Three Egyptian journalists said Monday they had begun hunger strikes to demand authorities free Alaa Abdel Fattah, a jailed political dissident who has been refusing food and now water too.

British-Egyptian Abdel Fattah, 40, a major figure in the 2011 revolt that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak, stopped drinking water on Sunday to coincide with the opening of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

“We have stopped eating now because Alaa Abdel Fattah is in danger of dying,” journalist Mona Selim told AFP during a sit-in at the journalists’ union in Cairo.

She was speaking alongside Eman Ouf and Racha Azab, the two colleagues who have gone on hunger strike with her.

Selim said that the three are also demanding the “liberation of all prisoners of conscience” in Egypt.

They number more than 60,000 in Egypt, according to rights groups — jailed under the rule of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, before being elected the following year.

After a seven-month hunger strike during which he consumed only “100 calories a day”, Alaa Abdel Fattah has refused food altogether since last Tuesday.

On Sunday he launched a “water strike” too, said his sister Sanaa Seif, who on Monday travelled to Sharm el-Sheikh where world leaders arrived for the COP27.

LAGA UN KOMENTARIO

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