The German government has lodged a complaint with the authoritarian government of Egypt over harassment of German activities at the COP 27 climate meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh. Deutsche Welle (DW), the state-owned broadcaster, reported, “The German embassy in Cairo accused Egyptian security officials of monitoring and filming events at the German pavilion in the climate conference venue. Berlin has used its presence to highlight human rights issues.”
In an official statement, Germany’s Foreign Ministry said, “We expect all participants in the U.N. climate conference to be able to work and negotiate under safe conditions. This is not just true for the German but for all delegations, as well as representatives of civil society and the media.”
The German conference area has not only hosted information and events about the country’s climate policies and goals, but also given human rights organizations – including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – permission to host events sharply critical of Egypt’s atrocious record on human rights. Among those participating, according to DW, has been “Egyptian activist Sanaa Saif, a film editor who has served prison terms in Egypt.”
She was convicted of disseminating false news, misuse of social media, and “insulting a police officer on duty,” typical of the trumped-up charges brought against political activists by the government of dictator and president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
According to Wikipedia, Saif is from “a well-known and very politically active family. Her father Ahmed Seif was an activist and human rights attorney until his death in 2014. Sanaa’s mother, Laila Soueif is a professor at Cairo University and political activist promoting academic freedom in Egypt. Her two older siblings are also well known in the activist community. Her brother Alaa Abd El-Fattah became an icon during the 2011 uprisings that toppled the Mubarak regime. Her sister Mona Seif is a genetics researcher and political activist responsible for co-founding an Egyptian movement against military trials of civilians.”
Reuters reported that German federal police, the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA, “warned delegates of “overt and covert surveillance through photography and videography” by Egyptian agents.” During his visit to COP 27, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday said he had raised the issue of the jailed hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah. “A decision needs to be taken, a release has to be made possible, so that it doesn’t come to it that the hunger striker dies,” he told reporters.
Reuters later (Nov. 17) reported, “Prominent Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah was close to death when he broke his hunger strike, and needed to be revived after collapsing in a prison in Egypt, his family said after visiting him for the first time in weeks on Thursday.
“Abd el-Fattah had been on full or partial hunger strike against his detention and prison conditions since April 2, then escalated his protest by ceasing to drink water on Nov. 6, the opening day of the COP27 climate summit.”
After several earlier arrests dating to 2006, and including participating in the 2009 protests, el-Fattah was jailed in December 21, sentenced to five years imprisonment for “false news undermining national security.”
Egypt has denied spying and harassing the German contingent, according to the German news service dpa (Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH). Egyptian security sources told dpa that the security of foreign seminars and activities was a task for the United Nations team at COP 27 and as Egyptians they were restricted to security outside the halls and in the city. Participants from other countries told the German news agency that Egyptian officials “had insisted on being present at closed sessions.
“It is very obvious that the Egyptian authorities are monitoring human rights activities,” Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian human rights organization EIPR, told DPA. “The only reason they haven’t used physical violence yet is that we’re in a UN-controlled area.”