Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the US State Department’s 2018 Human Rights Report was “not objective.”
Foreign Minister Spokesperson Ahmed Hafez said Cairo denies the validity of such reports, which make unsubstantiated claims about the state of human rights in Egypt.
The report relies on false information provided by non-governmental organizations that have political motives and fail to provide evidence for their allegations, Hafez stressed in a statement.
In January, Egypt asked the Human Rights Watch to be accurate in what it publishes about the state of human rights in the country, following its recent allegations and meetings with defendants involved in terrorism charges.
The Egyptian prosecution also denied in February that defendants, whose cases were mentioned in the human rights organization’s report, were subjected to any kind of torture.
“The US report did not mention the Egyptian government’s efforts to enhance human rights situation in its comprehensive sense and activate relevant constitutional guarantees,” the statement read “The report also failed to mention the major achievements made in in the field of enhancing religious freedoms and providing equal economic and social rights to all citizens.”
The statement stressed that oversight mechanisms mandated by Egyptian law to address any human rights violations in an independent, transparent and comprehensive way were not mentioned too.
Hafez highlighted the importance of respecting the principle of non-interference in any country’s internal affairs, stressing the importance of analyzing the issue in an accurate and comprehensive way, taking into consideration the achievements made to improve the state of human rights in Egypt.
In this context, Egypt’s Ministry Interior has been working to improve the prisoners’ conditions as a respect for human values and rights, according to security sources.
“Some foreign organizations have been spreading lies against Egypt, and their reports published in recent years clearly have political purposes,” MP Ahmed Saad told Asharq Al-Awsat.