sharm el-Sheikh’s 800 taxis were outfitted with video and audio
surveillance, and people’s phones in major cities have been searched
at random. There have been so many incidents of Egyptian security
spying on delegates inside the summit, including by filming and pho-
tographing their electronic devices, that the German government re-
portedly lodged an official complaint. “We expect all participants in
the U.N. climate conference to be able to work and negotiate under
safe conditions,” Germany’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“This is not just true for the German but for all delegations, as well as
representatives of civil society and the media.”

These tight controls mean that the summit is effectively taking place
inside an informational bubble, one that the Sisi regime, with help
from public relations company Hill+Knowlton, is attempting to paint
green.

5 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

In an attempt to pierce that bubble, we teamed up a group of trusted

journalists, lawyers, activists and scholars on the ground in Egypt to
try to gather information that the regime has been trying to suppress.

Using personal and professional networks, this team has been collect-
ing many testimonies and stories, about everything from Egypt’s new
fossil fuel projects to arrests and surveillance of locals, to the contin-
ued human rights crisis in the regime’s jails. Most sources needed to
be anonymous to avoid arrest, but we have been able to check claims
for accuracy. Here is some of what we have found so far.

Police officers are seen in front of the International Convention Center as the U.N. climate
summit COP27 is being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 12, 2022. Photo: Mohamed Abdel
Hamid/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

National Crackdowns

6 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

Since assuming office, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his regime have
severely limited space for dissent. State repression increases markedly
every year around the anniversary of the 2011 January 25 Revolution,
but we have received reports that ahead of and during COP27, crack-
downs have intensified across the country and in some areas amount
to a full lockdown. From random police searches in major cities to ar-
rests and the closure of schools and transportation, Egypt’s citizens
are experiencing one of the harshest crackdowns in recent memory.

The following testimonial shared with us represents one of the hun-

dreds, if not thousands, of stops that are occurring daily in the coun-
try:

A few days ago I was heading home after sending a msg to a

friend that I’ll be joining a meeting in 15 mins. I hopped on an
Uber scooter, and right after that a policeman in civilian cloth-
ing stopped us, he immediately took my phone and ID card.
There were 4 men of different ages being picked up from the
same spot. When I asked what the problem was, he asked me if
I had ever joined a protest. They then took us into a police pa-
trol vehicle, but wouldn’t tell us where they were taking us.
The car moved around the neighborhood, going to different
checkpoints, and at each checkpoint a new person would join
us. After this tour ended, they drove us to an ad hoc national
security checkpoint in downtown in the entrance of a random
residential building. They kept us there, we were around 14
men of different ages. … Not knowing why we were there or
how long we would stay, we were left without any info about
when we would be going home or whether they would take us
to a police station. I had deactivated my Facebook account for a
while now because of these police stops that happens regularly.
I was worried they could see what I had shared or worse see

7 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

what my FB friends are sharing and go after them. After three

and a half hours they called my name, gave me my phone and
ID card back but told me that I should delete my posts on my
Facebook. After I arrived home safely, I found that they man-
aged to reactivate my Facebook account.

These kinds of accounts are difficult if not impossible to report on be-

cause, after a decade of repression, journalists fear reprisal. An
Egyptian journalist shared with us:

I’ve been hearing imaginary doorbell ringing at the dead of

night, thinking policemen in uniformed clothing are outside
my apartment. I’ve considered leaving Cairo for the week even
because of the reports of random and targeted arrests of people
just like me, all because of the security frenzy brought by
COP27 and an anonymous call for protests at the end of the
week that I’m not even planning to join.

These fears are well-founded. In the past two weeks a number of

Egyptian journalists have been detained, including Manal Agrama,
Mohamed Mostafa Moussa, Amr Shnin, Mahmoud Saad Diab, and
Ahmed Fayez. Fayez was reportedly detained for reporting in Arabic
that Alaa had been subjected to a forced medical intervention.

We have also received reports from activists who fear continued

crackdowns after international attention leaves Egypt:

I’m afraid that after the climate conference they will come for
the rest of us. A few [activists] haven’t left Egypt and aren’t im-
prisoned, it won’t be about how active we are now or if we are
of any importance, it’s simply that we are the only ones left to
detain.

Even activists who have managed to leave are fearful of surveillance

8 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

and repression abroad. An Egyptian living in Berlin shared:

In order for us Egyptians to protest in Berlin, we have to use

tricks to hide our identity, fearing the Egyptian Embassy in
Berlin which follows activists and reports them. We fear being
arrested among arriving back to Egypt. Sometimes it feels like
in order to participate in any political action concerning Egypt
we just say goodbye to going back home. We left Egypt but the
fear continues.

At COP27, international and domestic advocates have repeatedly

raised the point that there can be no climate justice without an open
civic space and respect for basic human rights. Since the beginning of
the summit, we have heard from prisoner’s rights advocacy organiza-
tions about the atrocities of Egypt’s carceral institutions. Two new
prisons, the Badr Prison Complex and Wadi Al-Natroun, have been
touted by the regime as symbols of Egypt’s humane system, but the
few reports that have made it out of these prisons tell the opposite
story.

