Activists lock Egyptian embassies abroad, families back home pay the price

In July, Egyptian-Dutch activist Anas Habib chained the gates of Egypt’s embassy in The Hague shut. The 27-year-old political exile filmed the act, posted it online, and within hours the video spread widely among Egyptian dissidents all around the world.

He might not have predicted that what he started would snowball into a wave of similar protests by Egyptians angered with what they see as their country's complicity with Israel's war on Gaza.

The protests have spread to different countries, and, along with it, an increasingly violent campaign of repression that has not limited itself to the exiled activists abroad, but to their families still in Egypt.

Inspired by Habib’s action, Nour Hossam, a 25-year-old journalist and political exile in Turkey who also goes by Onur Azad, walked up to the Egyptian consulate in Istanbul in early August with two colleagues who were filming him. 

He carried a chain that he would use to symbolically lock the building's doors, intent on sending the same message that Habib had.

“Since they [the Egyptian government] claim Rafah is closed from the ‘other side’ [Israel], we locked their doors instead and claimed they were closed from the inside,” explained N N, another Egyptian-Dutch exile helping coordinate the campaign with Habib, who has requested anonymity to protect his identity. 

N N and Hossam were not in touch with each other. Hossam was dragged inside the mission and beaten so badly that the bruises lasted for weeks. 

Days later, the protest tactic reached New York City. Husam Khaled, a 24-year-old Yemeni-American activist, stood outside Egypt’s mission to the United Nations with a sign reading: “Egypt too, is starving Gaza.” 

On 20 August, he attempted to chain the mission’s doors.

As he approached the entrance, security agents at the mission rushed out, and instead of taking hold of Khaled, they went for his friends Ali and Yasin al-Sammak, who were filming the action. 

One of the agents is seen in a video using the same chain Khaled had brought to strangle Yasin, 22, who had rushed to defend his younger brother Ali, 15, after Egyptian guards began beating him. 

Both brothers, of Egyptian descent, were pulled inside the diplomatic building and heavily assaulted before being handed over to the New York Police Department. 

“They traumatised the younger one. He doesn’t want to be a victim,” their parents told Middle East Eye the day after Ali was released from juvenile custody. 

"Thank God the door was glass, and they saw they could be seen,” said their father, Akram. 

“Yasin told us, Mama, Baba, they would have killed us if there was no one filming.” 

Both Ali and Yasin have been charged with assault, despite not having taken part in Khaled's action, and the family is trying to have the charges dropped.

Such violence is neither a novelty nor a surprise.

A leaked video of Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty showed him instructing Cairo’s ambassador in the Netherlands how to act: “If someone puts paint on our gates, grab them, tie them up and hand them to the police. Say they harassed the embassy. If someone tries to put a lock or anything else, drag them inside and make their lives hell.”

“Sisi’s regime thinks it can act with impunity even in other countries,” said one Egyptian human rights expert based in Europe, who requested anonymity for security reasons. “But they forget there are laws outside Egypt.”

Families targeted in Egypt

The costs of activism have not only been borne by those chaining embassy gates. No stranger to transnational repression, Egyptian security services have detained relatives of exiles involved in the protests.

N N says five of his family members, some of whom are permanent residents abroad, have been imprisoned while visiting Egypt following his participation in recent activist campaigns in Europe. 

Habib’s uncle and cousin were jailed on 19 August on charges of joining a terrorist organisation. Hossam reported that his older brother is being held, with Egyptian intelligence pressing him to comply with demands, like stopping his activism, in exchange for his brother’s release. 

'And knowing, as an Egyptian, that my country has an active role in this is unbearable'

- Adham Hassanein, Egyptian-Dutch activist in exile

Until now, Hossam has refused to do so because he thinks it could be a slippery slope. "What more they will ask of me if I give up on one condition,” he said.

For the Sammak brothers, who were detained when filming the action in New York City and are US citizens, not Egyptian, the threat expands to their extended family in Egypt. 

Their father, Akram, who hasn't been to the country since 2013, now fears relatives could be arrested. “I would like to return, but I don’t want to live where people clap for the shaytan (devil),” he said, referring to Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Despite the risks, activists insist they will not stop. Most of the Egyptian activists interviewed for this piece have spent time in Egyptian prisons before fleeing their country. One activist compared it to Syria's infamous Sednaya prison. 

Hossam said that as he was forcibly taken inside the consulate in Istanbul, he recognised that the person who was interrogating him was a state security officer after smelling the same cologne which officials would wear in Egyptian prisons. 

"Since they kept us blindfolded, this was their way of terrifying us to make us sense when they were approaching.”

He says it brought him back to the terrifying years he was imprisoned as a minor. He intends to file a lawsuit against the consulate.  

“We are exhausted with sadness from what we see happening in Gaza,” said Adham Hassanein, an Egyptian-Dutch exile who has joined Habib in recent demonstrations. “And knowing, as an Egyptian, that my country has an active role in this is unbearable. I have absolute certainty Sisi is against Egypt.” 

He told MEE that his siblings and their families have already been threatened by Egyptian intelligence following his involvement in the protests in The Hague.

Widespread crackdowns

Activists’ criticism of the Sisi government is echoed by recent news: Egypt signed a record $35bn natural gas deal with Israel, agreeing to pay 14 percent more for imports while maintaining its blockade of Gaza. 

Families of Egypt's political prisoners haven't seen them in over a decade

Read More »

As Yasin was being carried away in handcuffs by the NYPD, he shouted, “I was beaten by Sisi’s dogs”, referring to Egyptian security personnel.

Egypt’s crackdown has long relied on mass imprisonment. “There are no official numbers, but there may be 20,000 to 40,000 political prisoners in Egypt,” said a rights expert affiliated with the Belgium-based NGO HuMENA, who also requested anonymity. 

“Since 2023 alone, over 800 people have disappeared.”

As the activists’ campaign mobilised against the embassies, a group of pro-government diaspora Egyptians, who go by the name “Union of Egyptian Youth Abroad”, started a counter-protest movement, claiming they are defending the embassies - from Tel Aviv to The Hague. 

Last week, following commotion between Egyptian activists and members of the Union, Ahmed Abdelkader "Mido”, the leader of the Union, was arrested by British police in London for harassing officers and activists.

Since last Monday, Habib and his brother Tarek have started a new peaceful protest in front of the Egyptian embassy in London by sitting in front of the building and playing music, denouncing what they say is the Egyptian government's violence, corruption, and cooperation with Israel.