By Our Correspondent, CAIRO
Egypt
The family have repeatedly demanded information on the health of the British-Egyptian activist in recent days, after he escalated his months-long hunger strike to include water.
Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a veteran
pro-democracy and rights campaigner, is serving a five-year prison sentence for
"spreading false news" by sharing a Facebook post about police
brutality.
International concern has
mounted since the 40-year-old also began declining liquids since Sunday,
marking the start of the UN climate summit COP27 hosted by Egypt.
On Thursday, an officer told
the activist's mother that he was "under medical intervention", but
gave no other details.
Hossam Bahgat, founder of the
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), the country's largest rights
group, said the prison officer statement "means he is being
force-fed".
Amnesty International said
they were "worried" that medical decisions for Abdel Fattah were
"not made by independent doctors free from interference and coercion by
security."
The dissident's aunt, novelist
Ahdaf Soueif, demanded that he be moved to the Qasr al-Aini University
Hospital, Cairo's largest state medical facility, fearing the prison hospital
"is probably not equipped" to care for a patient who has been living
for months "on 100 calories a day."
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak,
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have all
voiced concern during the climate summit and called for his release.
United Nations rights chief
Volker Turk has warned Abdel Fattah's "life is in great danger".
Activists at the COP27 summit
in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh have posted widely on Twitter
under the hashtag #FreeAlaa. Several figures have ended their speeches with the
words "you have not yet been defeated" -- the title of the jailed activist's
book.
On Thursday, hundreds of COP27
participants, dressed in white like Egyptian prisoners, chanted "Free
him!" and "no climate justice without human rights!".
Others shouted "Free them
all!" in reference to the 60,000 political detainees’ rights groups say
are incarcerated in the country, many of them in brutal conditions and
overcrowded cells -- accusations which Cairo rejects.
"We are carrying out this
action to draw attention to those who are invisible, hidden behind high
walls," one of the organisers George Galvis said. - AFP
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