UN to discuss Egypt's human rights record

Head of the Egyptian Human Rights Council Abdel-Ghaffar Shokr said that the UN Human Rights Council will discuss three reports about Egypt on November 5, the Anadolu Agency reported.

Shokr said the three reports cover the human rights situation in Egypt for the last four years. One of them, he said, was issued by the Egyptian Human Rights Council, the other by the Egyptian government and the third by a group of independent Egyptian organisations.

“After the discussion of the human rights situation in Egypt in the previous four years,” he said, “discussion will be opened to the organisations and states.”

The consortium of the independent Egyptian human rights organisations, which consists of 19 organisations, issued a joint report yesterday explaining the human rights situation in Egypt over the past four years.

According to the joint report, Egypt has witnessed a “huge deterioration of human rights and failed to lessen violations and work on guaranteeing the rights which need political, security, economic, social and judicial change”.

In the report, the organisations said: “As a result of the violent repression, carried out by the security services, especially dispersing protests and demonstrations, using lethal weapons heavily and disproportionately, human rights were exposed to flagrant violation and thousands were killed.”

“The consecutive governments have not succeeded in putting an end to the violations of people’s right to live, which has been practiced against the army and the civilians by the terrorist groups that started in Sinai and expanded to other Egyptian cities, including Cairo and claimed hundreds of lives.”

Meanwhile, the government committee which is taking part in the periodical human rights review is holding a meeting headed by the Justice Minister Ibrahim Al-Henedi to review the latest formula that Egypt would use in response to the accusations.