Amnesty International Wednesday reported that the Egypt presents a “deeply misleading picture” of the nation’s human rights crisis. Amnesty found patterns of violations including “unlawful killings, mass arbitrary detention and repression of freedom of expression.” The group asserts that Egypt wrongly justifies the violations on the grounds of public security.

Egypt’s National Human Rights Strategy (NHRS) was drafted by the Supreme Standing Human Rights Committee and launched in September 2021. Amnesty International alleges that “the NHRS repeatedly resolves the authority of responsibilities, offering modest solutions to overcome shortcomings in rights.”

UN bodies, international NGOs and Amnesty International gathered evidence from 2013 onwards demonstrating authorities’ repeated misuse of legislation including counter-terrorism, protest, media and NGO laws. According to Amnesty, the laws “effectively criminalize or severely restrict the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly; further erode fair trial guarantees; and enshrine impunity for security and military forces.” As an example of repression, the report specifically points to authorities’ failure to investigate the use of force against protestors in Rabaa and Nahda squares in August 2013. The use of force against protestors resulted in over 900 deaths.

Amnesty called upon the international community to pressure Egyptian authorities to take measurable steps toward policies to protect human rights.