Sisi arrived France on Saturday to attend the G7 Summit upon an invitation from French counterpart Emmanuel Macron. Right after his arrival Sisi held business lunch with a number of African presidents on the sidelines of the summit.
Twenty NGOs have urged French President Emmanuel Macron to denounce Egypt’s human rights record, criticizing the invitation of Egyptian president to the G7 summit to be held in France on Saturday and Sunday.
MACRON WERE CALLED TO SPEAK OUT ON HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS IN EGYPT
“It was a striking choice for France to invite Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi to attend the 24-26 August G7 summit in Biarritz, for which the chosen theme is ‘the fight against inequality’,” the NGOs which included Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Borders, and Egyptian civil society groups said in a statement on Thursday.
The statement said the number of Egyptians under the poverty line has clearly risen according to official Egyptian 2018 statistics, while the World Bank estimates that most of Egypt’s population is either poor or vulnerable.
SISI CAME TO FORCE AFTER A BLOODY COUP
It said that ahead of the fall 2019 review of Egypt’s rights record at the UN Human Rights Council, 20 rights groups are calling on Macron to speak out on the continuing human rights crisis in Egypt, and urge Sisi during his visit at the G7 to allow Egyptian rights defenders to document violations.
The NGOs also urged Macron to call on Sisi to implement an immediate moratorium on executions, promptly investigating all reported cases of enforced disappearance and bringing an end to torture.
Sisi led the bloody coup which ousted the first democratically elected president of Egyptian history Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and he has since been in power.
