MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the situation of human rights in Egypt
21.11.2022 - (2022/2962(RSP))
pursuant to Rule 132(2) of the Rules of Procedure
Mounir Satouri, Francisco Guerreiro, Rosa D’Amato, Hannah Neumann, Piernicola Pedicini, Jordi Solé, Michael Bloss, Malte Gallée, Bronis Ropė, Ignazio Corrao, Tineke Strik, Yannick Jadot, Alice Bah Kuhnke, Heidi Hautala, Jakop G. Dalunde, Pär Holmgren, Bas Eickhout, Caroline Roose
on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group
See also joint motion for a resolution RC-B9-0505/2022
B9‑0515/2022
European Parliament resolution on the situation of human rights in Egypt
The European Parliament,
– having regard to its previous resolutions on Egypt,
– having regard to its resolution of 20 October 2022 on the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (COP27)[1],
– having regard to the EU-Egypt Association Agreement, to the EU-Egypt partnership priorities 2021-2027 and to the joint statement issued following the 2022 EU-Egypt Association Council,
– having regard to the EU Guidelines on the Death Penalty, on Torture and Ill-treatment, Freedom of Expression, on Human Rights Defenders, on violence against women and girls and on the rights of LGBTI persons,
– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2021/821 setting up a Union regime for the control of exports, brokering, technical assistance, transit and transfer of dual-use items (recast)[2],
– having regard to Council Common Position 2008/944/CFSP of 8 December 2008 defining common rules governing control of exports of military technology and equipment[3],
– having regard to the statement by EU Special Representative for Human Right following his mission to Egypt from 11-13 April 2022,
– having regard to the statement of 8 November 2022 by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk calling for the release of Alaa Abdel Fattah,
– having regard to the statement by UN experts on the restrictions on civil society ahead of the climate summit,
– having regard to the joint declaration of March 2021 by 31 UN Member States at the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council condemning the human rights situation in Egypt,
– having regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention against Torture, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, all of which have been ratified by Egypt,
– having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
– having regard to Rule 132(2) of its Rules of Procedure,
A. whereas in Egypt there has been an escalating crackdown against human rights defenders and their families, activists, civil society, journalists, lawyers and health workers, with continuous and widespread use of repressive practices and politically motivated prosecution by the Egyptian authorities, including arbitrary arrests and detention, judicial harassment, enforced disappearance as well as torture, physical and psychological abuses;
B. whereas in September 2021 Egyptian President al-Sisi launched the ‘National Human Rights Strategy’ and announced a ‘National Dialogue’; whereas one year after the strategy’s publication there have been no substantial changes in the country’s human rights situation and the human rights crisis in the country continues to worsen;
C. whereas the systematic practice of enforced disappearances and of indefinite cycles of pre-trial detention in Egypt, have left tens of thousands languishing in inhuman prison conditions where torture, sexual assault, denial of access to adequate medical care and deaths in detention are prevalent; whereas Egypt is still considered the country in the Arab world with the highest number of political prisoners; whereas following the reactivation of the Presidential Pardon Committee in April 2022 more people have been newly detained or had their detention renewed than prisoners released or pardoned;
D. whereas Alaa Abd El-Fattah, an Egyptian-British citizen, democracy activist, and human rights defender is a political prisoner who has spent the most part of the last nine years behind bars for peaceful activism; whereas on 2 April 2022 Alaa Abd El-Fattah started a hunger strike to protest his detention, its inhuman conditions and the Egyptian authorities’ refusal to grant British consular access to him, moving from partial to complete strike on 1 Nov 2022; whereas his health is very serious and his life is in danger; whereas on 6 November coinciding with the start of the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Alaa Abd El-Fattah stopped drinking water; whereas several heads of government, as well as high-level UN officials, have called for his release;
E. whereas Egypt’s hosting of the COP27 has put a spotlight on the country’s alarming human rights situation; whereas the NGO law of 2019 subjects civil society to state control; whereas the anti-protest law of 2013 restricts the right to assembly; whereas the anti-terror laws of 2015 curtail freedom of expression and information, including the blocking of over 700 news websites such as Mada Masr and al-Manassa;
