U.S. Committee to End Political Repression in Egypt

اللجنة الأمريكية ضد القمع السياسي في مصر

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the US Committee to End Political Repression in Egypt (US CEPRE)?

US CEPRE consists primarily of scholars, analysts, human rights workers, and students of the contemporary Middle East. Our members are US citizens and residents. The committee formed in early 2021 to respond to an unprecedented surge of political repression in Egypt that has included: waves of state-sponsored political violence, mass incarceration, the shuttering of independent civil and media organizations, and the collapse of judicial authority.

The scale of the present crisis in Egypt has been known for several years. The US State Department’s 2020 Human Rights Report cites, “unlawful or arbitrary killings … forced disappearance; torture and cases of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by the [Egyptian] government … harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary detention.” Civil society activists, bloggers, and journalists have been especially targeted. Human rights workers, scholarly researchers, and medical professionals highlighting shortcomings of the government’s COVID response, are routinely harassed or detained on trumped-up terrorism charges. By any indication, the crisis is worsening and will continue to do so unless checked.

Our mission is to raise awareness of political repression in Egypt with a special focus on the plight of political prisoners. We seek to make this issue part of the broader progressive agenda in the United States. And we urge Congress to stop funding Egypt’s human rights abuses.

Why a US committee?

The Egyptian government’s treatment of its citizens may be atrocious, but it is unfortunately not unique in the world. So why are we speaking up about it?

American citizens and taxpayers are directly responsible for enabling political repression and abuses of human rights in Egypt. Egypt is the second largest recipient of US military aid (after Israel). Since 1978 Egypt has received over $50 billion in military aid and $30 billion in economic assistance. In addition the US military and military contractors train the same Egyptian officer corps that engages in extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses, while US diplomats provide cover for Sisi’s regime in international forums.

For more than four decades, since President Anwar Sadat switched sides in the Cold War and aligned with the United States, the US government, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has written checks to Cairo while turning a blind eye on its human rights abuses. Like his predecessors, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi could not afford to pursue his campaign of repression if he had to pay for it out of his own coffers.

Isn’t the issue complicated?

Not really. Most Americans are simply unaware that our government has a long-standing policy of supporting dictators on the Nile. Or if they are, they believe that there must be some overriding “national interest” for the policy. There isn’t.

US support for repressive and undemocratic rulers in Egypt began with the conclusion of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Military and economic aid to Egypt was offered as a carrot to encourage Egypt to uphold the treaty. But that treaty constituted a separate peace between Egypt and Israel. The Palestinian people and their representative, the PLO, were not included in the negotiations that led to the treaty because Israel was unwilling to withdraw from the Palestinian territories - the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip - that it conquered in the June 1967 war.

Because the rights of the Palestinian people were not addressed, there was considerable domestic opposition to the treaty in Egypt. President Sadat’s crackdown on all expressions of opposition across the political spectrum prompted his assassination in 1981. Because it abandoned the Palestinians, Egypt was isolated in the Arab world for a decade. So it was not in a position to broaden the peace it had concluded with Israel.

There is extensive publicly available information on these subjects. One does not need to be an expert on Middle East affairs to understand that Americans gain nothing by being party to human rights abuses in Egypt.

What right do you have to butt into Egyptian affairs?

We are not intervening in Egyptian domestic affairs. We are providing information and advocating that the United States government abide by the terms of US law (the Foreign Assistance Act and the Defense Appropriations Act) which prohibits providing military aid to governments that engage in gross violations of human rights. As long as Egypt takes US money, aid, and support, it is our business to have an opinion about how the Sisi regime treats its citizens. As long as this support is given in the name of the American people, we have a moral duty to insist that our support is not used to harm and abuse people.

Why now?

