By Hussein Mahmoud
CAIRO (AA) – A human rights group has decried the arrest by the authorities of a teenage street performer for criticizing the regime of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.
Ezzedeen Khaled, a member of a satirical group called Awlad al-Shawarea (“Street Children”), was arrested by Egyptian security forces from his home on Saturday after posting a video clip online in which he poked fun at the president.
Security forces also raided the homes of other group members, but they were reportedly not at home at the time.
“Khaled’s detention is a brazen violation of the right to free expression,” the Arab Network for Human Rights Information said in a statement.
The Cairo-based NGO went on to urge the authorities to release the performer and “stop raiding the homes of the group’s other members”.
The clip was one of a series of two-minute videos released by the group on its Facebook page mocking al-Sisi, a former army chief who came to power in a disputed election in 2014 after ousting elected President Mohamed Morsi one year earlier.
One of the videos was entitled, “Sisi, my president, has only made things worse”. Another one repeated the phrase “Leave”, which was first used during a popular uprising in 2011 that unseated autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.
The satirist’s detention came amid an arrest campaign that has targeted activists and critics of the regime.
The arrest campaign followed a wave of street demonstrations held last month to protest a government decision to cede sovereignty of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.
Egypt has been racked by turmoil and violence since a 2013 military coup in which the army ousted Morsi — the country’s first freely elected president — after only one year in power.