F. whereas the Egyptian government has excluded independent human rights groups from participating at COP27 through a covert government-controlled registration process that filtered out groups critical of the Egyptian government, a coordinated increase in hotel room rates, undue restrictions to freedom of peaceful assembly outside the COP27 venue and unjustified delays in the issuing of visas to those travelling from abroad; whereas only some independent human rights groups and rights defender Sanaa Seif were able to participate thanks to the assistance of international organisations;
G. whereas security forces subjected activists and civil society workers to harassment, surveillance and intimidation during COP27; whereas according to reports, the official COP27 app extended surveillance of guests to virtual space; whereas Germany has lodged a complaint with the Egyptian government over unwanted monitoring by security officials at the COP27 World Climate Conference;
H. whereas in the context of COP27, the government of Egypt began a new wave of arrests and detentions; whereas according to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) the Egyptian government detained nearly 734 individuals across 18 governorates between 1 October 1 and 14 November 2022; whereas those arrested include journalists, a prominent lawyer, a member of an opposition political party and activists; whereas most of those detained were held for 15 days under terrorism-related charges; whereas 40 of those detained have not been brought before prosecution officials and their whereabouts were unknown;
I. whereas women human rights defenders in Egypt continue to face various forms of state-led harassment, in particular in the form of defamatory campaigns and judicial prosecution; whereas the authorities have prosecuted at least 10 women social media influencers since 2020 on ‘morality charges’ in an apparent attempt to control cyberspace by policing women’s bodies and conduct; whereas activists defending the rights of LGBTQI persons and women face persistent repression, including under the guise of the preservation of ‘public morals’;
J. whereas on 10 December 2020, prosecutors in Italy charged four members of Egypt’s national security agency for the kidnapping and murder of the Italian researcher Giulio Regeni; whereas, despite repeated requests for cooperation by the Italian prosecutors, the Egyptian judicial bodies have substantially obstructed the due process; whereas the lawyers of the ECRF continue to provide their support to the Regeni legal team in Italy and are their legal representatives in Egypt;
K. whereas in 2022, the authorities executed at least 25 people and sentenced at least 321 to death; whereas in 2020 and 2021 Egypt was the world’s third most prolific executioner with at least 83 individuals executed in 2021 alone;
L. whereas according to civil society observers and independent media investigations, the Egyptian authorities have used surveillance technologies to target human rights and labour activists, LGBTI people, political activists and academics; whereas companies from EU Member States have sold a mass surveillance system to the dictatorship of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi;
M. whereas following the mass killings of anti-coup protesters in Cairo’s Rabaa and al-Nahda squares in August 2013, the EU Foreign Affairs Council agreed to suspend export licences for any weapons that may be used for repression; whereas according to Amnesty International, 11 Member States have flouted the suspension; whereas between 2013-2020, five EU Member States - France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands - were among the top eight global arms exporters to Egypt; whereas Egypt has been the most important buyer of French arms exports in 2022; whereas EU-made weapons have been used both in the Sinai conflict and for Egypt’s support to Khalifa Haftar in the Libyan civil war;
N. whereas Egypt has systematically murdered and injured civilians suspected of smuggling acts unrelated to terrorism in the western part of Egypt’s desert, drawing upon intelligence provided by the French military operation Sirli; whereas staff both in the French army and the French Ministry of Defence have raised the diversion of this military cooperation with Egypt without this leading to the operation’s suspension;
O. whereas the EU is Egypt’s first economic partner and its main source of foreign investment; whereas the EU and Egypt adopted Partnership Priorities in June 2022 with the aim of enhancing cooperation in a wide-range of areas, including security, counter-terrorism and judiciary reform; whereas Egypt is a major creditor of the European Investment Bank;
P. whereas under the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) - Global Europe, EUR 240 million has been allocated to Egypt for the bilateral portfolio for the period 2021-2024; whereas on 1 June 2022, Commission Varhelyi announced the disbursement of EUR 118 million in energy and water budget support, EUR 100 million for food security and EUR 80 million for border protection;
whereas the ongoing combined volume of financial assistance from the EU, its Member States and European Financial Institutions to Egypt in its different forms (grants, loans and debt swaps) over the past 10 years exceeds EUR 11 billion;
