President Sisi not welcome

Protesters listen to Samaya Halawa explain about the detention of her brother Ibrahim when he was just 17 exercising his right to protest peacefully against the military coup in August 2013. He is still being held in prison in appalling conditions.

They were participating in a demonstration against the visit of Egyptian dictator Sisi to London on 4th and 5th November 2015 at the invitation of the British prime minister David Cameron.

In his enthusiasm to secure lucrative deals for British multinationals and arms exporters, Cameron is prepared to overlook the human rights abuses of what has become one of the most authoritarian governments in the Middle East.

Sisi's regime has been responsible for the death of hundreds of protesters on the streets, hundreds of disappearances and death sentences, a clampdown on the press and media, trade unions and universities and allowing key Mubarak figures to return to politics and big business.

After disbanding parliament, Sisi's regime decreed that the government could delegate business and construction projects to the military without any tender process and subsequently the Egyptian army has been awarded contracts worth billions of dollars.

Meanwhile anyone who speaks out, whether Islamist or secular, is at risk of arrest or being "disappeared" and currently it is estimated that the country has approximately 40,000 political prisoners.

This is what Human RIghts Watch conclude in their latest country report -

"Egypt’s human rights crisis, the most serious in the country’s modern history, continued unabated throughout 2014. The government consolidated control through constriction of basic freedoms and a stifling campaign of arrests targeting political opponents. Former Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who took office in June, has overseen a reversal of the human rights gains that followed the 2011 uprising. Security forces and an increasingly politicized judiciary—apparently unnerved by rising armed group attacks—invoked national security to muzzle nearly all dissent."

Find out more

About Ibrahim Halawa

www.amnesty.ie/content/egypt-court-try-494-people-over-pr...;

About human rights in Egypt

www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa...

www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/egypt

freedomhouse.org/blog/stopping-egypt-s-downward-spiral-re...

( Freedom House uses one of my photos in its report. )

How to help/join a campaign -

www.facebook.com/FreeIbrahimHalawa/

egyptsolidarityinitiative.org/

To email me for any reason