AFP, Cairo :
Two years after the army ousted president Mohamed Morsi, Egypt has regressed into “all-out repression”, with activists jailed in a bid to crush dissent, Amnesty International warned on Tuesday.
The London-based rights watchdog said that Egyptian authorities led by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi are engaged in a blatant attempt to “nip in the bid any future threat to their rule”.
“Mass protests have been replaced by mass arrests,” Amnesty said in a statement ahead of the second anniversary on Friday of the July 3, 2013 ouster of the Islamist Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader.
“Today… youth activists are languishing behind bars, providing every indication that Egypt has regressed into a state of all-out repression,” the statement quoted Amnesty’s Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui as saying.
It said a government crackdown has resulted in more than 41,000 people arrested, charged or indicted with a criminal offence, or sentenced after unfair trials.
“The Egyptian authorities have shown that they will stop at nothing in their attempts to crush all challenges to their authority,” Hadj Sahraoui said.
