Ahmed Douma
Ahmed Douma is a prominent Egyptian human rights defender, poet, and writer who became a symbol of resistance during the 2011 uprising. His activism began in 2009, when he was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to one year in prison by a military court for joining a peaceful solidarity mission to Gaza. He was arbitrarily detained in 2013 under Egypt’s repressive protest law, subjected to torture, denied medical care, and held in solitary confinement for four years. In 2015, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison following an unfair trial, a verdict upheld in 2020 despite international condemnation. Though released under a presidential pardon in August 2023, he remains under a travel ban and faces ongoing judicial harassment and surveillance aimed at silencing his activism.
A significant crackdown on civil society has been taking place since 2014. Egyptian authorities consolidated a hostile legal environment to muzzle dissent and curtail freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of expression, media independence and digital rights. Peaceful protests are attacked and criminalized, no matter the size or issue.
HRDs including journalists, bloggers, LGBTI+ defenders, minority rights defenders and social and economic rights defenders have been detained, prosecuted and convicted under various repressive laws including assembly and protest laws and anti-cybercrime law. The counterterrorism laws enacted in 2015 and 2020 are legislative tools also used by the government to detain and prosecute HRDs. Several HRDs have been kept in pre-trial detention for prolonged periods. Detained and imprisoned HRDs suffer from inhumane detention conditions and some of them, including women human rights defenders (WHRDs), have been tortured and ill-treated.