Q. whereas on 17 June 2022, the EU, Egypt and Israel signed a Memorandum of Understanding on delivering natural gas to the EU; whereas on 9 November 2022, they made a statement on the EU-Egypt Renewable Hydrogen Partnership;
1. Strongly condemns the persisting and deteriorating human rights crisis in Egypt, in particular the broad and relentless crackdown on civil society organisations, human rights defenders, lawyers, protesters, journalists, trade unionists, media workers, women’s rights activists, LGBTI persons, students, political opponents and minorities;
2. Calls on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release prominent human rights defender Alaa Abd El-Fattah and comply with his family’s wish for his safe transfer to the United Kingdom, of which he has been a citizen since 15 December 2021;
3. Calls on the Egyptian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those detained or sentenced for carrying out their legitimate and peaceful human rights work or peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, including but not limited to Mohamed Baker, Hoda Abdelmoniem, Ezzat Ghoniem, Anas al-Beltagi, Mohamed Radwan ‘Oxygen’, Mawda al-Adham, Hanin Hossam, Abdelmoniem Abouelfotoh and Aisha al-Shater; urges the Egyptian government to abandon the massive use of abusive pre-trial detention to clamp down on real or perceived dissent; urges the Egyptian government to drop politically motivated charges against independent journalists such as the Mada Masr journalists arrested in September 2022;
4. Condemns the exclusion of independent human rights and environmental groups from COP27 by the Egyptian government, as well as the harassment, intimidation and surveillance of participants at the summit; is appalled by the new wave of arrests and detention across Egypt during COP27; notes that by allowing the Egyptian government to control the registration process for organisations attending COP27, the UN broke with its standard rules; recalls that freedom of expression and the participation of global civil society are central to progress towards a climate-neutral, just and climate-resilient world; strongly supports the call by UN experts for the UNFCCC Secretariat to develop human rights criteria that countries hosting future COPs must commit to meeting as part of the host agreement and urges the Commission and the Member States to work with the UNFCCC Secretariat and other Parties to adopt those criteria at the latest by COP28;
5. Expresses its concern that once the conference is over, the authorities could retaliate against Egyptian activists and dissidents who criticised the government’s environmental and human rights record, in particular the family of Alaa Abd El-Fattah;
6. Calls on the Egyptian government to fulfil its promise made to EU Special Representative Eamon Gilmore during his visit to Egypt in April 2022 to close Case 173, which targets NGOs for allegedly ‘receiving foreign funding to harm national interest’; urges the Egyptian authorities to drop travel bans, asset freezes and other measures against human rights defenders such as Patrick George Zaki, Gasser Abdel Razek, Karim Ennarah, Mohamed Bashir and the founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Hossam Bahgat;
7. Deeply regrets the failure of the Egyptian authorities to cooperate with Italy over the kidnapping, murder and torture of the Italian student Giulio Regeni; reiterates its support for the family of Giulio Regeni and calls on the EU and its Member States to increase the pressure on the Egyptian government to disclose the whereabouts of Tariq Sabir, Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim, Uhsam Helmi and Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, who have been charged in Italy for the Regeni murder;
8. Urges the Egyptian authorities to reopen civic space and the public sphere by repealing draconian legislation, replacing it with versions that are in line with Egypt’s constitutional and international commitments, and abandoning repressive practices, so as to end the crackdown on the freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, association and of the media;
9. Calls once again on the government of Egypt to adopt a moratorium on the use of the death penalty and end mass death sentences;
10. Calls on the Vice-President / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (VP/HR) and EU Member States to take a firm public position and use all engagement with Egyptian authorities to demand the immediate release of human rights defender Alaa Abd El-Fattah, as well as all political prisoners in Egypt; calls on the government of the United Kingdom to step up its efforts towards the release of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, given his British nationality;
11. Urges the European External Action Service (EEAS), the Commission and Member States to hold Egyptian authorities accountable for the numerous cases of intimidation, harassment and surveillance of civil society actors, human rights defenders and representatives at COP27; asks the EU and Member States to closely monitor the situation of civil society and human rights defenders in Egypt in the following weeks and month, especially the family of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, and to actively engage with the Egyptian authorities to discourage and prevent any reprisals against them or their families;
