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Jump to: 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019;
-- 2014 --
April 9: Egypt's Solvency Crisis
Egypt is experiencing a deep economic crisis. The country's foreign currency reserves are less than half of what they were before the January 2011 uprising, threatening Egypt's ability to pay for food and fuel. Egypt's budget deficit is 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and its overall debt, which is the result of accumulated deficits, is more than the country's economic output.
https://www.cfr.org/report/egypts-solvency-crisis
-- 2015 --
Undated: Egypt’s human rights crisis, the most serious in the country’s modern history, continued unabated throughout 2014. The government consolidated control through constriction of basic freedoms and a stifling campaign of arrests targeting political opponents. Former Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who took office in June, has overseen a reversal of the human rights gains that followed the 2011 uprising. Security forces and an increasingly politicized judiciary—apparently unnerved by rising armed group attacks—invoked national security to muzzle nearly all dissent.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/egypt
-- 2016 --
May 11: American Journalist Briefly Detained over Labor Research
https://pomed.org/egypt-daily-update-american-journalist-briefly-detained-over-labor-research/
-- 2017 --
April 20: An Egyptian American charity worker who was imprisoned in Cairo for three years and became the global face of Egypt’s brutal crackdown on civil society returned home to the United States late Thursday after the Trump administration quietly negotiated her release.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
-- 2018 --
Undated: Egypt 2017/2018 -- Egypt’s human rights crisis continued unabated. The authorities used torture and other ill-treatment and enforced disappearance against hundreds of people, and dozens were extrajudicially executed with impunity. The crackdown on civil society escalated with NGO staff being subjected to additional interrogations, travel bans and asset freezes. Arbitrary arrests and detentions followed by grossly unfair trials of government critics, peaceful protesters, journalists and human rights defenders were routine. Mass unfair trials continued before civilian and military courts, with dozens sentenced to death. Women continued to be subjected to sexual and gender-based violence and were discriminated against in law and practice. The authorities brought criminal charges for defamation of religion and “habitual debauchery” on the basis of people’s real or perceived sexual orientation.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/egypt/report-egypt/
March 4: Egyptian government targets journalists, labels them 'forces of evil'
https://abcnews.go.com/International/egyptian-government-targets-journalists-labels-forces-evil/story?id=53501531
April 2: President Donald Trump on Monday called Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to congratulate him on winning last week's Egyptian presidential election, according to el-Sissi's office. The Egyptian leader faced virtually no real competition and won 97 percent of the vote.
El-Sissi faced no serious challenger after a string of potentially strong candidates were either arrested or withdrew under pressure, according to The Associated Press.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/trump-congratulates-egypts-president-heavily-criticized-election/story?id=54183779
May 3: The Uncensored Playlist: how news is being turned into pop to bypass repressive regimes
Music streaming services such as Spotify are freely available even where social media and search engines are banned, so the Uncensored Playlist has recruited journalists from five repressive regimes to spread the news via song
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/03/press-censorship-is-a-worldwide-problem-but-now-banned-articles-are-being-turned-into-pop-songs
May 18: UN human rights chief rebukes Israel as Egypt opens Gaza crossing
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein says there is little evidence Israel tried to minimise casualties at Gaza protests
As a special session of the UN human rights council voted to set up a commission of inquiry to look into Monday’s violence, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said that while 60 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured in the day of protests, “on the Israeli side, one soldier was reportedly wounded, slightly, by a stone.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/18/egypt-opens-gaza-border-crossing-month-ramadan-palestinians
March 30: For Egypt’s democracy and human-rights activists, Trump is ... an enabler of repression who has embraced Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as he carries out the most repressive crackdown in the country in decades. Three days after taking office, Trump phoned Sisi and effusively pledged his support for the authoritarian ruler. When Sisi visited Washington last spring, Trump warmly welcomed him to the White House, reversing an Obama Administration policy of declining to meet the former general because of his government’s sweeping human-rights abuses.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/with-trumps-help-egypt-holds-a-farcical-election
July 26: Despite Egypt’s Dismal Human Rights Record, U.S. Restores Military Aid
Egypt’s jail population has swelled. New prisoners include a Lebanese tourist who complained about Egypt on Facebook; a democracy activist who spoke out about sexual harassment; and a visiting grad student from an American university who was arrested as he researched the judiciary.
https://marsad-egypt.info/en/2018/07/26/despite-egypts-dismal-human-rights-record-u-s-restores-military-aid/
July 26: Egyptian national security prosecutors in the past two weeks prolonged the detention of at least five journalists, according to Egypt's Journalists' Syndicate, the local press freedom group Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), and news reports. Authorities accuse the journalists, who had been arrested separately beginning in March, of belonging to a banned group and spreading false news.
https://cpj.org/2018/07/egypt-extends-detention-of-five-journalists.php
July 27: Egypt is winning battle against Islamic State in Sinai — but only temporarily
Local branch of terror group suffers major losses after sweeping campaign, but Peninsula's beaches remain dangerous -- and situation could explode when army reduces its presence
https://www.timesofisrael.com/egypt-is-winning-battle-against-islamic-state-in-sinai-but-only-temporarily/
July 27: 'Fake news' becomes tool of repression after Egypt passes new law
Broadcasting false rumours’ criminalised as government imprisons journalists and bloggers to stifle dissent
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jul/27/fake-news-becomes-tool-of-repression-after-egypt-passes-new-law
July 28: Egypt court sentences 75 to death over 2013 pro-Morsi protests
The group, including leaders of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, are part of a mass trial of more than 700 people.
Rights group Amnesty International has called the trial "grossly unfair" and a violation of Egypt's constitution.
Their cases will now be referred to the Grand Mufti, who must be consulted whenever the death sentence is applied.
But while Egyptian law requires the opinion of the Grand Mufti, the country's highest Islamic legal authority, it is non-binding - although rarely ignored.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-44993661
July 28: A zoo in Cairo, Egypt has been accused of painting a donkey with stripes to look like a zebra, tricking tourists and other visitors.
In a now viral post, student Mahmoud Sarhan uploaded a picture of the animal on his Facebook page from his July 21 visit to Cairo's International Garden municipal park. Sarhan told the local news outlet extranews.tv he immediately recognized paint on the animal because of his background in art and because the animal's "stripes," were visibly smudged on its body and face.
"The stupidity has reached in the country that they brought a local donkey and painted it to look like a zebra," Sarhan wrote in Arabic on Facebook, according to CNN.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/07/28/egyptian-zoo-paint-donkey-zebra/854657002/
July 30: Egypt Responds to Trump's Lifting of Military Aid Ban by Sentencing 75 Anti-Coup Protesters to Death
"The decision to release the funds despite a significant deterioration in the rights situation in Egypt is both baffling and troubling."
Egypt on Saturday sentenced 75 people to death for taking part in a 2013 sit-in protest against the military ouster of democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi—a court decision that came days after the United States sent "the wrong message to one of the most abusive governments in Egypt's recent history" by restoring $195 million in military aid to the nation.
The dozens sentenced in Saturday's ruling are among 739 defendants, including members of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood and members of the press, the government is targeting over their participating in the protest. The day became known as the al-Rabaa Massacre, as security forces under the command of now-President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi killed hundreds of people in a matter of hours.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/30/egypt-responds-trumps-lifting-military-aid-ban-sentencing-75-anti-coup-protesters
August 10: Once again, Washington has backed down in a standoff with Cairo over military aid. On July 25, U.S. and Egyptian officials revealed that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had released $195 million in military assistance, which had been frozen since last August. The move came despite the fact that Egypt had met none of the three conditions that the previous secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had attached to releasing the aid: the resolution of a 2013 trial involving 43 employees of various nongovernmental organizations, including 17 Americans, who were convicted on politicized charges of operating without licenses and receiving illegal foreign funding; the repeal or wholesale revision of Egypt’s draconian 2017 NGO law; and the discontinuation of Egypt’s diplomatic, military, and economic cooperation with North Korea.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/10/trump-blinks-and-egypts-sisi-wins/
August 12: At a White House summit in April 2017, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi told President Trump that he was confident the two leaders, working together, would “find a solution to the problem of the century in the deal of the century.”
In the early days of Mr. Trump’s administration, Mr. el-Sissi had high hopes of brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal with the Americans, repairing relations with Washington that had chilled under President Obama and reaping economic benefits from placing Egypt squarely at the center of an eastern Mediterranean energy hub and investment magnet.
Yet Egyptian zeal to partner with Mr. Trump’s special envoys — son-in-law Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, a lawyer with 20 years of service in the Trump Organization — has dimmed in recent months with a lack of concrete progress. The pessimism is spreading to other Arab capitals.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/aug/12/donald-trumps-egypt-hopes-middle-east-peace-deal-f/
September 16: Escalating global trade tensions are giving Chinese fruit stalls a little more of an international flavor.
Fruit distributor Sunmoon Food Co. is shipping navel oranges from Egypt, kiwis from Italy and apples from Poland into China for the first time ever. The produce will fill the gap created when the Asian nation slapped tariffs on U.S. fruit as part of the escalating trade war between the Xi Jinping and Donald Trump administrations.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-17/trump-trade-winds-blow-egyptian-oranges-to-shanghai-fruit-stalls
September 24: Once more, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi will meet with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in New York, which is considered their fifth encounter within only 24 months.
On the sidelines of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 73), the two leaders will set together to discuss the current political situation in the Middle East, the Arab-Qatari dispute, and other issues of mutual interest to both countries.
Egypt is one of Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East, receiving US$1.3 billion in US military aid annually.
http://www.egypttoday.com/Article/2/58020/Sisi-to-meet-Trump-for-fifth-time-in-2-years
September 25: Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote to Congress to explain why he was releasing $195 million in U.S. military aid for Egypt that the Trump administration had earlier withheld over human rights concerns.
But far from assuring lawmakers that Egypt is making progress on human rights, the “memorandum of justification” laying out the decision amounts to a searing indictment of how Egypt’s government treats its citizens — describing extrajudicial killings, unfair trials, censorship and a generally repressive atmosphere.
At one point, the Aug. 21 memo bluntly states: “The overall human rights climate in Egypt continues to deteriorate.”
The document, obtained this week by POLITICO, offers insight into one of two recent cases in which Pompeo has decided that U.S. national security interests should override human rights concerns when it comes to offering military support to foreign allies.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/25/pompeo-justifies-sending-egypt-money-840214
November 26: Can Egypt afford to defy Trump in support of Gaza?
Egypt is walking a tightrope as it tries to balance its support for Palestinians with its common interests with Washington and its security and economic ties to Israel.
As Egypt vigorously pursues diplomatic efforts to reach a lasting truce on the Gaza-Israel border, Cairo's delegate to the Arab League, Yasser al-Atwi, confirmed recently that his country will continue to support the Palestinian people and work to stabilize the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/11/egypt-us-deal-of-the-century-gaza-clashes-ceasefire-israel.html
-- 2019 --
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