The Freedom Initiative’s Research Manager, Amr ElAfifi, published an opinion piece in Responsible Statecraft on August 15, 2022, titled Nine years after Rabaa massacre, US still turns blind eye to Egyptian abuses. 

“The administration’s failure to take serious measures to combat these human rights abuses, and call things for what they are, is increasingly a threat not just to Egyptian democracy, but to our own.

Egypt’s reach into American democracy has been through consistent threats to activists, defamation campaigns, and travel bans against the families of dissidents. A recent report by Freedom House found Egypt to be the third-largest aggressor of transnational repression. At the Freedom Initiative, we have documented instances in which US citizens were denied travel back home from Egypt because of their parents’ political activism.

We have also documented incidents in which citizens were surveilled by foreign security operatives and threatened to be physically harmed on U.S. soil. Activists who engage U.S. civil society are also defamed on state-owned channels and, perhaps more urgently, have their family members arrested.”

Read the full article here.

To set up an interview with Research Manager Amr ElAfifi, email [email protected].