Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (on right) and her husband join protest to demand freedom for Alaa Abd el-Fattah
Jailed Egyptian democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, whose profile rose during COP27 because the summit was in Egypt and he is a UK citizen, is still alive. His family has finally been allowed to see him, and reports his hunger strike was broken by the regime, which forced him to take intravenous fluids. They revealed many harrowing new details of the most recent period of his decade behind bars.
There are over 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt’s jails.
The UK labour movement should champion Abd el-Fattah’s release as part of renewed solidarity with the working class in Egypt, which is a big target of the state’s repression.
The UK government is disinclined to challenge an important ally and trading partner, even over the life of one of its citizens. When a reporter at COP27 asked Rishi Sunak about Abd el-Fattah’s case, he literally ran away.
This is part of a wider trend, of the UK abandoning or repudiating citizens found inconvenient for different reasons (while it degrades the rights of much wider layers of citizens at home in various ways).
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British Iranian held in Iran 2016-22 and not well served by Boris Johnson as foreign secretary or prime minister, has raised this issue recently both at a protest demanding freedom for Abd el-Fattah and one demanding freedom for Jagtar Singh Johal.
Johal is a British citizen, a supporter of Sikh-Punjabi separatist politics, being held and tortured by the far-right government in India. Instead of championing his rights, the Tories have effectively collaborated with the Modi regime over the case. They tried to extradite three other British Sikhs, the “West Midland Three”, to India, but were blocked by the courts.
Then there is Shamima Begum, the former Daesh supporter whose case is currently being heard by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. Although Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s activism seems good to us, and Begum’s extremely bad, there are common issues.
The UK government has stripped Begum of citizenship. It argues she should go to her ancestral homeland Bangladesh, where she has never lived, even though the Bangladeshi government says she is not welcome and could face the death penalty (for her association with Islamist terrorism, of which Bangladesh has decades-long experience).
Instances of “deprivation of citizenship” have surged, from none for many years before 2006 to 148 in 2017, 73 in 2018, 82 in 2019 and 42 in 2020. Last year’s Nationality and Borders Bill strengthened the government’s powers of deprivation. And research by the New Statesman found that while 5% of white UK citizens could be at risk from the new powers, the figure for ethnic minorities was 41%, including a majority of South Asians.