A decade after Egyptian security forces led by then-Deputy Prime Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi massacred over 1,000 people protesting the general's 2013 military coup, a rights group on Friday released a report decrying the Biden administration's failure to support human rights in the key Middle Eastern ally.
The Human Rights First report asserts that "local activists say the United States government has failed human rights defenders in Egypt for the last 10 years."
"I don't feel the U.S. has in any way done enough to support human rights in Egypt since the Rabaa massacre."
Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian-American human rights defender featured in the report who was jailed for three years after the 2013 coup, said that "I don't feel the U.S. has in any way done enough to support human rights in Egypt since the Rabaa massacre."
Hijazi asserted that the Biden administration, Congress, and the U.S. media have failed Egyptians being repressed under el-Sisi.
"Rabaa was the worst massacre in modern Egyptian history and in no way has it got the attention it deserved," she said. "I read somewhere the numbers are equivalent to the Tiananmen Square massacre and yet within American common knowledge almost everyone knows about Tiananmen Square and almost no one knows about Rabaa," she added, referring to the deadly 1989 Chinese government crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in central Beijing.
Brian Dooley, a senior adviser at Human Rights First and the report's author, said in a statement that "as they struggle to stay out of prison for their defense of human rights, Egyptian activists know that the United States is not keeping its promise to support human rights in Egypt."
"The U.S government has a legacy of ignoring human rights in allied countries like Egypt, and contrary to campaign promises, the Biden administration has not meaningfully changed the U.S. approach of providing military and political support to President Sisi's brutal and dictatorial regime," Dooley added.
The report offers recommendations from Egyptian activists on how the U.S. government can support human rights in the country, which is allocated $1.3 billion in annual military assistance from Washington. Of that amount, more than $300 million is subject to human rights certification. Last year, the Biden administration refused $130 million of the designated aid on human rights grounds, even as the U.S. State Department approved a sprawling $2.5 billion arms sale.
"The U.S government has a legacy of ignoring human rights in allied countries like Egypt."
On Thursday, a group of 11 U.S. House Democrats led by Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking the Biden administration to withhold $320 million in foreign military assistance meant for Egypt. Their request comes weeks after 11 U.S. senators—10 Democrats plus Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders—also called on Biden to hold back the military aid "absent improvements on human rights," a demand previously made by dozens of advocacy groups.
The senators' letter states that the Egyptian government "has not only failed to investigate allegations of human rights abuses, it has also continued to commit 'significant human rights' violations such as extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearance; torture and life-threatening prison conditions; and severe restrictions on freedoms of expression, assembly, and association as documented in the State Department's latest human rights report."
"The Egyptian government's track record on these criteria has not improved," the senators noted, adding that el-Sisi's administration "has detained supporters and family members of a challenger" while forcing NGOs "to register under a draconian law that prohibits any activities it deems political."
