Marking Sisi’s first year as president, HRW issues checklist of human rights violations committed since Morsi’s ouster

Commemorating the one-year anniversary of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s inauguration, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement Sunday lambasting his government for its “erasing of human rights gains,” while castigating the Western states that support him.

In a long checklist of violations committed under interim President Adly Mansour and in the first year of Sisi’s presidency, HRW highlighted legislature outlawing public protests, the murder of more than 1,000 protesters in the aftermath of former President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster, the jailing of more than 41,000 political dissidents, the arrests of journalists, the hundreds of death sentences levied against Islamists — including Morsi — the referral of at least 2,280 civilians to military trial, the deaths of dozens of people in police custody, repeated cases of torture and police brutality, and the forced displacement of civilians in Sinai as part of the “war on terror.”

But HRW also criticized the escalating violence committed by armed Islamist militants over the past two years.

The report said that nearly 2,600 people were killed during the unrest following Morsi’s ouster in the period from 2013-14, citing findings issued by the governmental National Council for Human Rights. These fatalities purportedly included 700 security personnel, 1,250 people identified as Muslim Brotherhood supporters and 550 other civilians.

Furthermore, no member of Egypt's security forces has yet "been held accountable for the mass killings of protesters that followed the military’s July 2013 removal of Mohamed Morsi,” the report continued. While some members of the Egyptian police force have stood trial since July 2013, nearly all have thus far been acquitted by the judiciary.

Since being elected, Sisi has presided "over the flagrant abuse of human rights since taking office a year ago pledging to restore stability,” HRW arcgued.

The "Sisi government is acting as though to restore the stability Egypt needs a dose of repression the likes of which it hasn’t seen for decades, but its treatment is killing the patient,” wrote Joe Stork, HRW's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“What makes it worse is that Western governments that subordinated human rights in their relations with Egypt during the Mubarak era seem ready to repeat their mistake,” Stork added.

HRW castigated the US government and the member states of the European Union (EU) in particular for providing Sisi's regime with military support, political legitimacy and diplomatic acceptance, while turning a blind eye to the increasing rate of human rights abuses in Egypt.

US President Barack "Obama resumed supplying military equipment to Egypt and announced that most military aid would continue, albeit with policy changes, to be implemented later, that would eliminate Egypt’s ability to buy on credit and more strictly define the uses of such aid,” the report claimed.

HRW also criticized those amongst the EU's 28 member states who "have failed to find a collective, firm and principled response to Egypt’s crackdown on dissent and the imprisonment of critical journalists, activists, and political opposition following blatantly unfair trials."

Sisi was sworn in as president on June 8, 2014, relieving Mansour from his year-long interim presidency and allowing him to resume his post as chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court. Mansour took over the presidency on a transitional basis following the military-mandated removal of Morsi from power on July 3, 2013.

Morsi had promoted Sisi to the post of defense minister in August 2012. Sisi accepted this promotion and served in this ministerial capacity under Morsi. The military-led regime later moved to officially classify the Muslim Brotherhood group from which Morsi hailed as a terrorist organization on December 25, 2013.