On Monday, six human rights organisations said that the crisis of human rights in Egypt is not related to the lack of a national strategy, but the lack of political willing from the Egyptian president to respect human rights.
The organisations described the strategy as an attempt at “reputation wash,” adding that the president of the republic has to respect the constitution he gave an oath of allegiance to, which includes articles that guarantee human rights. However, the Egyptian authorities violate these human rights on a daily basis.
The organisations that signed the statement include the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, Committee for Justice, Freedom Initiative and Sinai for Human Rights.
The organisations pointed out that the president expressed on more than one occasion his disrespect of human rights as a universal concept. This is besides his use of the capital punishment, which means Egypt is third rank in the world in the annual number of executions. The statement added that the executive authority, represented by the presidency, worked on undermining the state’s institutions, particularly the judicial and legislative powers: “This eliminated the balance between powers and gave the president and the security bodies absolute power.”
The statement alluded to the problem of extended pretrial detention, explaining that it is no longer a legislative defect, but deepened by the judicial malpractice known as the “revolving door,” when the detainee is inserted in a new case after finishing the maximum pretrial detention in a previous one, to prevent his release.
