Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Egyptian authorities arrested 1,540 Egyptian people in the weeks just before COP to prevent them organising protests. Thousands of people have been imprisoned and detained. Even when they get judicial orders for their release, they disappear. Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been imprisoned for five years for “spreading fake news”, by which it is meant that he utters words critical of the El-Sisi regime. Did the Taoiseach even raise these issues with the Egyptian authorities, never mind question whether it was appropriate to go to a conference held in a country whose regime is so brutal that it crushes even the mildest voices of criticism of the El-Sisi regime?

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