Following public criticism and backlash by human rights activists and organizations, the United Nations has placed on hold its anti-torture conference, Defining and Criminalising Torture in Legislation in the Arab Region, scheduled to take place in Egypt on the 4th and 5th of next month.
Scheduled to be held along with Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), activists described the UN’s choice of location for the conference as a joke owing to Egypt’s widespread culture of abuse, torture, and a crackdown on dissent. “It is illogical for a country where torture is systematic to host a conference on torture,” Mohamed Zaree, of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), said.
In a joint statement, over 80 prominent human rights workers, activists, lawyers, and journalists said Egypt has neither a good human rights record nor evidence of a political will to address crimes of torture and maltreatment that is rife within its borders, therefore it should not be the location for the conference.
Regarding the UN’s decision to postpone the event, Rupert Colville, the spokesperson for the UN human rights office said the organization is well aware of the growing unease in some parts of the NGO community with its choice of location. “We understand and are sensitive to this,” he said, further stating that the UN would reopen the process of consultation with all relevant actors before making a final decision on the date and location for the conference.
Colville, who had said in February that torture is practised systematically in Egypt, defended the UN’s choice to host the conference in Egypt, as one with quite a lot of value, as it would have made sense for it to happen there than in a country where torture never happens. According to him, the UN still plans to hold the conference in the Middle East/North Africa region, where it is likely to have more impact than if it is held in Europe or elsewhere.
CIHRS’ Zaree admits that the conference is a good opportunity for the Egyptian government, however, the UN should not participate in whitewashing its[the governments]image prior to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) for Human Rights at the UN coming up in November. Zaree says hosting the conference in Egypt would have been a way to divert attention from the recommendations and commitments on torture Egypt has not honoured since the last UPR session in 2014.
Meanwhile, Egyptian digital newspaper, Mada Masr reports that the UN had attempted to downplay the conference and keep it lowkey by not consulting and inviting well-known and independent human rights organizations. Last week, Colville told Reuters that the conference is a fairly standard type of event.
Repression, human rights abuses, and a clampdown on press freedom thrive in Egypt under the administration of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. Since Sisi assumed power in 2014, democracy in Egypt has been on a steady decline. Journalists, activists, and political opponents are constantly harassed, arrested, tortured and imprisoned without trial. And in cases where they are tried, it is not in any way, fair.
Last September, an Egyptian court conducted a mass trial of 739 people who allegedly protested the military coup that propelled Sisi to power in 2013. 75 of them were sentenced to death, a judgement Amnesty International condemned as a grotesque parody of justice.
A 2018 report by Amnesty International, revealed that Egyptian security forces arbitrarily arrested and detained at least 111 people from January up until when the report was released, solely for peacefully expressing critical opinions about the authorities or for participating in protests or political gatherings.
Sisi also shuts down human rights organizations in Egypt and blocks their source or channel of foreign funding. In September 2016, a criminal court in Cairo approved a request to freeze the assets of three human rights groups and the personal assets of the founders, leaders, and staff members of these groups. These individuals were also banned from travelling outside Egypt.
There is also the widespread practice of systemic enforced disappearances where individuals are arrested without legal representation or access to their families. Geneva-based human rights defense organization, Committee for Justice, documented 1,989 cases of enforced disappearances in Egypt from August 2017 to August 2018.
