Hunger Strike for Imprisoned Alaa Eladly

On August 18, 59-year-old Alaa Eladly, an Egyptian national living in Germany, was arrested at Cairo Airport.

The accusation? “Spreading False News”. The military dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el Sisi is known to use such fabricated accusations against political prisoners. Over 60,000 political prisoners have been held in Egyptian jails on similar charges of “spreading false news” or “membership of a banned organization” since the 2013 el-Sisi coup.

 

Alaa Eladly’s daughter, Fagr Eladly, who has both German and Egyptian citizenship, is a well-known critic of the regime. Fagr Eladly and her family hold that Alaa Eladly was arrested for his daughter’s political work in Germany. Through the collective punishment of arresting the family members of regime critics the Egyptian state is trying to silence people in the opposition outside of Egypt. 

A few days after her father’s arrest Fagr Eladly also flew to Egypt, despite the risks of arrest, to campaign for her father’s release. Fagr Eladly has been on a hunger strike in front of the German embassy in Cairo for four days now. 

Fagr Eladly announced on Twitter that her father is also now on a hunger strike. The imprisoned regime critic Hisham Kassem is currently on a hunger strike.

At the end of August, a rally in solidarity with Alaa Eladly took place in front of the Egyptian consulate in Frankfurt am Main.

The Sisi dictatorship continues to lose its image abroad, despite the intensive cooperation between the German state and the European Union with Egypt.

The solidarity campaign with Alaa Eladly or similar ones such as with the still imprisoned regime critic Alaa Abdel Fattah or the released activist Patrick Zaki, can be focal points abroad to draw attention to the disastrous political situation under the military dictatorship and at the same time to expand the struggle for the release of all political prisoners.