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Egypt blocks Human Rights website day after it released report on torture

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Egypt blocks Human Rights website day after it released report on torture

Authorities in Egypt have chosen to shut down the website of Human Rights Watch. a day after the organisation released a report claiming security operatives used arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and applied torture on victims.

Titled “We Do Unreasonable Things Here” and based on the accounts of 19 former detainees and the family of another, Egypt’s foreign ministry lambasted the report, saying it defamed the country and ignored progress made on human rights in recent years.

“The report … is a new episode in a series of deliberate defamation by such organization, whose politicized agenda and biases are well known and reflect the interests of the entities and countries sponsoring it,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid.

Read also: EGYPT: 50 policemen sentenced to 3 yrs in prison for going on strike

The report by the New York-based rights group said security services in Egypt used arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and torture as a “systematic practice” against suspected opponents of the government.

“Egyptian authorities keep insisting that any incidents of torture are isolated crimes by bad officers acting alone, but the Human Rights Watch report proves otherwise,” Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said on Thursday.

“Rather than address the torture crisis in Egypt, the authorities have blocked access to a report that documents what many Egyptians and others living there already know,” Stork added.

 

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