Egypt: Poet Galal El-Behairy is at risk after 80 days on hunger strike
Image: Courtesy of Galal El-Behairy’s family
25 May: PEN International raises serious concerns about the health of imprisoned Egyptian poet and lyricist Galal El-Behairy after 80 days on hunger strike. Earlier in May 2023, PEN International received a message from El-Behairy announcing that he will escalate his hunger strike on 1 June 2023, refusing to take fluids, in protest against his continued unjust detention. This follows a message PEN International received from El-Behairy in February, announcing that he would begin a hunger strike on 5 March, the fifth anniversary of his arrest.
Despite fully serving an unjust 3 year sentence by a military court in July 2021, Egyptian prosecutors subsequently brought forth additional fabricated charges against El-Behairy, leading to his continued arbitrary pre-trial detention. El-Behairy’s health has significantly deteriorated due to torture and inhumane detention conditions over five years of imprisonment, and he has reportedly lost considerable weight since he began striking in March 2023.
PEN International believes that El-Behairy is being targeted for his writings, which are critical of the Egyptian authorities. The organisation believes that El-Behairy's life is at grave risk, and holds the Egyptian authorities responsible for El-Behairy's physical and psychological health and well-being, and Egypt’s General Prosecutor Hamada El-Sawy, for his unfair imprisonment. PEN International calls on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release El-Behairy and drop all charges against him, and to ensure that he receives urgent and adequate medical care, pending his release.
TAKE ACTION
Advocacy
Please send appeals to the Egyptian authorities, urging them to:
Release Galal El-Behairy immediately and unconditionally
Drop all charges against him;
Ensure that, pending his release, he is held in conditions that meet international standards for the treatment of prisoners, including by providing urgent access to adequate health care and regular communication with his family and lawyers.
Send appeals to:
· Hamada El-Sawy
Role: Head of Egypt’s Public Prosecutor
Email: m.office@ppo.gov.eg
WhatsApp: +201111755959
· Abdel Fattah El Sisi
Role: President of Egypt
Email: p.spokesman@op.gov.eg
Send copies to the Egyptian Embassy in your own country. Embassy addresses may be found here: https://www.embassypages.com/egypt
Please reach out to your Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic representatives in Egypt, calling on them to raise the case of Galal El-Behairy with the Egyptian authorities and at bilateral fora.
***Please send appeals immediately. Check with PEN International if sending appeals after 30 June 2023. ***
Solidarity
Please send messages of solidarity to Galal El-Behairy through English PEN’s PENWrites Campaign.
Social Media
PEN members are encouraged to:
Take part in a Twitter storm on Thursday,1 June 2023 – between 12 and 3 pm Egypt time / 10 am and 1 pm UK time, targeting:
o Egypt’s Public Prosecutor’s Office: @EgyptianPPO
o The President of Egypt: @AlsisiOfficial
o Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: @MfaEgypt
Sample messages are available here.
Outreach
Publish articles and opinion pieces in your national or local press highlighting the case of Galal El-Behairy and the state of freedom of expression in Egypt;
Share information about Galal El-Behairy and your campaigning activities via social media. Don’t forget to add #FreeGalal.
Please keep PEN International informed of your solidarity actions.
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Galal El-Behairy, an Egyptian poet and lyricist, has been unjustly held since 5 March 2018 and has reportedly been tortured and beaten while in detention. He initially faced charges of ‘joining a terrorist group’, ‘disseminating false news’, and ‘insulting the President’ for lyrics he had written for the song Balaha, which was performed and disseminated online by exiled Egyptian singer Ramy Essam. The case was eventually dropped, but the authorities continued to detain him.
In a separate case, on 31 July 2018, El-Behairy was sentenced to three years imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 Egyptian Pounds by a military court on charges of ‘disseminating false news and rumours by writing a book containing false news and statements about the Egyptian armed forces’, and ‘insulting the Egyptian army by issuing a book containing phrases that offend the Egyptian army’. The sentence related to his book of poetry, The Finest Women on Earth, which challenged the official narrative around the Egyptian military and its relation to politics. Later, the Court confirmed the three-year sentence at the appeal stage and dropped the fine.
In July 2021, El-Behairy completed his three-year prison term. However, rather than being released, he was subjected to enforced disappearance for three weeks before being charged with ‘disseminating false news’ and ‘joining a terrorist group’ by the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) in case no:2000/2021. The SSSP is notorious for bringing additional charges against prisonnotorious ers of conscience to keep them in arbitrary pre-trial detention for prolonged periods. Along with other detainees, El-Behairy joined a collective hunger strike for several weeks in February 2022 to protest their arbitrary detention. However, demands to end his ordeal were ignored.
In April 2022, President Abdelfattah Al-Sisi called for political dialogue, addressing the human rights situation in the country and reactivating the ‘Presidential Amnesty Committee’. The Committee was initially formed in 2016 to consider cases of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. However, over a year later, thousands of Egyptians remain arbitrarily imprisoned due to their legitimate practice of the right to freedom of expression. The authorities have imposed severe restrictions on freedom of expression, including on press freedom and social media: PEN International has documented numerous cases of writers, poets, journalists, and bloggers whom the Egyptian authorities have arrested for peacefully expressing their opinions. Many of them face discriminatory treatment in jail, including denial of reading and writing materials, restrictions or total denial of in-person family visits, refusal of opportunity to exercise outside their cells, and denial of many other legal rights guaranteed to prisoners under Egyptian law.
PEN International calls on the Egyptian authorities to urgently and unconditionally release the many writers who remain detained in violation of their right to freedom of expression.
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Against the life of coercion and the prison’s grave
Against the colours of the cell’s walls
Against the iron’s logic
Against the sensation of the sun behind bars and the wires
Against the prison’s uniform and food
Against the shining lights in my cell 24/7
Against the 20 minutes of the allowed time for the prison visit
Against the ban on pens and papers
Against the ban on lighters
Against the ban on all colours but white[1]… the ban on white[2]
Against 1912 nights in which I only saw the moon once, and by chance
Against every dream that dies over time and joins all my wasted dreams. Dreams of love, a home, establishing a family, fatherhood in my thirties, being beside my little sister in every hard step she takes in the sea of life, my dance with her on her big night, being there for my mom and dad as they are slowly devoured by time
Against myself, against every day I get away from the human inside, and become a concrete thing, in a concrete place, under a concrete law[3]
Against all this, and to save what is left, on the 1 of June, I will start a life strike to regain my life back.[4]
[1] Here El-Behairy refers to the colour of prisoners' uniform who are being held in pre-trial detention, and to his own experience of that.
[2] Referring to the idea and principle of goodness.
[3] Against myself, against every day I get away from the human inside [me], and become a concrete [cement] thing in a concrete [cement] place, under a concrete [rigid] law.
[4] Against all this, and to save what is left, on the 1 of June, I will start a life strike [escalate my hunger strike] to gain my life back.
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For more information about Galal El-Behairy – please click here.
To read Galal El-Behairy’s latest poem, please click here.
Please click here to see writers and artists reading El-Behairy’s February message.
For further details please contact Mina Thabet, Head of the MENA Region, at PEN International, email: Mina.Thabet@pen-international.org