“Egypt has become one big prison,” Egyptian activist and human rights defender Abd al-Rahman Tariq, better known as Moka, told Daraj. “Even those out of jail are forced to always control their emotions and censor what they say.”
Born in 1994, Moka used to work with the Al-Nedal Centre for Rights and Freedoms to defend freedom of expression and prisoners rights in Egypt. For years he faced persistent state harassment, abuse and arbitrary detention. In 2021, he won the Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Award for Campaigning. The judges praised his courage despite the overwhelming adversity.
He was first detained in 2013 for taking part in the protests against military trials for civilians. On June 11, 2014, he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison for, among other things, organising an unauthorised demonstration, blocking the road, and damaging public property.
“I was arrested on January 25, 2015 and released at the end of 2018,” Moka said. “But I remained under observation. Every day I had to go to the police station and spend half a day there.”
To document what he and other (former) inmates had to endure he started the project “Observation.” That is the reason he was imprisoned again in September 2019. He was sentenced several times.
“Every time I completed one sentence, they would come up with something new,” he said. “Even if I obtained a court ruling to release me, state security would refuse to implement it. They are the ones ruling by force. This is our experience in Egypt. Military rule is nothing but a repressive control machine.”
Inside the overcrowded prisons, Moka experienced all kinds of ill-treatment, including torture. At times, he would disappear for months as he was moved from one prison to the next, without his family or lawyer being informed.
Number 179
“The regime does not deal with prisoners as human beings,” he said. “They are just numbers. There are many thousands of people in prison, yet no one knows their names. For example, I was number 179. It was forbidden for me to say my name. Also, I had to call the officer in charge Mr. Zero.”
“They want to make sure no one outside knows who is in detention and what happens to them,” he continued. “Many people in prison have died as a result of medical negligence and poor conditions. They include Shadi Habash, Omar Adel, Abdel Rahman Zawal and Mustafa Al-Fagani.”
The Egyptian government recently launched a national dialogue, which is supposed to bring together various political parties, including the opposition, to discuss social, political, economic and human rights issues. As part of the effort, the regime searched for detained activists, whose names have circulated widely in the Arab and international media, especially the ones human rights organizations have demanded to be released.
Moka was one of them. He was released on June 2, 2022, though not at all as a gesture of goodwill.
“The state decided at some point it would initiate this national dialogue,” Moka explained. “It is called a national dialogue because the government claims it is making amends to the human rights files, showing the world it is making progress.”
“But, literally, all the time, me and most of the people who got out of prison as a result of the national dialogue, have been threatened,” he said. “The one closest to me was Sherif El-Rouby, a famous activist. He appeared on TV saying that he does not know how to live, that the security services are after him all the time, and that he has not been able to provide for his children. He was promptly arrested again.”
“They threatened to arrest me again after the climate change conference COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh,” he said. “Because I, and others, didn’t agree to participate in the national dialogue. Because we would be forced to say that Egypt is democratic, and that we were treated well in prison. But that is not true. If we had participated, we would have wronged the people still in prison and helped the regime with its propaganda.”
Detained in Beirut
After being threatened, Moka left Egypt for Lebanon in November 2022. There he hoped to find a safe and stable environment, to explore new opportunities in life and work. Yet, the reality was a very different one.
“I came to Lebanon to discover that Egypt is not only practicing repression by silencing voices in Egypt, but also outside the country,” he said. “I used to think I’m not important enough for them to cooperate with the intelligence agency of another country to hand me over. I was stunned that this is exactly what happened when they arrested me at home [in Lebanon].”
“They told me: ‘you are going to Egypt now.’ I still shiver every time I remember the scene. I felt l was going back to prison, to state security, to the officer who tortured me so he could torture me again. I was afraid and thought of how my mother would react to such news.”
On May 24, Moka was detained and interrogated for hours by the Information Branch of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF). He was only released as a result of pressure from the media and human rights organizations. Despite the failure to deport him, Moka experienced his biggest fear: a possible return to the living hell of Egyptian prison.
That is why on June 9 he decided to leave Lebanon for France in search of safety. By doing so, he has joined countless Egyptian and Arab activists and dissidents who were forced into exile due to the repression in their authoritarian homelands.
“I feel guilty for being free while my friends are still in prison,” he said. “Just because they are not famous. Their whole existence gets denied. There are people among them who are better than me. There are people who are educated and don’t deserve a minute of imprisonment. But they are imprisoned because they decided to interact with the reality in which they live. They are not politically affiliated. So no one defends them. Even financially, they have reached a very difficult stage.”
“Other friends of mine have gotten out of prison and are still in Egypt,” Moka concluded. “They are constantly being chased and threatened. They are living in exile in their homeland.”
