Until the Last Prisoner: A human rights campaign advocating amnesty for prisoners of conscience in Egypt

Today, marks the launch of a new human rights campaign #TillTheLastPrisoner, which demands the immediate release of all political prisoners who have been held in Egyptian prisons for years. The campaign, initiated by a number of human rights defenders, renews the repeated human rights demand that the files of all political prisoners, without exception and until the very last political prisoner, be immediately handled with integrity and seriousness, according to a set of governing standards, which are:
Justice: That every political prisoner shall have equal and equitable opportunities to have their case examined on objective grounds.
Transparency: That decisions to release prisoners are made according to publicly announced criteria and standards that are known in advance by the detainees, their families, and the community.
Inclusiveness: That decisions to release prisoners include all prisoners who meet the announced criteria and standards, without exception.
Urgency: That this process, unlike previous processes, must be rapid and prompt. It should not take years or an indefinitely prolonged time, adding even more loss – especially in regards to health and human suffering – to the already lost lives of thousands of political prisoners.
Human rights organisations had previously prepared a list of political prisoners, which was submitted to the Presidential Pardon Committee last May. The list was based on an unofficial form provided by the organisations to communicate with families of the detainees. Of the 2,418 cases included in the first list, the committee only responded to 29 cases. The organisations will announce a new list that they will submit to the committee in the coming days.
There remains much to be desired in how the files of political prisoners are handled. Despite the fact that a small number of detainees held in pre-trial detention for years were released in previous weeks, terrorist circuit courts alone have renewed the detention of 4,000 pre-trial detainees. Many other prisoners of conscience continue to be unjustly deprived of their freedom in apparent political retaliation for their peaceful expression of opinions and peaceful conduct of their work, including former parliamentarian Zyad Elelaimy and journalist Hisham Fouad, who have been detained for more than three years. The detention of human rights defender Mohamed El-Baqer, Huda Abdoulmoniem, Ezzat Ghoniem and Alaa Abdelfatah has exceeded 1,000 days while the hunger strike of the latter is approaching 100 days as a result of the arbitrary and disproportionately severe rulings of the Emergency State Security Court. Punitively unjust verdicts from the Emergency State Security Court have arbitrarily deprived many citizens of their freedom including politicians Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, Mohamed al-Qassas, and Moaz al-Sharqawi, at the end of last May. The peaceful expression of opinion continues to be a primary cause of ongoing and recent arrests, including the arrests of journalist Mohamed Fawzy, television host Hala Fahmy, and other journalists, bloggers, social media users, and others. For simply expressing their opinions on social media, media professionals and others have been charged under the same set of repeated and fabricated charges: joining a terrorist group, publishing and broadcasting false news, and misusing social media.
The #TillTheLastPrisoner campaign affirms that the first steps towards reform, and a credible framework in which the seriousness of the national dialogue is guaranteed, lies first in the Egyptian state’s genuine recognition of the illegitimacy of its repressive security policies and practices, committed routinely in violation of fundamental rights and freedoms. To that end, the government must work towards immediately releasing dissidents arrested for merely expressing their opinion. Without these steps, calls for dialogue risk becoming a white washing effort similar to the National Human Rights Strategy launched last September.
The #TillTheLastPrisoner campaign invites families of detainees, activists, local and international human rights organisations, and others to join our efforts in calling for the systemic and inclusive criteria for the release of political prisoners in Egypt.