In solidarity with the detainees and their families, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) launched today the Detainees Registry website to commemorate Human Rights Day. The website features the profiles of 100 detainees in Egypt including politicians, human rights defenders, lawyers, and journalists. The website aims to provide detailed information about their imprisonment conditions for those concerned with detainees’ rights in Egypt.
The Detainee’s Registry is evidence of the extent to which the Egyptian authorities oppress society members from different backgrounds. It documents the authorities’ excessive use of detention to muzzle individuals engaging with political, social and economic issues.
Imprisonment is being used as a tool of revenge from individuals expressing any sort of peaceful opposition. The practice has extended beyond critics to include their loved ones who are being used to pressure the former to silence. The Detainees Registry aims to document the current context where arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, prolonged pretrial detention, which exceeds the legal maximum period of two years, are widely used.
The ECRF understands that the featured 100 profiles might not represent all the detainees; however, through these profiles, ECRF tries to highlight the authorities’ patterns of targeting individuals, the charges used against them, and the violations they are subjected to. ECRF hopes that this will open the floor to shed light on thousands of detainees, their imprisonment conditions, and legal situation.
The Detainees Registry cites legal sources, human rights organisations, media and, of course, ECRF’s archive which includes its primary documentation. It categorises the detainees into 10 categories which are: journalists, lawyers, syndicalists, political activists and parties’ members, workers, students, artists, victims of moral guardianship, relatives of political detainees, and others.