The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) ( ar, المفوضية المصرية للحقوق و الحريات, al-Mafwaḍiyyah al-Miṣriyyah lil-Ḥuqūq wal-Ḥurrīyāt) is an Egyptian
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
organisation based in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
. The organisation has been subject to continuous harassment by the Egyptian authorities after reporting on human rights abuses by the
el-Sisi government. ECRF is one of the very few human rights organisations still operating inside a country increasingly hostile to dissent and in which countless civil society organisations have been forced to close. The commission coordinates campaigns for those who have been tortured or disappeared, as well as highlighting numerous incidences of human rights abuses.
Founders
* Ahmed Abdallah, chairman of the board of trustees.
*
Mohamed Lotfy, executive director.
* Mohamed Sameh, International Relations Advisor.
Human rights campaigns
ECRF started operating in September 2013 as a membership based human rights organisation mainly conducting trainings to activists on the basic concepts of human rights, skills of documentation of violations, strategic campaigning, and legal awareness-raising. These were received by youth activists who requested more engagement into human rights advocacy. Believing that all human beings are capable of defending human rights in their local communities, ECRF focuses on coordinating and accompanying the activists' energy to collectively work on the pressing issues of civil, political, economic, or social rights. This approach aims at documenting and mitigating human rights violations, raising civil awareness and community participation in human rights and development efforts.
ECRF tracks
forced disappearance
An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organiza ...
s in the country. These have spiked since General Abdel-Fatah
Al-Sisi came to power in 2013. The Commission investigates the unauthorised use of military camps in the country for the detention of civilians. These could be held outside of judicial oversight in secret military prisons. In June 2014, ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' published a long article on the Azouli military jail in the Suez Canal area: "Prisoners at Azouli are routinely electrocuted, beaten and hanged naked by their tied wrists for hours until they either give up specific information, memorise confessions or until – in the case of a small group of released former inmates – are deemed of no further use to their interrogators."
In June 2017, ECRF published a detailed report on the Galaa Military Prison and described how civilian detainees are treated and interrogated by different security agencies including the national security, military police, military intelligence and referred to military trials in the Galaa court, situated inside the complex.
Lawyers connected to ECRF are also acting as the Egyptian legal counsel for the family of murdered Italian
Giulio Regeni, whose body bearing signs of torture was found on a desert road outside Cairo on 3 February 2016.
Harassment and arrests
On 2 June 2015, Mohamed Lotfy, ECRF executive director, an Egyptian-Swiss National, was banned at Cairo International Airport from travelling to Germany and had his passport confiscated. He was on his way to Berlin invited by the Greens Party to participate in a discussion panel on the deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt at the German Federal Parliament (
Bundestag
The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Commons ...
).
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
and
Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
have continuously called on the Egyptian authorities to lift the abusive and arbitrary travel bans.
His speech was still read at the
Bundestag
The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Commons ...
:
"I wish i could be with you to speak on behalf of thousands who languish in inhumane conditions in jail for their political beliefs, opinions and affiliation, on whom the world knows little. My travel ban cuts a long story short, in Egypt only one voice is allowed and any critical voice is silenced. You can still hear us not because the government allows us to speak but because Egyptians continue to strive for a democratic nation that respects fundamental rights."
On 25 April 2016, Ahmed Abdallah, the chairman of the board of trustees was arrested at his home. He was accused of various charges that could have resulted in him being jailed for life. He was released in September 2016 after having spent 140 days in pre-trial detention.
On 20 October 2016, Egyptian authorities raided the office of the ECRF in
Giza
Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah'' arz, الجيزة ' ) is the second-largest city in Egypt after Cairo and fourth-largest city in Africa after Kinshasa, Lagos and Cairo. It is the capital of Giza Governorate with a total population of 9.2 ...
. Early morning on that day, four men — claiming to be affiliated with the Investment Authority — barged into the headquarters of ECRF and began searching the office without presenting a search warrant. Upon leaving the ECRF office, the four men threatened to close down the organisation and left without physically harming anyone in the process.
Between 10 and 29 September 2020,
ECRF documented how the Egyptian police arrested between 571 and 735 individuals in 17 governorates, amid the nationwide anti-corruption protests and published an open-source online database with their names and location of arrest.
Awards
In April 2018, ECRF received the annual 2018 award of
Index on Censorship
Index on Censorship is an organization campaigning for freedom of expression, which produces a quarterly magazine of the same name from London. It is directed by the non-profit-making Writers and Scholars International, Ltd (WSI) in association w ...
for Campaigning for Freedom of Expression. Selected from over 400 public nominations and a shortlist of 16, the 2018 Freedom of Expression Awards Fellows which exemplify courage in the face of censorship were awarded to ECRF from
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
for Campaigning, the Museum of Dissidence from
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
for Arts, Habari from
DRC
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
for Digital Activism and to Wendy Funes from
Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...
for journalism.
On 21 November 2018, France and Germany announced that Mohamed Lotfy, executive director of ECRF, was chosen along with 14 other human rights defenders in the world to receive the
Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and Rule of Law of 2018.
On 24 September 2020, ECFR was awarded the
Rafto Prize
The Professor Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize (''Raftoprisen'') is a human rights award established in the memory of the Norwegian human rights activist, Thorolf Rafto.
Organization
The prize is awarded annually by the Rafto Foundation for Human Righ ...
by the
Rafto Foundation for Human Rights The Rafto Foundation for Human Rights was established in 1986 in memory of Thorolf Rafto, a professor of economic history at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and a human rights activist. The main objective of the Rafto Foundation is the promo ...
for "their persistence in bravely resisting Egypt's state of fear". In the same month, ECFR was nominated by the Government of the Netherlands for the Dutch
Human Rights Tulip
The Human Rights Tulip ( nl, Mensenrechtentulp) is an annual prize awarded by the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs to a human rights defender or organisation who promotes and supports human rights in innovative ways. The Human Rights Tulip was est ...
2020. ECRF was nominated together with 12 human rights organisations worldwide.
See also
*
Ibrahim Metwaly
References
External links
*https://www.madamasr.com/en/topic/egyptian-commission-for-rights-and-freedoms/
{{Authority control
Human rights in Egypt
Organisations based in Cairo
Human rights organisations based in Egypt