Political Quotes

“Madam President, Egypt is one of America's closest allies. Our taxpayers send them more direct funding for their military than we send almost any other nation in the world. But here is what happens to political opponents of the Egyptian regime when they get arrested--and they get arrested at a dizzying rate and get sent to the infamous Tora prison. Arrivals there are blindfolded and then are forced to run through a human corridor of guards who pummel them with sticks until they collapse. Following this initiation for political prisoners, many of them are routinely beaten and tortured for months or years on end, often with no formal charges being filed. Some never make it out alive. Human rights groups estimate that there are around 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. I get it. The big numbers sometimes lose their meaning in this place. But, by comparison, estimates are that Russia has 420. China likely has around a thousand. Egypt locks up 60,000 political opponents of the regime. To keep up with the demand of President El-Sisi's imprisonment spree, the country has had to build 60 new detention centers over the last decades. These prisons house some of the country's most prominent human rights defenders, journalists, opposition leaders, but also just ordinary people who are locked up for years because they just attended a protest or they liked a Facebook post or they recorded a TikTok video. Let me tell you a story of just one of these 60,000 people.…”