Yesterday, November 18, is the birthday of blogger and political activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who turns forty under inhuman conditions in prison, to say the least.
– Alaa, who is prevented from communicating with the world, from books and newspapers to answers, which is the only way for his family to reassure him, they restrict him to take them out, and he is prevented from exercising, and his mother and two sisters, Sana and Mona Seif, were arrested, and his entire family paid the price for his adherence to his principles.
Alaa was born in 1981 and began his political activity at the beginning of the second millennium. He was one of the most important political activists and bloggers before the revolution, and he and his generation were direct partners in the January 25, 2011 revolution.
– Alaa, and because of his technical knowledge of the Internet by virtue of his work as a programmer and because of his early activity in blogging on the Internet, he was very important to the political movement and blogging to the extent that he was called “our father who blogs.”
– Every year and you are good, Alaa, and we hope your suffering ends and you go out to your family and your life as soon as possible, and the least we can do is that we celebrate Alaa and his steadfastness in all these circumstances.
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Seif’s family has been a political family par excellence, since the seventies, with a clear political activity in the field of human rights and civil society, so it was natural for Alaa to be a politicized person who understood the importance of democracy for a country like Egypt.
Alaa was arrested for the first time in May 2006 after a peaceful protest to demand the independence of the judiciary during Mubarak’s days, and he was imprisoned for 45 days before he appeared again to complete his political activity.
– After the revolution in October 2011 and after the events of Masibro, in which 25 Coptic Egyptians were martyred under the wheels of tanks during the military council period, Alaa was arrested again and transferred to a military court, but he refused to make any statements and then turned to the State Security Court to see after the investigative judge’s decision on December 25, 2011.
During the Brotherhood period, an arrest warrant was issued against him and a travel ban on charges of inciting against state institutions in March 2012, but he was released on the same day.
During the transitional period of President Adly Mansour, Alaa was arrested on November 28, 2013 on charges of inciting demonstrations, after beating him and his wife during arrest.
On February 23, 2015, the court issued a sentence to Alaa of 5 years in prison, with police supervision, in which he spends 12 hours a day in the police station.
– Alaa was released in March 2019 after completing five years, and was subject to police supervision, whose life literally stood like prison and every day he was required 12 hours to make them sit in the department, including insults and intransigence that happened to him from the warden and officers more than once.
– But after the events of September 2019 he was arrested again and accused of belonging to a terrorist group, and he was placed in the Scorpion 2 high-security prison, which he is still in until now, despite the end of his legal pretrial detention period.
– Alaa was exposed in his prison to all kinds of intransigence, fabrication and injustice, and he pays a very high price with his life because of his peaceful political activity.
From 2011 until today, Alaa has been imprisoned for about 2,660 days, which means about 7 years and 4 months out of the ten years that passed since the January revolution.
During this period, he was always coherent, but because of the latter’s intransigence, he threatened to commit suicide.
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Alaa Zeyeh, like many of the revolution’s youth, is paying the price of the current regime’s hostility to everything related to January 25, despite the current constitution recognizing this revolution, and he is awaiting sentencing on December 20, who came with Muhammad Baqir, Muhammad al-Qassas and Muhammad Oxygen in another fabricated case.
– Alaa Embarh On his birthday, the Court of Cassation upheld the Cairo Criminal Court’s decision issued last November, including: the head of the Strong Egypt Party, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, and his deputy, Muhammad al-Qassas and others, on the lists of terrorists, after their appeals against the decision were rejected.
Alaa published a book for him in English for a short period in London entitled “You are not defeated yet.” Its introduction was written by journalist and economic thinker Naomi Klein. The book is a collection of letters, letters, ideas and articles that Alaa wrote in prison and evaded through his family.
In one letter, Alaa says, “Bodies, movements, and the natural world are capable of regeneration, even if past losses and wounds mean that they will regenerate into something different, more scarred, and less perfect from a traditional perspective. We have to be ready to become a kind of freak, new and more beautiful, for the monstrosity alone bears the history of dream and hope and the reality of defeat and pain together.”
– Alaa is like any person who has been exposed to politics and the field is right, it will be your definite right that you disagree with some or all of his positions, but it is not worth denying his persistence and struggle over the past years.
– All the love and support for Alaa Abdel-Fattah and all the political detainees, and we wish his next birthday to be in the arms of his son and his family.
– Every year and you are good and free, Alaa.
