Egyptian journalist Ashraf Omar arrested: the German state is complicit

In the early hours of July 22, Egyptian journalist Ashraf Omar was arrested in Cairo and taken to an as yet unknown location. According to the news channel “Al-Manassa”, Omar’s wife reported that security forces searched the house, arrested Omar blindfolded and confiscated his phone, computer and a sum of money.

The arrest of Ashraf Omar is a scandal and we demand his immediate release!

Omar’s arrest is not an isolated case. The Egyptian state apparatus is notorious for arbitrarily arresting, torturing and even killing journalists and critical voices. The Egyptian state tries to silence oppositionists through draconian measures. In the last nine months, this has increasingly affected those in solidarity with Palestine. The regime has arrested countless people for taking to the streets for Palestine or declaring their solidarity.

The military dictatorship of Abdelfattah el Sisi has ruled Egypt since 2013. Sisi came to power through a coup against the first freely elected president in Egypt’s history, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammad Morsi. Since then, a brutal dictatorship has ruled that has forced countless Egyptian opposition figures, from socialists to Muslim Brotherhood members, into exile. In addition to political oppression, the economic situation for the country’s impoverished masses is also steadily deteriorating.

Support for the military dictatorship from Berlin and Brussels

The German state is an active supporter of the Egyptian military dictatorship. In 2021, the German government sent weapons worth over four billion euros to Egypt, almost half of the total amount of arms deliveries abroad.

In March 2024, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi signed an eight billion dollar “aid package”. Just a few weeks earlier, Egypt had made a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue loan, also worth $8 billion: “The deal with the IMF is linked to economic reforms, which included the liberalization of the exchange rate of the Egyptian pound and a sharp increase in the key interest rate.”

These agreements must be viewed in the context of the genocide in Gaza, for which the EU is complicit. Germany increased its arms exports to Israel tenfold last year and needs Egypt to block the Rafah border and approve the genocide in Gaza.

While EU states like Germany unconditionally support the Israeli state due to their imperialist interests, even when it commits genocide, the EU and especially German imperialism, as the largest player in the EU, fears a destabilization of the region, which could lead to Palestinians fleeing to Europe. Israel continues to bomb Gaza, slaughtering over 40,000 Palestinian men, women and children, while over a million people have sought refuge in Rafah on the border with Egypt.

The EU’s hypocrisy should come as no surprise. In its imperialist logic, the EU fails to reach the only viable solution to stop the ongoing causes of destabilization: an end to all economic, political and military support for the settler colony of Israel. Instead, the EU continues to seal its borders as before to prevent the same refugees from fleeing the bombs that EU member states themselves supplied to Israel, while supporting the brutal military dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el Sisi. The Egyptian regime plays an important role as a vassal of Western imperialism in the region.

For the EU’s economic and political interests are the basis of cooperation with dictatorships like Egypt. The talk about “human rights” is merely lip service and serves as a liberal facade for the brutal policy of “contain[ing] refugees,” whether from Palestine or Sudan, and condoning genocide.

Freedom for Ashraf Omar and all political prisoners

The German support for the military dictatorship of el Sisi only brings about further state arbitrariness, destabilization and oppression.

We demand the immediate release of the journalist Ashraf Omar and the more than 60,000 political prisoners in Egyptian prisons.

In Germany and other Western nations socialists must scandalize and challenge the cooperation of the German state with the regime of Al-Sisi. Because a weakening of the ruling class in the West is a weakening of the ruling class internationally, including in Egypt!

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