Egyptian-Americans launch human rights push ahead of Sisi re-election
Trump helped free NGO worker Aya Hijazi from prison. Now she’s leading the charge against his Egypt policy.
President Donald Trump relished showing off his deal-making skills when he hosted Aya Hijazi at the White House last year after convincing Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to release the Egyptian-American NGO worker and her husband.
Now Hijazi and other Egyptian-American activists are hoping to use that bond to convince the US president to rethink his unstinting support for Cairo. To that end, they’ve launched a campaign to draw attention to the country’s dismal human rights situation on Capitol Hill and at the State Department ahead of this month’s presidential election.
“It seems like it was unclear to [Trump] that at least my case was a case of Sisi’s repression and I helped clarify that,” Hijazi told Al-Monitor this week during the two-day campaign, dubbed Egypt Advocacy Day. “I still wish that he can know that there’s more people who are like me who are unjustly in prison and deserve to be outside.”
“They are in the thousands now,” she added. “It is not about p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Calibri; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} imprisonments anymore, it’s about extrajudicial killings and torture.”
