Tribune. We, elected members of the Council of Paris, would like to express our deep concern regarding the continued detention of Alaa Abdel Fatah, political activist and human rights defender, imprisoned in Egypt and on hunger strike since April 2, 2022. While President Al-Sissi conducts a particularly repressive policy against his opponents and human rights defenders in Egypt, international NGOs estimate that around sixty thousand people are today imprisoned in the country for having expressed their opinions.
In 2020, in an already particularly difficult context, and at a time when President Al-Sissi was being welcomed for a State visit to France, the City of Paris wished to support Egyptian political prisoners by granting honorary citizenship , his highest honor, to Alaa Abdel Fatah, as well as to Solafa Magdy, Patrick George Zaki and Esraa Abdel Fatah, all four journalists, political opponents and human rights defenders.
Through this title, the members of our Council wished to express their solidarity with all political prisoners and call for their immediate release. Since then, thanks to international mobilization, Solafa Magdy, Esraa Abdel Fatah and Patrick George Zaki have been released. Alaa Abdel Fatah, meanwhile, is still imprisoned, subject to relentless Egyptian powers for ten years.
A hunger strike like Gandhi
Recently, he was even again sentenced to another five years in prison for a message shared on a social network in 2019 concerning human rights violations in Egyptian prisons. The trial took place before the State Security Emergency Court, an exceptional jurisdiction, which flouted all the principles of a fair trial, its lawyers having neither access to its file nor the right to plead.
In order to alert us to his situation and to demand his release, Alaa Abdel Fatah began a hunger strike on April 2. After fifty-six days of strict hunger strike, given his worrying state of health and in the face of international mobilization, the Egyptian government allowed him to be transferred to another penal center.
He left the cell, lit day and night, where he was isolated and slept on the floor, deprived of visits, reading and outdoor exercise. He now has access to a few books and has decided to ease his hunger strike, taking up the one that Gandhi practiced, by absorbing up to one hundred calories a day in liquid form.
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