Thread by @ChidiOdinkalu

In Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, proceedings are underway in #ACHPR64, the 64th Ordinary Session of @ACHPR. The conditions are far from conducive. The Egyptian Mukhabarat are stifling advocacy & harassing NGO advocates with a systematic obstacle course of manufactured difficulties

Groups attending #ACHPR64 are finding that visas are difficult to get. Yesterday, after facing serious frustration, @ACHPR negotiated for some groups to travel on the condition that they would get visas on arrival. That experience was worse than an ordeal

Registration has proved difficult. Agents of the Mukhabarat are everywhere, rifling through documents & bags. Their excuse is counter-terrorism presumably. But a few participants are complaining of documents disappearing from their bags & rooms just like that at #ACHPR64

Advocacy documents cannot be distributed at the venue of the #ACHPR64 without the express consent of the Secretary to the Commission, who in turn must get the permission of the chief of the #Mukhabarat, who will vet the document with an eye on censorship. It's crazy-fying

In particular, participants from Ghana, Malawi, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania have been unable to get visas to #ACHPR64. In the end, Ugandan groups have had to ask ppl from outside #Africa to represent them. Egypt's Mukhabarat is succeeding in stifling the session as they set out to do

Egypt's Mukhabarat has been as brazen & shameless in its interference in the proceedings of #ACHPR64 as @ACHPR has been supine & timid. The full extent of the interference is captured in this complaint by the body of NGOs attending the session

Overnight at the Sharm El Sheikh proceedings of #ACHPR64, many more participants report what appears to be a pattern of intrusive harassment from agents of Egypt's Mukhabarat. Rooms have been ransacked, things are out of place, items of advocacy & campaign inexplicably vanish

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