21 May 2010 - 16 Mar 2017
On June 6, a pair of police officers entered an Alexandria Internet cafe and began asking for the identification documents of everyone present. When 28-year-old Khaled Said objected to being searched without a warrant, the officers began to attack him, beating his head against a table and kicking him in the chest.
(13 June, 2010)- The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) concluded its first review of the human rights situation in Egypt under the new Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) will hold a session tomorrow, 11 June, to consider the final report and recommendations on the human rights situation in Egypt. Earlier this year, the HRC discussed Egypt’s human rights record under its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism, established in 2006 to assess the rights situation in all countries of the world. On Monday, 7 June 2010, the Supreme Administrative Court heard the appeal filed by the Ministry of Health challenging a ruling from a lower court suspending work under the new drug pricing system. If implemented, the system established by Decree 373/2009 would have lead to a sharp increase in drug prices.
On Tuesday, 11 May, the Prime Minister announced in a speech to the People’s Assembly, “As it seeks a two-year extension of the Emergency Law, the government vows before the People’s Assembly not to employ the exceptional measures permitted by the Emergency Law except to confront the dangers of terrorism and drugs and to the degree necessary to confront them…The Emergency Law shall not be used to encroach on liberties or diminish rights…if the issue is not these two dangers…The
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) welcomed the decision by the Supreme State Security Prosecutor yesterday, 7 June 2010, to release six citizens detained for more than 80 days because of their affiliation with the Ahmadi confession. The prosecutor’s decision came four days after a summary court judge issued an order releasing three other defendants in the same case.
The Committee for the Defense of the Right to Health, a coalition of activists and organizations including the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, and the Doctors Without Rights Committee, organized a protest yesterday, Thursday 18 May, in front of the People’s Assembly to protest the meager health allocations in the 2010-11 state budget. Health spending in the budget accounts for 4.9% of total public expenditure and 1.4% of the GDP.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) today urged the Minister of Interior to release immediately nine Egyptians detained under the Emergency Law for two months because of their affiliation with the Ahmadi confession.
The Egyptian government is often forced to recognize past abuses in the course of putting a pretty face on future ones, as aptly illustrated by a presidential decree issued on May 11 that extended the State of Emergency for another two years.
The Court of Administrative Justice today issued a ruling suspending work under the new drug-pricing system, which tied drug prices in Egypt with global prices. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) filed an urgent lawsuit (no. 2457/64) on 22 October 2009 asking the court to suspend Health Minister Decree 373/2009, which would have entailed substantial price hikes for many kinds of drugs.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights encourages freedom of information.