The BBC made a story recently on politically motivated enforced disappearances in Egypt after the military coup in 2013. The report featured a few cases one of them was a middle aged Egyptian woman who spoke on her daughter named Zubayda who was kidnapped and disappeared by the Egyptian state for over a year. Her testimony brought so much attention and created an uproar in the Egyptian social media sphere to the degree that the Egyptian state had to do something.
This isn't the first time local and international human rights organizations or international media spoke of the phenomenon. When the Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni was disappeared and then killed in Cairo the whole world spoke of the incident for a long time. Local and international human rights organizations have documented and spoke of 1,000s of enforced disappearance cases for the past 4 years.
However, this latest report seemed to disturb the Egyptian state so much to the degree that they eventually forced the young woman Zubaida who was disappeared for a year to come on Egyptian TV and deny that she was arrested and disappeared as the BBC report showed. It was a pathetic set up and it was clear that Zubayda had to do this under so much pressure. Her mother who appeared on the BBC was detained today, Feb 28th, 2018.
The Egyptian general prosecutor ordered lawyers and prosecutors to "Watch and report news and reports made by forces of evil". Pro-Sisi's social media accounts are roaming the internet denying that there is any torture, imprisonment, or enforced disappearances in Egypt.
While there is some spotlight on the situation in Egypt and while the issue is hot, we wanted to remind the international community and those who are confused because they can't get reliable information on what is going in Egypt that there are atrocities being committed in Egypt while the whole world is ignoring us.
We wanted to remind all of you that there was a military coup in July 2013 and that as a result of this tragedy thousands of Egyptians have paid a very high price for standing against injustice. We wanted to remind all of you that there are tens of thousands of unjustly imprisoned men, women, boys, girls, and elders whose only crime was speaking up. Ignoring what is going on in Egypt while you can say something helps the Egyptian state continue to get away with all of this.
We would like to salute all of the local Egyptian human rights organizations and human rights defenders who are working under so much pressure and risking their lives and future by continuing to do this work with very little support and recognition.
We would also like to thank the BBC team and those in HRW and other international organizations for utilizing their privileges and speaking about what is going on in Egypt from time to time.
Please check out our archives on the blog here as well as the following outlets for more related information and detailed reports on enforced disappearances in Egypt after the military coup:
The Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms
Verità per Giulio Regeni
