Prominent Egyptian activist Alaa Abdelfatah has resumed drinking water days after he stepped up the hunger strike he began more than 200 days ago to demand his release, according to his family, who said they have received proof that he is alive in prison.
«I am so relieved. We just received a note from prison delivered to my mother. Alaa is alive, it says he has been drinking water since November 12,» said Sanaa Seif, Abdelfatá’s sister and also an activist.
«He says he will say more when he can. It’s definitely his handwriting. Proof of life at last. Why have they held this for two days?» the woman has wondered through a message posted on her account on the social network Twitter.
Abdelfatá stopped drinking water on November 6 to put pressure on the authorities for her release, coinciding with the start of the (COP27). Days later, Cairo indicated that he had undergone a «medical intervention» and assured that he was in good health.
In this context, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, last week called for the «immediate» release of Abdelfatá, an important Egyptian blogger and one of the main figures of the popular uprising against Hosni Mubarak in 2011 in the framework of the ‘Arab Spring’.
The activist has been in prison for nine years and in 2021 was sentenced to another five-year jail term for «spreading false news», charges that various NGOs have called trumped up.
The current Egyptian president, Abdelfatá al Sisi, came to power in a coup in July 2013 which he led after a series of mass demonstrations against the then president, the Islamist Mohamed Mursi, the first democratically elected president in the country and who died in 2019 during a court hearing against him following his arrest after the uprising.
The leader has promoted a broad campaign of repression and persecution against opponents, both liberal groups and Islamist organizations – going so far as to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization – an initiative that human rights groups have denounced as the most serious in recent times.
