Sisi-Trump Meeting Shows Mutual Contempt for Rights

[riversedge]

April 2, 2017 12:00AM EDT
Sisi-Trump Meeting Shows Mutual Contempt for Rights

Visit Comes at Nadir for Basic Freedoms in Egypt


(Washington, DC) – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s scheduled meeting with United States President Donald Trump on April 3, 2017, comes at a time when human rights are at a nadir in Egypt and under threat in the US, Human Rights Watch said today.

Al-Sisi’s meeting with Trump is the first visit by an Egyptian head of state to the White House since 2009. Al-Sisi, as defense minister, overthrew the country’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsy, in July 2013, and oversaw the brutal dispersal of opposition protests that left more than 1,150 people dead in the following weeks. Under al-Sisi’s presidency, his security forces have arrested tens of thousands of Egyptians and committed flagrant rights abuses, including torture, enforced disappearances, and likely extrajudicial executions.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a bilateral meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 19, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
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Then-presidential nominee Donald Trump meets with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on September 19, 2016 in Manhattan, New York.
© 2016 Reuters

“Inviting al-Sisi for an official visit to Washington as tens of thousands of Egyptians rot in jail and when torture is again the order of the day is a strange way to build a stable strategic relationship,” said Sarah Margon, Washington director at Human Rights Watch.

Al-Sisi, who was elected in May 2014, has presided over near-total impunity for abuses by the military and security forces and the severe restrictions on civil and political rights, effectively erasing the gains of the 2011 uprising that ousted the longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak.

After meeting al-Sisi during his visit to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016, Trump, then a presidential candidate, released a statement declaring his “strong support for Egypt’s war on terrorism, and how under a Trump Administration, the United States of America will be a loyal friend, not simply an ally, that Egypt can count on in the days and years ahead.”..................

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