Donald Trump is meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Washington, D.C. on Monday — the first meeting between the two countries’ heads of state since 2010.
Trump’s “America First” focus leaves a lot of questions about what U.S.-Egypt relations will look like the next four years. Three of the biggest issues Trump will have to deal with are the fight against terrorism in the region, U.S. military aid to the country, and the continued languishing of American citizens in Egyptian jails. Addressing all of these issues should involve a broader discussion of human rights in Egypt. But the White House has already made it clear that that won’t be a priority.
Trump has expressed a lot of praise for Egypt’s autocratic president. After meeting him last fall, Trump declared that Sisi is a “fantastic guy” who took control of the “tremendous problem” of terrorists in the country. The two spoke over the phone just three days after Trump was inaugurated, and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed that Trump expressed support for “Egypt’s fight against the terrorists” in the call.
On Friday, a White House statement again praised Sisi’s war against terrorists, while making no mention of his problematic human rights record. White House aides told the New York Times that security and economic matters would be a priority for the leaders’ first meeting and Trump would deal with the question of human rights in private.
Human rights organizations have repeatedly expressed concern about the crackdown on Egyptians’ rights during Sisi’s rule. Since Sisi came to power in 2013 after a military coup against then-President Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president in Egypt following the 2011 revolution and ouster of Hosni Mubarak, his authoritarianism has been astonishing.
Sisi oversaw one of the bloodiest periods in recent Egyptian history: the Rabaa massacre, in which at least 817 people (by some estimates over 1,000) were killed in violent confrontations with the Egyptian army and security forces. Human Rights Watch’s Kenneth Roth called it “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators on a single day in recent history.”
Sisi’s rule has also threatened the freedom of press. Tens of thousands have been imprisoned and hundreds of activists have been abducted, tortured, and forcibly disappeared.
Although Sisi’s approach to terrorism has gained support from many U.S. Republicans, it’s not clear if his counterterrorism strategy is even working. As ThinkProgress has reported:
Since taking power, Sisi’s focus has been on increasing security in Egypt through strict counterterrorism measures. But his efforts have largely failed to bear fruit as there has been an increase in terrorism in Egypt since the coup in 2013, and ISIS has established a solid presence in the Sinai.
The Egyptian government does not give journalists or independent observers access to North Sinai, and so in the name of fighting terrorism, there are continued human rights abuses.
Refusing to make the broader issue of human rights in Egypt a priority also means the fate of American citizens currently imprisoned in Egypt remain unclear. At least seven American citizens are currently in Egyptian jail, according to #FreedomFirst, a campaign led by Mohamed Soltan, an Egyptian American who was imprisoned in Egypt for almost two years. That includes American NGO worker Aya Hijazi, who has been in custody for almost three years, along with her husband and other co-defendants, and whose trial was verdict was postponed yet again last month.
Human rights and U.S. interests in the region shouldn’t be considered two separate issues, the Brookings Institution’s Shadi Hamid previously told ThinkProgress.
“I think it’s a very problematic approach in that it sees counterterrorism as wholly separate from Egypt’s political situation,” Hamid said. “The two are related, terrorism doesn’t just come from the sky. Terrorism, extremism, and civil conflict all draw from the given political and regional context. To keep them separate is not good policy.”