Despite His International Campaigns, Sisi's Oppression Against Women Is Continuing

On Sunday January 9, 2022, the fourth Circuit of Terrorism at the Cairo Criminal Court, held at the Institute of Police Secretaries in Tora, decided to release fifteen women with precautionary measures.

Activists posted on Twitter the names of the detainees, while others spoke of the country's transformation into a large prison. While the Egyptian authorities refuse to disclose the number of prisoners in Egypt, it is estimated that the number is about 114,000, more than double the prison capacity estimated by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in December 2020 at 55,000.

This coincided with the announcement by the head of the Reform and Development Party, Mohamed Anwar Sadat, that judicial bodies and the public prosecutor's office discussed the cases of those held in pretrial detention, in preparation for their release within a few days.

He added in a press release that "as part of the activation of the national strategy for human rights, work is now underway by the judiciary and the public prosecutor to review the cases of those held in pretrial detention in preparation for their release in the next few days."

Sadat said the incident "represents a major breakthrough in this file, the file of remand detainees," and concluded by saying that he is "very optimistic about 2022," noting that the Egyptian regime has adopted a method of pretrial detention to detain thousands of activists and civilians, not only Islamists as alleged but also secularists and democracy-seekers in the country. 

 

 

Violence and Sexual Abuse

Upon becoming president in 2014, Sisi visited a victim of sexual assault on Tahrir Square in what became a first: an Egyptian president explicitly committing to fighting gender-based violence.

Sisi said to the victim: “I apologize to you, and as a state, we will not allow this to happen again…I am here to tell you and every Egyptian woman I apologize to all of you.”

Yet, before and after this gesture, Sisi’s violence has continued to abuse girls and women who opposed the regime, explicitly dehumanizing anyone who opposes him, man or woman or even children.

In 2018, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) issued a report called “What Egypt’s el-Sisi and the EU have in common when it comes to women’s rights.”

According to the think tank, “While Egyptian women have indeed gained new rights under el-Sisi—at least on paper, they had to give up their independent voice and their freedom of association and expression in return.”

“Those defying this image by speaking out against the government’s authoritarian feminism are being silenced. Women’s rights defenders who link gender justice to broader demands for freedom and social justice are particularly prone to the wrath of the regime,” the center said.

Mohamed Anwar el-Sadat, head of Reform and Development Party, said to Mada Masr in an interview in September 2021 that he saw a blindfolded girl in Cairo’s security directorate who kept saying that she didn’t know where she was, whether in Alexandria or anywhere else.

The interview was removed from the website 1 hour after it was published.

Salma el-Hosseiny, a program manager at International Service for Human Rights in Geneva, wrote an article for Democracy for Arab World Now organization (DAWN), where she challenged Sisi’s propaganda of empowering women in Egypt.

“The current regime commits violence against women systematically including threats of rape by security/military forces, rape, sexual harassment and assault, torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention of women human rights defenders and political activists,” she said.

“Virginity tests, and forced genital examinations for transgender women are frequent, and detention conditions in female prisons in themselves amount to ill-treatment,” she added.

 

Human Rights Reports

In 2015, Amnesty International issued a report titled: “Circles of Hell: Domestic, Public, and State Violence Against Women in Egypt.”

“Women, like men, who are incarcerated for ordinary criminal offences are also vulnerable to torture or other ill-treatment at the hands of security forces. The most frequently reported methods used include beatings, kicking, punching, suspension and other stress positions, and the administration of electric shocks. Released female detainees to whom Amnesty International spoke, also reported sexualized torture and other gender-based ill-treatment, including groping, inappropriate touching, and covert ogling by male officials,” the report mentioned.

In 2020, Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) published a report with a coalition of Egyptian and international human rights organizations, documenting thousands of violations against Egyptian women over the past 10 years

These violations including murder, enforced disappearance, arrest, and the referral of hundreds of them to civilian and military courts as well, in a phenomenon that is rare in different countries of the world, and even sentencing dozens of them to prison and execution.

“Beatings, dragging, sexual harassment and other violations are common in Sisi’s regime, so that the Egyptian authorities continue their repressive policy against women without stopping,” the ENHR said.

“Among the female detainees were students, children and older women, until it came to the arrest of those over 70 years old, as happened when the security authorities arrested Dr. Najla al-Qalyubi for a period of about a year before releasing her with precautionary measures to go to the police station twice a week to spend a few hours there in degrading conditions that are not suitable for her old age,” it added.