Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

There are 60,000 political prisoners behind bars in Egypt. One of them, Abd el-Fattah, whose collection of prison writings was published earlier this year, has been on a 100 calories per day hunger strike since the start of April. The Egyptian dictatorship, having organised a military coup in 2013, now wants to organise a greenwashing publicity coup in 2022 by hosting the United Nations climate change conference, COP27. It is due to start on 6 November. Egyptian NGOs that have criticised the regime's record on the environment have been harassed, spied on and filtered out of the conference. Has the Government raised any objections to the location for COP27, and has it made the release of Egypt's political prisoners a serious issue in any fashion in the run-up to this conference? If not, why not?

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