[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 132 (Wednesday, July 28, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5129-S5130]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Egypt

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, rightfully, this body is consumed with 
pending votes on infrastructure, but I want to draw my colleagues' 
attention to another matter of both importance and urgency.
  One of Vladimir Putin's favorite tactics during the Chechen rebellion 
was to kidnap the innocent relatives of rebel leaders and hold them 
captive until the leaders surrendered. Sometimes, if the rebel leader 
never gave himself up, the family members would just disappear forever. 
Thousands of these cases were documented over the course of the war, 
all in gross, blatant violation of human rights laws. It is one of the 
many reasons that Russia is an adversary, not an ally of the United 
States. We don't do business with nations that prey upon the innocent. 
We don't align ourselves with nations that use kidnapping or torture as 
a tool to stay in power.
  A few months ago, Moustafa Soltan and Khairi Soltan were startled by 
a hard knock on their door in the wee hours of a February Sunday 
morning. It was the Egyptian authorities, there to detain them again 
simply because their cousin happened to be a man named Mohamed Soltan, 
an American citizen and vocal Egyptian human rights advocate. Rightly, 
Moustafa and Khairi were not surprised because for the past year, the 
Soltan family has been the subject of consistent, coordinated 
harassment and detention by the agents of Egyptian dictator Abdelfattah 
Elsisi.
  Now, Sisi would probably argue that he uses the tactic of harassing 
and detaining family members of his political opponents in a more 
judicious manner than does Vladimir Putin, but he can't deny that he 
does it. He further cannot deny the systematic method by which he has 
used the judicial system in Egypt to eliminate his political 
opposition.
  Now, a reliable estimate is hard to come by because the political 
arrests have come at a dizzying pace since 2013, but it is believed 
that there are 60,000 people in jail today in Egypt because they are 
political opponents of the Sisi government.
  Now, Putin jails his political adversaries, too, but his number of 
around 400 doesn't come close to Sisi's. But that is just the tip of 
the iceberg when it comes to the Egyptian regime's treatment of 
political opponents. Only China and Iran execute more people every year 
than Egypt, and many of these executions are for political crimes. 
Journalists are currently under constant threat in Egypt. The country 
rates 166 out of 180 by the press freedom group Reporters Without 
Borders compared against other nations.
  In the 2018 Presidential election, Sisi had his main opponent 
arrested and had his campaign manager beaten up, causing all the other 
credible candidates to drop out of the race. Shockingly, Sisi won with 
97 percent of the vote. That same year, Putin was less greedy. He gave 
himself only 70 percent in his Presidential election.
  So why, you might ask, is Egypt our partner and Russia our adversary 
if their behavior is so malignantly similar? