The Egyptian Parliament has voted for a number of amendments to the Constitution allowing an extension of the rule of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi up to the year 2030. The deputies voted on Tuesday in favour of extending al-Sisi’s current mandate of two years to six years, as the state media reported. Subsequently, the President could apply for another six-year term.
The approval for the extended term of office of the President, and other Amendments to the Constitution was carried out initially by a show of hands. In the evening the deputies were going to vote finally, in a roll-call vote on all the Changes in the package. The approval of Al-Sisi-supporters-dominated Parliament is considered to be safe.
The application is for an amendment to the Constitution was introduced by al-Sisi-loyal deputies. The Parliament is dominated by supporters of Ex-General. Al-Sisi took over after the overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013, the Power in Egypt. He was elected in 2014 for the first time as President, a year ago, he was elected in an internationally criticized elections.
Many Egyptians, al-Sisi is the “strong man”, set in the Chaos after the fall of longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The ongoing economic crisis together with significant price increases, damage to the Reputation of the heads of state, had promised economic stability, as well as the allegations by human rights groups. They say that al-Sisi’s rule was more repressive than that of Mubarak.
number of executions to the top of soared
executions, always by hanging, have increased under the rule of al-Sisi drastically. This year calculations, 15 people have been, according to AFP hanged. From the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2018, Egypt has done a recent report by the human rights groups Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and Adalah for Rights and Freedoms, according to 92 people.
These Figures are very much higher than that of previous governments, even by the former authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed after protests in 2011. In Mubarak’s last three years in Power, Amnesty International, a total of eleven people executed.
During a summit of EU and Arab League in February in the Egyptian Sharm el-Sheikh, al-Sisi defended the use of the death penalty. “You will not teach us about our humanity,” said the Ex-General who had a military coup in 2013.
“Arbitrary killings”
The UN special Rapporteur on executions, Agnès Callamard, said the AFP, the increasing application of the death penalty would be equivalent to “arbitrary killings”, to break the possible resistance in the population.
Since the deposition of Morsi’s experts register an increasingly authoritarian behavior of Egyptian judges. This goes hand in hand with a continuing crackdown by the government, in which were imprisoned thousands of people.
Sahar Aziz, law Professor at Rutgers University in the U.S. state of New Jersey, told the AFP: “We are experiencing an increase in the death sentences of around ten per year before 2011 to be in the hundreds per year after 2013.” The London-based human rights group Reprieve believes that between 2014 and 2018, a minimum of 2159 people were sentenced to death.
The “alarming speed”, with which the death penalty will be applied, suggest that Egypt’s courts have been politicized in the Wake of the restrictive government policy, argued Aziz.
“Why are you upset?”
The Egyptian legal system is based on Islamic law, the Sharia, which provides for the death penalty. A high-ranking source from the judiciary assured, there are judgments of “no politicization” of death. “We apply the Islam according to its laws, why are you upset?” he said in an interview with AFP.
A report by Amnesty International in April, ranks Egypt in the sixth position of the countries with the most executions in the year 2018; behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and Iraq. Many of the sentences were handed down in Mass trials, with hundreds of defendants within a few days.
UN special Rapporteur Callamard called the circumstances that led to the “imposition of those judgments and their enforcement”, and “extremely alarming”. You are not accused by the international community to pull out of Egypt because of the scandalous use of the death penalty for the responsibility. “This deafening silence is an important part of the fast-rising human rights violations in Egypt,” she said. (nag/afp/sda)
Created: 16.04.2019, 18:58 PM
