Why Did Blinken Meet Human Rights Activists in Egypt Before Meeting Sisi?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent new signals after his visit to Egypt on January 29, 2023, with a group of young people at the American University in Cairo, before meeting President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi later the next day.

The meeting was held at the university’s old headquarters in Tahrir Square.

Blinken’s meeting was about the urgent need to release political detainees.

This arrangement seemed like an implicit American message to the Egyptian regime: “We will not communicate with Sisi alone.”

The importance of the message is that it comes in light of the worsening economic and political crisis of the regime, and the expectation of international reports of “difficult days” that Sisi will face.

 

Signals on the Horizon

Blinken’s talk after his meeting with Sisi and his counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, about the necessity of releasing the detainees and his meeting before leaving Cairo with a number of human rights activists and representatives of civil society—like the founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Hossam Bahgat, and the former leader of the Constitution Party of Egypt, Khaled Dawoud—gave the message a special impression.

Activists linked the visit of the US Secretary of State to Egypt to the decisions of the presidential pardon committees that were “not enough,” and also the visit of the Director of US Intelligence, William Burns, to Egypt a week earlier.

They considered this an American pressure on the regime to improve conditions in Egypt “for fear of an explosion” due to the increase in the state of internal discontent and anger and the release of detainees of liberal and leftist current, as they may be signs of something to come on the horizon.

Others warned against optimism about what might appear as “pressures” on Sisi at the height of his weakness due to the collapse of the economy, and saw that any American pressure on Sisi hides fears of America’s interests lost, nothing more.

It was remarkable that it’s Shoukry’s first time to issue such a statement during the press conference with Blinken, in which he acknowledged that “the crisis facing Cairo requires intervention from America to lift the pressure,” noting that Egypt’s stability is “in America’s interest.”

A third group linked the visits of US officials to Egypt’s role in protecting Washington’s interests in occupied Palestine by pressuring the resistance in the West Bank and Gaza to stop the escalation against the Israeli Occupation and that talking about human rights or meeting young people is a “mere decoration.”

What are the messages that Blinken sought to convey to the Egyptian regime through his meeting with young men and jurists and his talk about the release of detainees before and after his meeting with Sisi and Shoukry to discuss Cairo’s role in calming the situation in Palestine, especially since he was keen to talk about “interests” between the two countries?

Why did he arrive in Cairo a day before Sisi returned?

 

The Meeting Main Points

It was remarkable that Blinken met with what the US embassy called “youth leaders” before he held talks with Sisi and Shoukry to discuss bilateral and regional issues such as Palestine, Sudan, and Libya.

Blinken explained to journalists that his meeting with these Egyptian youth leaders at the American University in Cairo was to strengthen Washington’s “strategic partnership” with Egypt.

In his speech at the American University on January 29, 2023, which was published by the US State Department website, he said he wanted to start here (with the youth at the American University before meeting Sisi) for several reasons, including the president’s partnership between the United States and Egypt.

He explained that moving forward in this partnership, building, sustaining, and strengthening it will ultimately be done by the people who are here today (youth leaders), and the people who represent 60% of Egypt’s population are 25 years old or younger.

He continued to say that “It’s important for us not just to engage government to government, as important as that is, but to engage with every sector of society.”

He added: “We want to know what’s on your minds, what you’re thinking about, what you’re concerned about, and how you’re looking at things. Because for me, the most important thing is this:  Just because we’ve done something one way for the last 50 years doesn’t mean we need to do it the same way for the next 50 years.”

Blinken advised those “in positions of responsibility” to listen to other people’s questions and to think of new and different ways of doing things.

The US State Department said Egypt is dynamic and youthful to a large extent, and it is important for the US not only to partner with Egypt at the governmental level but also with all sectors of society, especially the rising generation that constitutes a large part of this country and will maintain relations with the United States in the future.

Blinken also said on Twitter that he “Enjoyed hearing from these young Egyptian leaders who are promoting our shared values and strengthening our important bilateral relationship—this makes me optimistic about our future.”

But the former pilot residing in America, who was released by the UAE after his recent arrest, Sherif Osman, commented on Blinken’s tweet, saying: “Leaders? I don’t know any of the leaders in this picture, no disrespect.”

He added: “What program are they under? What visions do they share? Do you really think that they can share anything while meeting with you in Egypt?”

Al-Estiklal was informed that those whom Blinken met were “entrepreneurs,” the embassy said that they had achieved success in their fields or representatives of students at the university, that is, they had nothing to do with politics.

A number of those who attended the meeting confirmed later on that it was a “very short” meeting that included receiving only a few questions revolving around the climate issue, advice from the minister, and a friendly conversation with the youth, and there were no political questions.

Initiatives to promote “entrepreneurship and the creative economy” are one of several ways in which the United States works to build cultural relations with Egyptians, especially youth, and there is an “Academy for Women Entrepreneurs” affiliated with the US State Department.

In a January 29 tweet, the US State Department spokesman, Ned Price, pointed to the benefits of exchange programs in Egypt with youth and entrepreneurs, saying that so far, more than 21,000 Egyptian graduates from English and academic exchange programs have attended.

Journalists were not allowed to attend the meeting between the minister and the youth, and their presence was limited to attending the opening speech, as Blinken asked them to leave with the embassy official before he began his dialogue with the youth, according to the US State Department website.

 

Political Detainees

Although Blinken’s meeting with Sisi had the declared aim of cooling the atmosphere in occupied Palestine and taking the role that the Biden administration had given him since May 2021, the meeting was not devoid of talking about human rights.

Blinken himself drew attention to this after his meeting with Sisi, referring through his Twitter account to the discussion of “the strategic partnership and Egypt’s important role in regional stability and the importance of progress in human rights.”

After his meeting with Shoukry on January 30, 2023, the US Secretary was clearer, as he said during the press conference that the human rights file was at the forefront of the issues on the agenda in the talks with the leaders of Egypt.

He stressed that the United States will continue to put pressure on Egypt with regard to human rights, calling for the need to release political prisoners and take “reforms” that lead to freedom of expression, according to Reuters.

formal disregard

The spokesman for the presidency of the Egyptian regime ignored what Blinken said about human rights and stated that Washington is counting on close coordination with Egypt to restore stability and calm the situation between the Palestinians and Israelis.

He implicitly referred to Washington’s demand from the Palestinian Authority to restore security coordination with the Israeli Occupation by talking about the importance of working immediately within the framework of the political and security tracks to calm the situation and limit any unilateral measures taken by the two parties.

This means that Blinken actually asked Sisi to pressure the Palestinian Authority to re-coordinate security within Egypt’s role with the Biden administration based on its sponsorship of the truce in Palestine, whether Gaza or the West Bank, before his meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas.

However, the editor-in-chief of Rai Alyoum newspaper, Abdel Bari Atwan, predicted in a tweet on January 29, 2023, the failure of this Egyptian–American pressure to curb the uprising against the Israeli Occupation and the truce that Blinken hopes to achieve to save “Israel,” because the decision-makers are the resistance fighters, the Lions’ Den, and the Jenin Brigades.