The land of Egypt is synonymous with those immortal Pyramids, the Nile and magnificent temples in Luxor. It is also a country ruled by a cruel and ruthless dictatorship where even writing this letter in the Egyptian press could see me dragged away in the middle of the night to an interrogation centre by the secret police and charged before a military tribunal with “activities endangering the State” or “acts of terrorism”.
The veracity of what you are about to read can be checked at https://www.amnesty.org.uk/urgent-actions.
Oqba Hashad has been arbitrarily detained without trial for almost five years solely for his brother’s human rights activism. Security forces subjected him to enforced disappearance for 77 days during which they tortured him by means of severe beatings, electric shocks and suspension in contorted positions.
The authorities in Wadi Al-Natroun prison continue to deny Hashad a replacement for his prosthetic leg, which broke in August of last year. Although his family has begged them for the broken one so that it can be taken for repair, their repeated requests have fallen on deaf ears.
Egyptian security forces on duty in Cairo. File photo: AFPLife inside that prison cell must already be unbearable on two legs, let alone one. These same authorities also refuse to provide the medicine and antiseptics needed for his stump care. How can people be so cruel?
Indeed, we often take so many things for granted on this island, including our right to peaceful freedom of expression (or maybe we shouldn’t). And, yet, so many human beings living under totalitarian regimes are deprived of their liberty in inhumane conditions simply for speaking out against injustice and oppression. Some even pay with their lives.
While hoping that the Egyptian embassy in Malta sets eyes on this letter and is moved to intervene with the powers-that-be so that Hashad can have his prosthetic leg back, I appeal to readers of goodwill to spare a thought and perhaps a prayer for people like Hashad.
MARTIN BUGEJA – Balzan