Rights Organizations Condemn Coup Repression, Arrest of 21 Girls in Alexandria

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression condemned the arrest of 21 girls, aged between 15 and 22 years – including 12 minors – as they tried to form a human chain on the Corniche in Alexandria last Thursday, their detention for 15 days pending investigation and the outright rejection of an appeal made by the girls’ lawyer against the detention decision.

Coup security forces arrested the 21 girls and transported them over to the Security Directorate of Alexandria, where they appeared before the Public Prosecution. The prosecutor charged them with the crimes of being members of the Muslim Brotherhood, ‘a group which works against the provisions of law’, promotion verbally and in writing of said group’s purposes, possession and making of printed materials, massing in public places, belligerence, disrupting public transport and damaging ‘movables’.

Asmaa Ali, Media Spokesperson for the "7 AM" movement, said that a human chain was to be held as a peaceful protest activity in the perimeter of Stanley Bridge (at the sea front in Alexandria).

As soon as the girls arrived around the bridge to form the human chain, coup security forces ambushed them, arresting 22 people, Asmaa Ali went on. The prosecutor decided to detain these girls for 15 days pending investigations, putting 12 underage girls in the Defense Care Home in Mahram Bec district, and transferring the adults to Damanhur Women’s Prison, away from Alexandria.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression completely rejected these practices, “which do not differ from the repressive practices of the authorities in the decades before the January 25 Revolution”.

This incident comes amid continued widespread violations by the coup security forces of freedom of expression and the right of peaceful assembly and demonstration. The rights organizations affirmed that the right to demonstrate and organize peaceful gatherings is an inherent right of every citizen that cannot be curbed and that they find most unacceptable such repression against protesters, especially women who have fought long against all practices intended to exclude them from the political sphere through intimidation, terror and direct targeting, which are the same persecution practices seen in the latest incident of arrests and detentions in Alexandria.