El Shehab for Human Rights Issues Annual Report-2023 on Egypt’s Human Rights Violations
El Shehab Center for Human Rights (SHR) has issued its annual report for 2023, tackling the situation of human rights in Egypt. The report has revealed multiple violations against political detainees inside Egyptian prisons and detention centers, with the escalation of cases of arbitrary arrest of citizens with no legal basis, as well as other human rights violations.
SHR documented in its annual report the numbers of forcibly disappeared politicians up to 2,465 people, in addition to documentation of the extrajudicial killing of 65 forcibly disappeared persons by state authorities, even though several human rights organizations had documented their forced disappearance before they were declared dead.
The El Shehab Center confirmed that prisoners of conscience and those detained for political reasons in Egypt were subjected to torture, tough and inhumane detention conditions, and were deliberately deprived of health care as punishment for their opposition, which caused deaths during detention.
El Shehab pointed out the absence of adequate medical care in prisons, despite the existence of legal provisions that guarantee the prisoners’ right to health care, which led to the death of 32 detainees during 2023 due to deliberate medical negligence.
SHR also monitored other violations practiced against political detainees, including solitary confinement, prevention of the entry of medicines, denial of visits, and rotation of dozens of detainees in new cases after serving their prison sentences.
In conclusion of the report, the rights center provided several recommendations, calling for allowing independent experts to conduct visits to prisons and places of detention without any restrictions, to determine the detention conditions and ways to access health care in prisons; reducing the numbers of detainees in prison rooms and cells; subjecting prisons and places of detention to supervision by independent bodies; and urging the prosecution to conduct unannounced surprise visits to places of detention.
El Shehab Center called on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release all arbitrary detainees. It also called on the international community to demand development of a mechanism to monitor the human rights situation in Egypt, to be undertaken by the United Nations Human Rights Council.
For its part, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) issued several statements and press releases related to the human rights issue in Egypt during the past year, 2023, that it published on its official website, calling for the immediate release of detainees, putting an end to arbitrary arrests with no legal basis, and allowing detainees and prisoners of conscience access to all prisoners’ rights stipulated in Egyptian law, the Egyptian Prison Authority regulations, and all the international laws signed by Egypt, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- To view the El Shehab Annual Report-2023 on Egypt’s Human Rights Violations – 2023, press here.
- Other specialized reports on violations against certain categories: