A former journalist who was imprisoned by Egyptian authorities, has pledged to go on hunger strike to demand the release of a democracy activist under prolonged imprisonment.
Peter Greste, an award-winning journalist who has worked for the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and Reuters, said he would fly to London to raise awareness about the situation of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, an Egyptian-British blogger and political activist.
El-Fattah became well-known for his activism during the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt in 2011.
He has been arrested and sentenced to prison multiple times by the Egyptian authorities.
In his most recent arrest in 2019, an Egyptian court sentenced him to five years imprisonment for “disseminating false news undermining national security.”
It was reported that El-Fattah was subject to torture and other forms of mistreatment in prison.
The blogger was originally scheduled for release in September 2024. However, his release date was postponed to January 2027 after Egyptian authorities refused to recognise the time El-Fattah spent in pre-trial detention.
The Hunger Strike
During his trip to London, Greste said he would conduct a three-week hunger strike and join El-Fattah’s mother, who has already been on hunger strike for over 100 days.“I thought of a hunger strike when I saw what his mother was doing,” he said.
“I’ve been frustrated for a long time because there’s not much I could do here from Australia.”
The professor noted that El-Fattah was his lifesaver when he was imprisoned in Cairo, Egypt, in December 2013. At the time, Greste was on a field trip to cover some local news topics.
An Egyptian court later sentenced him to seven years in prison for allegedly falsifying news.
In 2015, Greste was deported after the Australian government struck a deal with the Egyptian authorities.
The professor said El-Fattah helped him devise a strategy for his release during the detention period.
“He was one of the first people I met when I was in prison,” he said.
“He helped me understand the psychology of prison at a time when I was struggling.”
While Greste did not know whether his protest would reach Egypt or bring about any immediate change, he said it was important to bring attention to El-Fattah’s situation.
“What we have to do is keep fighting for what is right,” he said.
“If you measure a step in a campaign about whether someone will be free, all the steps up until that point would be considered failures.
“But that misses the point because the only reason I got out was because of that collective action.”
