Egypt launches portal to ‘correct’ understanding of human rights

Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) has launched a portal providing information it says promotes a correct understanding of human rights.

The SIS has said it will use the portal to challenge attempts at politicising human rights in Egypt and respond to suspicious organisations trying to exploit human rights issues, according to Asharq Al-Awsat.

Since Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi assumed power in 2014 Egypt has carried out sweeping human rights abuses aimed at silencing any opposition to the current regime.

The Arab Organisation for Human Rights has said that up to 3,185 civilians have been killed extrajudicially by Egyptian security forces since the July 2013 coup.

Egypt has handed out an unprecedented number of death sentences – over 2,500 since 2014, hundreds of them for political violence, according to Human Rights Watch.

READ: Egypt arrests founder of pro-Mubarak Facebook page

In North Sinai the Egyptian Army has killed over 4,000 people including children and displaced thousands more, demolishing their homes without offering alternative accommodation.

Despite the fact that these rights abuses are widely documented the Egyptian government has attempted to discredit them.

In June the SIS said that “Human Rights Watch has routinely fabricated lies about the human rights situation in Egypt.”

It has said that the BBC “promotes the lies of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group” and that Amnesty International’s statement on the torture of children in Egypt “is not based on tangible evidence and lacks accuracy.”

READ: Rights group calls for international investigation into Sisi regime

In March Egyptian authorities responded to a US State Department report on human rights saying it was “not objective.”

Earlier this year Al-Sisi defended his human rights record and said that Europe should not lecture the Arab world: “You are not going to teach us about humanity.”

“We have our own sense of humanity, values and ethics, and you have your own idea of humanity and ethics, and we respect it. Respect our values and ethics, as we do yours.”