Bahey El-Din Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, warned that Egypt's human rights violations - "unlawful killings, thousands of detentions, thousands of people being tortured, a disregard for freedom of thought, and a lack of real democratic rule" - were the same practices that had led Syria to its current fate. "Over the past two years, Egypt has taken the exact same course of countries that fall," he told France 24 TV, in an interview that aired on February 14.
Following are excerpts:
Bahey El-Din Hassan: If we examine what has been happening in Egypt in the past couple of years, and if we look at what Bashar Al-Assad was doing before the Intifada of 2011, we see just about the same practices: unlawful killings, thousands of detentions, thousands of people being tortured, a disregard for freedom of thought, and a lack of real democratic rule. This is what led Syria to is current fate. President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi always reiterates his statement: "Beware! Countries that fall do not rise again." But unfortunately, over the past two years, Egypt has taken the exact same course of countries that fall.
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