More than 20,000 prisoners began a hunger strike on Friday to protest “against the ill-treatment and torture of detainees in Egypt's prisons”, according to groups allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Freedom for the Brave campaign.“This level of ill treatment hasn't been seen for 35 years,” Gamal Eid, director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, told Al-Ahram Weekly. Equally worrying, he says, is that the violations are being committed with the public's consent. According to lawyers representing detainees in Wadi Al-Natroun, prisoners are also refusing to take their daily one-hour break or attend court sessions. A day after the hunger strike began the death of a prisoner from a heart-attack led to riots. The state-owned news agency MENA quoted the director of security at the prison as saying guards were able to control the situation without any injuries.
No official figures of the numbers detained since the toppling of Mohamed Morsi on 3 July have been released. Wiki Thawra, an independent website that has documented detentions since the 25 January Revolution, last week said 41,163 people have been detained or prosecuted since Morsi's removal and at least 53 people have died in custody. A month ago the Associated Press (AP) issued a report listing the detention of 16,000 people in the last eight months. It was, says AP, Egypt's biggest round-up in two decades.
On Sunday the Ministry of Interior denied any prisoners were on hunger strike and contradicted reports that prison visits had been cancelled. The ministry warned the media against reporting “rumours promoted by members of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organisation”.
The number of arrests has swamped the prison and legal systems. Many detainees are held for months in police-station lockups or temporary holding areas such as police training camps because prisons are so overcrowded, say NGOs.
Ahmed Seif Al-Islam, director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, says the level of indiscriminate arrests and torture, and the perfunctory sentencing of hundreds to death “are worse than under the British occupation of Egypt”.
Aida Seif Al-Dawla, a psychiatrist and human rights advocate working with the Al-Nadeem Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, and activist Laila Sweif, began on 25 May their own hunger strike in solidarity with the detainees, especially Al-Jazeera journalist Abdullah Al-Shami.
On Sunday dozens of protesters gathered outside the Press Syndicate to protest the continued detention of Al-Shami, and of journalist Mohamed Sultan. Al-Shami was arrested while covering the forced dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-in in Rabaa Al-Adaweya on 14 August 2013. Despite no charges being brought against him, Al-Shami's detention has been routinely renewed. In ten months he has not once been referred to court. Al-Shami has been on hunger strike since January to protest the arbitrary nature of his detention.
“My son is not a criminal. He is a journalist, arrested for doing his job,” Al-Shami's mother told participants in Sunday's protest.
Gehad Khaled, Al-Shami's wife, criticised the National Council of Human Rights (NCHR) during a press conference on Monday held to call for Al-Shami's release. The NCHR was given permission by the prosecution authorities to visit Al-Shami and check on the conditions in which he is held, she said, but has not yet visited him.
NCHR member Kamal Abbas, who was at the press conference, defended the council. Permission was granted a visit to the detainees last Thursday, he said, but the Ministry of Interior then stalled on setting a date. The council subsequently issued a statement condemning the Interior Ministry's prevarication.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says that of the 65 journalists arrested in the last 11 months 17 remain in detention.