The #TillTheLastPrisoner campaign documented “at least 47 deaths in

detention since the beginning of the year. These deaths speak to dete-
riorating conditions in places of detention despite calls for reform
and progress.” One of these deaths occurred a few days before the
COP27 opening. According to the campaign, “Alaa AlSalmi (47 years)
died in detention in Badr 3 prison today. AlSalmi was serving a life
sentence in case 610/2014 upon his arrest in 2014.” He was the second
prisoner to die in less than a month inside the new Badr 3 prison fa-
cility. It is reported that he died after an extended hunger strike
protesting the lack of basic rights including family visitation.

9 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

An armored vehicle of the Egyptian army is seen as they blow up buildings as part of an opera-
tion aiming to create a buffer zone at the Rafah border in Egypt, on Nov. 1, 2014. Photo: Abed
Rahim Khatib/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Environmental Coverups
Before international delegates arrived to Sharm el-Sheikh, Human
Rights Watch warned that “the most sensitive environmental issues
are those that point out the government’s failure to protect people’s
rights against damage caused by corporate interests, including issues
relating to water security, industrial pollution, and environmental
harm from real estate, tourism development, and agribusiness.”
These hot-button issues for the state have not been widely discussed
at COP27. However, environmental and human rights researchers
have shared cases with us where Egypt’s military and security forces
have displaced communities and wreaked environmental havoc.

In Sinai, where COP27 is being held, security forces have for the past
decade destroyed the communities and environments. According to
Mohannad Sabry, a journalist, researcher, and author of “Sinai:

10 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

Egypt’s Linchpin, Gaza’s Lifeline, and Israel’s Nightmare”:

Egypt’s decade long war on terror in North Sinai has bulldozed

tens of thousands of green acres, hundreds of thousands of pro-
ductive trees, comprising a local agricultural wealth built over
decades by the local Bedouin community. This destruction of
the agricultural wealth continues to this day across the region
of North Sinai. Egypt’s war on terror has displaced close to
120,000 people from their villages and towns in North Sinai,
the entire historic city of Rafah has been demolished, and as
COP27 takes place in Sharm El-Sheikh, the military authorities
evacuated dozens of families who returned to their destroyed
homes in the villages of North Sinai in an attempt to rebuild
their lives.

Underlining the intersections of militarism and climate justice, they

add, “The impact of Egypt’s last decade of war on terror in North
Sinai on women and children remains a blacked out catastrophe. The
lives, well-being and education of thousands of children, and the
health and safety of thousands of women, is currently in ruin after
mass waves of forced evacuation and displacement without any con-
tainment plans by the state authorities. The environmental impact of
a decade of military operations across the region, and the destruction
of thousands of acres of green spaces, will extend for years if not
decades to come, unless immediate plans of damage assessment and
containment are launched.”

Read Our Complete Coverage

Climate Crimes

11 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

On Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, a researcher reports:

Since El-Sisi came to power he took special interest in the lakes

in Northern Egypt. He considered the lakes a source of revenue
and a resource of various elements and fish farming for export.
Numerous projects were undertaken: deepening and trenching,
enormous fish farming facilities. These projects were executed
without any consideration of environmental servicing of the
lakes. The Egyptian military’s full control over fishing and fish-
eries in North Sinai’s lakes and Mediterranean shores does not
only strip the local communities of pursuing a source of living,
but also hinders all kinds of environmental research, study,
work and preservation efforts. This crisis has been evolving for
over a decade and will continue into the future, with multiply-
ing impacts extending into the future.

These testimonials provide a brief snapshot of the realities being cov-

ered up in a country where research and journalism are heavily crimi-
nalized, and where even posting about these topics can land a person
in prison under the same charges as Alaa: spreading false news.

At the end of its first week,

The clearest messages
to emerge from this
extraordinary summit
is that political rights
and climate progress
are inextricably linked.
als who are free enough to imagine that future and fight for it. Those
and with one more to go,
the clearest messages to
emerge from this extraordi-
nary summit is that politi-
cal rights and climate
progress are inextricably
linked. A future in which
safety from the worst cli-
mate impacts is possible re-
quires groups and individu-

12 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.

The Hunger Striker vs. The Dictator https://theintercept.com/2022/11/14/egypt-cop27-alaa-crackdown/

who are most impacted must be empowered to lead the way. That can
only happen if basic freedoms — to speak, to dissent, to protest, to
strike — are defended, in Egypt and around the world.

Working with the Egypt Unsilenced Collective, we will continue to

share these reports for the duration of COP27. You can follow the lat-
est on Twitter at @NaomiAKlein.

WAIT! B EFORE YOU GO on about your day, ask yourself: How

likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced
by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadn’t done it?

Consider what the world of media would look like without The
Intercept. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values
they proclaim to have? How many covert wars, miscarriages of
justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our
reporters weren’t on the beat?

The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not

easy, cheap, or profitable. The Intercept is an independent
nonprofit news outlet. We don’t have ads, so we depend on our
members to help us hold the powerful to account. Joining is
simple and doesn’t need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining
member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. That’s all it takes to
support the journalism you rely on.

We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?

$5 $8 $10 $15

RELATED

13 of 15 2023-05-15, 6:15 p.m.