The truth is that we should have started years ago. Since the military coup of July 2013, Egypt has suffered a dramatic escalation of human rights violations. The present level of repression is unprecedented: There are currently at least 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt out of an estimated prison population of 100,000 in Egyptian jails.[1] More than 35 new penitentiaries have been built in the past ten years to hold this generation of detainees. Even so, overcrowding remains a horrendous problem, especially since now Egyptian prisoners have to face Covid with little or no health precautions or care.

Donald Trump jokingly called Sisi his “favorite dictator.” Joe Biden promised to turn the page on the Trump years and provide “No more blank checks for Trump’s ‘favorite dictator.’” There have been some encouraging developments in this respect. President Biden addressed this issue on the campaign trail and as a result several political prisoners were released. In January 2021 a congressional Egypt Human Rights Caucus was established (but initially with only three members). Congress has legislated that for FY 2020 delivery of $300 million of Egypt’s annual $1.3 billion military aid appropriation be conditioned on progress in addressing human rights abuses.

However, the Biden administration followed through on a Trump administration commitment and in February 2021 notified Congress that it would supply 168 missiles valued at $197 million to the Egyptian military. So there appears to be little substantive change when it comes to US-Egyptian relations: Democratic and Republican administrations share the same enthusiasm for propping up Egyptian strongmen.

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[1] The exact numbers are difficult to ascertain. The 2020 State Department Country Report on Egypt, for instance, estimates between 20-60,000. Human Rights Watch puts the minimum number at 60,000. ANHRI, a local rights organization, estimates 65,000 political prisoners. The Sisi regime routinely denies the existence of political prisoners and does not report prison population numbers. Amnesty International has reported that Egypt’s political prisoners are undercounted for a number of reasons: thousands of Egyptians have been detained without charges; thousands others have been held in long-term pre-trial detention; thousands have disappeared while in police custody; and many detainees have been “formally released” from prison, but remain under direct or semi-direct police control.

What is US CEPRE’s strategy?

Despite the concerted efforts of many good organizations for many years, US policy on Egypt has shifted very little, if at all. Among the reasons that this is so are the vested interests in the military-industrial gravy trains that run between DC and Cairo and the lavishly funded lobby groups on the payroll of Sisi and his reactionary backers in the Gulf.

So perhaps on this issue, as on so many others, Washington will not be where change gains traction.

If change won’t come from above, perhaps it’s time to try it from below. To that end, we seek to amplify the work of existing human rights and civil society organizations by speaking directly to progressive social movements in the United States. Foreign policy issues have not been high priorities on the agenda of most progressives. This is understandable (but short-sighted) in light of the need to address the most urgent issues we face. At the same time, some of these issues—such as climate change—demand that we think and act globally. And on other issues—such as economic inequality, police violence, and the burgeoning carceral state— Egyptian realities have much to teach Americans about our own situation. Domestic and foreign policy cannot be separated. Arming authoritarian regimes and intervening militarily around the globe is inconsistent - fiscally and politically - with promoting democracy, equality and social justice at home.

What does US CEPRE do?

US CEPRE regularly organizes and presents informational webinars. It is engaged in lobbying Congress and participates in joint campaigns with other human-rights and pro-democracy groups to inform the public on the deterioration of freedom of speech and other basic democratic norms of civil society and the systematic violation of human rights in Egypt. US CEPRE seeks to bring awareness of these conditions and focus our efforts on opposing the role of the United States in supporting Egypt’s praetorian dictatorship.

Which organizations does US CEPRE work with?

Several organizations have been working for many years to bring the Egyptian regime’s massive human rights violations to the attention of Congress and the American people. We have high regard for their efforts and rely heavily on their research and advocacy. We have collaborated with them in the past and expect to do so in the future.

US CEPRE collaborates with several US-based (and international) organizations whose goals are in harmony with US CEPRE’s. The following is a partial list of allied organizations:

· Amnesty International USA

· Arab Network for Human Rights Information

· Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies

· Committee for Justice

· Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN)

· Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

· Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR)

· Egyptian Human Rights Forum

· Egypt Solidarity

· EuroMed Rights

· FIDH, within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

· Freedom House