By POMED –
During the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations’ hearing on the fiscal year 2023 State Department budget request on April 26, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) pressed Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the State Department’s “curious proposal … to delink human rights conditions from military aid to Egypt” given the regime’s continuing human rights crisis.
President Joe Biden’s budget proposal requests $1.3 billion in military aid for Egypt, the same amount that has been appropriated every year since 1987, and asks Congress to remove all human rights conditions on that assistance.
Noting that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime has made only “tepid progress, even when presented with fairly minimalist requests for reforms,” Murphy asked “why this would be a moment that the administration would be asking to separate the money we send to Egypt for military support from our human rights requests, and our human rights work in Egypt.”
In response, Blinken acknowledged “the concerns that we have about the Egyptian approach when it comes to civil society, when it comes to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political detentions, abuses, etc.” Yet he insisted that the administration needs to have “maximum flexibility” in its dealings with Egypt, and he added that maintaining Egypt’s status as a “vital partner” is all the more important in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Well, very briefly,” Murphy concluded, “just count me amongst those who think it would be unwise at this moment to delink our human rights conditions from military aid.”
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Photo Credit: ATTILA KISBENEDEK AFP via Getty Images
Copyright: 2014 AFP
https://mailchi.mp/pomed/egypt-update-moanis-receives-pardon?e=8e9e92eefa
