(Cairo) On hunger strike for six months, Alaa Abdel Fattah, a central figure in the 2011 revolt in Egypt, will stop all calorie intake on Tuesday and will stop drinking water from November 6, at the start of COP27, her sister announced on Monday.
Posted at 1:25 p.m.
“From tomorrow, Alaa will completely stop eating and from November 6, when COP27 opens, he will stop drinking, if nothing is done he will die,” said his sister, Mona Seif, human rights activist in Egypt, on Twitter.
Mr. Abdel Fattah, sentenced at the end of 2021 to five years in prison for “spreading false information”, is a central figure in the popular revolt that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Now a pet peeve of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi’s regime, he has only been swallowing for 6 months “100 calories a day, that is to say a spoon of honey and a little milk in tea”, according to his relatives.
Environmental activist Greta Thunberg said on Twitter that she was in solidarity with “prisoners of conscience in Egypt before COP27”, the UN climate conference which opens on November 6 in Sharm el-Sheikh.
“He is very thin, the last time my mother saw him, he looked like a skeleton,” said Sanaa Seif, Mr. Abdel Fattah’s other sister in London in mid-October during a rally to mark the 200 days of the opponent’s hunger strike and call on the British government to step up its efforts to free him.
Alaa Abdel Fattah obtained British nationality in detention in April, thanks to his British-born mother, Laila Soueif.
Egypt is regularly criticized on human rights with more than 60,000 prisoners of conscience behind bars, according to NGOs.
Human Rights Watch had criticized the organization in Egypt of the COP27, which it described as a “reward for the repressive power” of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.