Everyone has the right to life-saving interventions during or outside of crises.[ii] And yet, women and girls’ rights to bodily autonomy and safe abortion have been some of the first rights to be conveniently sacrificed under the guise of prioritizing COVID, as if health was a zero-sum game. That includes free, safe and legal abortion and comprehensive abortion and post-abortion care, without which women, girls and gender-non-conforming persons are forced to seek unsafe clandestine abortions or to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, in complete violation of our rights.
Programs: Civil Liberties
EIPR hopes that the prosecution’s decision not to proceed with the referral of Menna Abdel Aziz to trial is a precedent that will be generalized to the rest of sexual violence cases, through the prosecution’s use of its inherent right to suspend investigations or counter-reports that the victim of sexual violence may face once they report the incidents of abuse.
EIPR also warns of the danger of using Article 27 of the Law to Combat Electronic Crimes issued in 2018 to target the same spectrum of non-traditional ideas and trends, under the pretext of “misuse of social media.” Last June as well.
EIPR had previously and repeatedly warned that the precedent of accusations being brought against a victim and survivor of rape and kidnapping sends a clear message to women and girls that reporting sexual assaults they are subjected to, may end up in them being charged as accused and lead them to prison, hindering any community efforts seeking to support women and girls in their quest to recover from the aftermath of sexual violence crimes that they may be exposed to.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) condemns the verdict passed in absentia by the Fifth Circuit of the Criminal Court (terrorism felonies) with 15 years’ imprisonment for Bahey El Din Hassan, founder of Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), and one of the pioneers of Egyptian human rights work throughout its history.
EIPR calls upon the Public Prosecution again to use its authority, and to take the decision best suited for the safety of the victim, Menna Abdel Aziz (Aya), to drop all charges against her and release her immediately, so that she can begin recovering from the psychological and physical effects of the attacks that she was subjected to at the hands of the accused.
The court did not allow the lawyers to obtain the case file and only allowed them to see it quickly, and the case documents did not include any specific publications published by the defendants that would qualify as promoting Shiite doctrine, while the accusation articles included article 98 (f) of the Penal Code known as “contempt of religions” that punishes "promoting extremist ideas that ridicule divinely-revealed religions."
This ruling comes in a broader context of prosecutions and trials for online expression in general, and for religious expression in particular, and includes a wide range of persecuting of unconventional Islamic ideas such as criticism of some of the revered traditional figures of Sunni Islam, or the expression of ideas of non-Sunni Islamic sects such as Shiites, Ahmadiyya and the Quranites, in addition to expressing atheistic ideas or declaring unbelief and criticizing religions.
In a statement yesterday, the Public Prosecution announced the transfer of Menna Abdel Aziz (Aya) to a Ministry of Social Solidarity shelter hosting victims of abus
INCLO calls on police in the USA to adopt clear regulations on the use of force and less-lethal weapons in the context of protest which conform with the recent UN Guidance on Less Lethal Weapons.It is well established that the use of violence by some protesters does not suspend the right to protest of all those gathered and it doesn’t provide a license to escalate police responses and use of excessive or deadly force.
