A British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist has said he will escalate his hunger strike inside a desert prison, raising concerns he could die while British officials attend the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a figurehead of Egypt’s 2011 uprising and one of the Middle East’s best-known political prisoners, has spent most of the past decade behind bars. Shortly after gaining British citizenship while in detention last year, he was sentenced to a further five years in a high-security prison on charges of “spreading false news” for sharing a social media post about torture.
The 40-year-old writer and activist, once branded “synonymous with [Egypt’s] revolution” by domestic media, has been on a prolonged hunger strike since April in protest at his detention conditions, demanding freedom for himself as well as other political prisoners.
Originally taking only water and salts, Abd El-Fattah switched to a partial hunger strike of 100 calories a day in May after prison authorities relocated him to a different detention facility. He has maintained this hunger strike for more than six months and warned his family in early September that he could die in prison.
In a letter from prison released on Monday, the 213th day of his hunger strike, Abd El-Fattah wrote to his mother, the activist Laila Soueif, saying: “Today is the last day that I will take a hot drink, or rather, since I’ll count the days from when the lights come on at 10am – tomorrow, Tuesday, just before the lights come on, I will drink my last cup of tea in prison.”
He added that he would cease drinking water five days later, the day Cop27 begins in the southern Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. “After five days, when the lights come on on Sunday 6 November, I shall drink my last glass of water. What will follow is unknown,” he said.
News of Abd El-Fattah’s escalation sparked a call to action by his family, demanding that British government officials act immediately to prevent him dying in prison. Last week, a coalition of 64 MPs and peers signed a letter demanding that the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, take urgent action on Abd El-Fattah’s case. “We write now to ask for urgency. Alaa’s life is at serious risk,” they wrote.
The last-minute decision by the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, to attend Cop27 after previously having said he would be unable to go to Egypt due to “pressing domestic issues” has raised the stakes for Abd El-Fattah’s case. The prospect that top-level British officials will be in Sharm el-Sheikh while a British national’s life is at risk in an Egyptian prison raises a potential challenge for Sunak and his government.
“We are working hard to secure Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s release and we continue to raise his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government,” a Foreign Office spokesperson told the Guardian.
Earlier this week, the majority of living Nobel prize for literature laureates published an open letter calling on heads of state, climate ministers, envoy heads and negotiators attending Cop27 to help free political prisoners in the country, including Abd El-Fattah.
“Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s powerful voice for democracy is close to being extinguished,” they warned, asking leaders to mention him in their addresses to the conference.
Observers have grown increasingly concerned about Egypt’s crackdown on protest and civil rights in tandem with their hosting duties. Days before the conference, an Indian climate activist was detained by security forces when he walked through the outlying streets of Cairo holding a sign that said “March for our planet”.
Rights groups reported this week that hundreds of people were detained across Egypt over demands on social media for citizens to protest concerning the country’s deepening economic crisis. Protesters who do attend the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh will probably find themselves confined to a government-sanctioned area for demonstrations far into the desert, away from the conference centre.
In London, Abd El-Fattah’s youngest sister, Sanaa Seif, maintained a sit-in outside the Foreign Office in London, which she began two weeks ago to demand that Cleverly speak publicly and demand her brother’s release. There has been little outward sign that he has engaged with the issue. Seif said earlier this week that she intends to fly to Cop27 as an observer.
Other family members have pointed out that Abd El-Fattah’s decision to stop drinking water will probably shorten the window in which British officials could act to save him.
“This means if there is no urgent action, Alaa will die before the end of the climate summit,” said Mona Seif, another of Abd El-Fattah’s sisters.
