The years of oppression and isolation. The situation of human rights defenders in Egypt during the Covid-19 pandemic

In cooperation with the ASFARI INSTITUTE FOR CIVIL SOCIETY & CITIZENSHIP, GOHOUD TO SUPPORT HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS published a new report titled: “The years of oppression and isolation. The situation of human rights defenders in Egypt during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

This report seeks to document the situation of human rights defenders during the years of the pandemic by monitoring and analyzing the patterns of targeting human rights defenders during those years, the impact of the pandemic on their lives, work and safety, and the added burdens imposed on them due to the pandemic, in addition to monitoring and analyzing legislative changes related to human rights defenders’ work and how the pandemic’s consequences contributed to shaping these legislative changes.

In addition to several secondary sources. This report was based on the content of eleven individual interviews conducted with human rights defenders residing in Egypt or abroad who have diverse professional backgrounds and diverse areas of activism and defending human rights.

The report includes four primary axes, the first of which covers the contextual and legislative developments relevant to the work of the human rights defenders. Meanwhile, the second axis discusses the targeting patterns of human rights defenders during the pandemic years, focusing on the deficiency that struck the justice system due to the complete or partial closures in the early stages of the pandemic. These closures resulted in the disruption of court and prosecution office work and the suspension of prison visits. This axis further provides insights into the suffering of several human rights defenders imprisoned in arbitrary and unlimited pre-trial detention, their rotation in new cases on the exact charges which extended to trials before exceptional courts, and the issuance of rulings to convict some of them. In addition to the suffering of other human rights defenders being arbitrarily prevented from travelling abroad, the pursuit of their family members, and the continued restrictions and siege of the activities and events of the independent human rights groups in Egypt.

In its third axis, the report discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the physical and psychological safety of human rights defenders and the additional restrictions imposed by the exceptional measures imposed by the pandemic on some forms of activities and interventions carried out by human rights defenders. The report then moves on in its final section to comment briefly on the national dialogue process in Egypt from the point of view of the human rights defenders we interviewed.