Cop27: Surveillance and fear in Sharm el-Sheikh as Egypt clamps down on activists
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Loading... - Thema Zakaria
- 08 Nov 2022
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When Makarios Lahzy received a call from Egypt's dreaded National Security Agency (NSA), he immediately feared the worst.
The human rights lawyer had recently hosted Ajit Rajagopal, an architect and environmental activist from India, who was planning to walk 260km from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh ahead of Cop27 to highlight the challenges that climate change presents.
But instead of being greeted with Rajagopal's progress, Lahzy was told that the activist had been detained shortly after he started his journey and that he should come and collect him.
Rushing to one of the hundreds of makeshift checkpoints erected in the run-up to the UN Climate Change Conference, known as Cop27, Lahzy was met by security officials who confiscated his phone and whisked him away to a local police station.
"They asked me, what do you do professionally, and what's your relation to this environmental activist?" Lahzy told Middle East Eye.
Rajagopal had been holding a banner that read "March For Our Planet", in reference to a caravan-foot, march style mobilisation that set off within Africa and spread globally.
After being treated like "criminals" for more than 24 hours, the pair were finally released, Lahzy said.
Critics of the Egyptian government say such arrests are not isolated events, but part of a pattern of ratcheting security and surveillance during Cop27. Read More...
