On Thursday, Amnesty International issued a statement recalling the human rights violations of the regimes of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in conjunction with El-Sisi’s visit to India. “[National] celebrations should not distract us from the grim reality that the human rights situation in both countries has gone from bad to worse since both presidents came into office,” the rights group said.
The rights group called on the Indian and Egyptian authorities to address the ongoing human rights crises in the two countries in recent years. It said that both countries’ current human rights crises are characterized by entrenched impunity and the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation to stifle civic space and peaceful dissent. Both countries show striking similarities in their attempts to harass and intimidate actual or perceived critics and opponents of the government.
Human rights defenders, lawyers, political dissidents, peaceful protesters, academics and students face arbitrary arrest and detention, unfair trials and other forms of harassment and intimidation in both countries, it added. Authorities in both countries increasingly target journalists and other media workers. The Egyptian authorities have relied on repressive legislation and other tactics to control civic space, and India has taken similar measures in this regard, according to the rights group. Egyptian authorities also failed to protect Christians from repeated sectarian attacks against them.
