British-Egyptian activist’s mother continues extreme hunger strike
Laila Soueif, the mother of jailed British-Egyptian writer and human rights activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, announced on May 20th that she has resumed a full hunger strike by refusing her 300-calorie intake she has consumed since late February.
The 69-year-old has engaged in this life-threatening act in continued protest of her son’s detention in Cairo. Abd el-Fattah was arrested after sharing a social media post that exposed reportedly torturous methods used to ensure the death of a fellow prisoner.
According to Middle East Eye, since the beginning of her strike 234 days ago, the-69 year-old has lost 36kg, now weighing 49kg after losing 42% of her original body weight. Soueif was hospitalised on the 149th day of her strike due to critically low blood sugar levels in February.
“I’m going to continue to the end,” Soueif told reporters, “Whether the end is my collapse or Alaa’s release”.
After Abd el-Fattah’s initial arrest in 2019, he was charged by the Supreme State Security Prosecution, charging him with joining a terrorist group that spread misinformation and misuse of social media.
Abd El-Fattah was held in pre-trial detention for two years until he was referred to a new trial on October 10th 2021. The Emergency State Security Court sentenced him to five years of incarceration.
His lawyer, Khaled Ali, stated that the authorities intend to hold Abd el-Fattah in jail until January 3rd 2027, despite the initial sentence being due to end on September 29th 2024.
Soueif has reportedly not eaten food since this date, surviving on liquids such as herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts.
A phone call between the UK prime minister Keir Starmer and the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on February 28th saw Starmer lobbying for Soueif’s son’s release from prison. After this, Soueif engaged in a partial hunger strike, taking a daily 300-calorie liquid nutritional supplement.
On May 20th, however, she refused the supplement and resumed her full-time hunger strike due to the subsequent inaction of the UK government since the Starmer-el Sisi call.
“Nothing has changed, nothing is happening. I am Alaa’s mother; we are Alaa’s family. What actually happens to Alaa is what we care about. We have used up more days than we ever thought we had. We need Alaa released now. We need Alaa with us now. We need Alaa reunited with his son Khaled now,” Soueif said.
“I feel in my heart that when I moved to a partial hunger strike, the urgency was taken out of the situation,” she added. She is now making no concessions and remains resolute in her protest.
Abd el-Fattah is himself pursuing a hunger strike, lasting 81 days without food on May 20th.
Soueif’s physical fragility has not hindered her determination to continue her daily protest outside of London’s Downing Street, in a bid to push Starmer into prioritising her son’s release. “As Alaa puts it, governments are like dinosaurs, they move very slowly.” Soueif commented.
“I’m feeling stronger than I expected to feel at this point. Like any stubborn person, when I’m doing something like this press conference, I feel like I could do anything,” she said.
“I’m almost 90 percent sure that, in the end, Alaa will be free. I’m not at all sure that it’ll be in time to save my health and my life,” she continued.
During a prison visit on May 6th, Soueif was permitted to hug her son for the first time since October. A later visit on May 14th saw restrictions to their contact, with the Egyptian authorities only allowing her to see him through a glass panel.
Soueif also reiterated that this issue not only concerns the release of her son, but was also serves as a commentary on Egypt’s human rights abuses.
Egypt’s prisons have seen an overwhelming increase in captives, since el-Sisi seized power in a 2013 military coup. The estimated prison population in Egypt is 120,000.
Groups fighting for Egyptian rights have claimed that living conditions inside the prisons have worsened dramatically in recent months, with lack of sufficient medical care responsible for an increase in deaths.
Middle East Eye/The Guardian
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