12. Reiterates its call on the VP/HR and the Member States to respond in a unified and resolute manner, also in coordination with other likeminded partners, to the persistent crackdown and human rights violations in Egypt, and to use all tools at their disposal to secure concrete progress on Egypt’s human rights record;
13. Calls on the EEAS and the Commission to mainstream human rights and civil society participation in all dialogues and areas of engagement with the Egyptian authorities, and ensure that cooperation on issues such as climate change, energy and security, does not come at the expense of human rights;
14. Insists on a fundamental and comprehensive review of the EU’s relations with Egypt; urges the Commission to put the condition of tangible improvements to the human rights situation, in particular the release of arbitrarily detained human rights defenders and journalists, at the centre of the EU’s relations with Egypt; calls on the Commission to establish clear benchmarks for assessing the implementation of the new EU-Egypt partnership priorities adopted in June 2022 and to adopt robust measures to address the Egyptian authorities’ consistent failure to deliver on these;
15. Welcomes the adoption by the Council of an EU Global Human Rights Sanctions regime and calls on the VP/HR and Member States to apply it to high-level Egyptian officials responsible for the most serious violations in the country, starting with President Sisi;
16. Asks representatives of the EU and Member States to be more critical in their engagement with the Egyptian government and to refrain from lending legitimacy to the Egyptian government’s attempt to whitewash its human rights record; encourages the EU and Member States not to offer unwarranted praise for the very limited and unsatisfactory steps the Egyptian government has taken, such as the adoption of the National Human Rights Strategy, but to exert pressure to bring about real progress;
17. Calls on the Commission to suspend any budget support to Egypt until there are tangible improvements on human rights and fundamental freedoms in Egypt; calls on the Commission, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank to ensure that respect for human rights and the involvement of independent civil society are a key components in any financial support or investment strategies planned for Egypt; emphasises the need to restrict EU funding to primarily supporting democratic actors and civil society and implement safeguards to prevent any EU money from flowing to the Egyptian army;
18. Encourages EU Delegation and Member State representatives in Cairo to attend the trials of Egyptian human rights defenders, including foreign journalists, bloggers, trade unionists and civil society activists in the country, and visit them in detention; asks the EEAS and Member States to persistently demand their immediate and unconditional release both publicly and privately and to ensure that their rights in detention are respected, they are allowed visits by their lawyers and families and guaranteed adequate healthcare;
19. Calls on the EEAS, the Commission and its Member States to increase their protection and support for human rights defenders in Egypt, including through emergency grants under the NDICI - Global Europe instrument and the European Endowment for Democracy, as well as the granting of emergency visas;
20. Calls on the European Union and its Member States to initiate with other UN Member States the establishment of an independent monitoring and reporting mechanism on human rights violations in Egypt through a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council;
21. Calls on EU Member States to suspend export licences for any equipment which might be used for internal repression, in line with Common Position 2008/944/CFSP, and halt all exports to Egypt of arms, surveillance technology and other security equipment that can facilitate attacks on human rights defenders or other forms of repression; welcomes the Commission’s monitoring of the implementation of the recast Dual-Use Exports Regulation and expects transparent follow-up for any infringement of the Regulation;
22. Calls on Member States to put human rights and international humanitarian law at the forefront of their military cooperation with Egypt or to cease such cooperation; expresses its deep concern that crimes against humanity may have been committed by the Egyptian authorities when it executed several hundred smugglers; urges EU Member States to demand transparency and accountability on this matter;
23. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the Egyptian Government and Parliament and the African Commission on Human Rights and Peoples’ Rights; calls for this resolution to be translated into Arabic and duly submitted to the Egyptian Parliament.
- [1] Texts adopted, P9_TA(2022)0373.
- [2] OJ L 206, 11.6.2021, p. 1.
- [3] OJ L 335, 13.12.2008, p. 99.