Arabic Network for Humans Rights Information suspends activities after receiving ‘unofficial message’

The Arabic Network for Humans Rights Information will suspend all activities after 18 years of producing work relating to rights and freedom of expression, the organization announced in a statement on Monday.

ANHRI director Gamal Eid told Mada Masr that he took the decision after receiving an "unofficial message" indirectly delivered via employees of the Social Solidarity Ministry to the effect that ANHRI, which has been active since 2004, will not be officially granted license to register as an NGO unless it changes its name and ceases to address prison conditions and matters relating to freedom of thought and expression.

Eid said that he and two other former employees of ANHRI will continue their work as independent lawyers.

ANHRI had begun the process of registering with the ministry, despite what Eid described as misgivings about the new NGO law, though Eid said he faced difficulties that made registration seem impossible. 

Among these hurdles, aside from the injunction to alter the organization’s work, is the fact that Eid is still subject to a travel ban and asset freeze as he remains under investigation in the 11-year long probe into several NGOs accused of receiving illicit foreign funding. “We will not become a complicit organization or a ‘GNGO,’” Eid said.

The judge presiding over the investigation dropped nearly 100 organizations from the case in recent months, while high-profile figures associated with the groups have seen travel bans and asset freezes lifted.

Eid told Mada Masr that he believed that “the serious and most independent” organizations were deliberately kept under investigation, adding that ANHRI, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, and the Cairo Institute For Human Rights Studies “will not be allowed to work.”

Since its inception in 2004, ANHRI has contributed to producing information and campaigning to raise awareness around security incidents affecting many journalists and writers in Egypt and the Arab world and to building an archive of information around the human rights movement, as well as preparing several initiatives to promote reform of the police apparatus. ANHRI also launched publications such as Katib blogging platform, Wasla newspaper and Katib, a website that was blocked nine hours after launching.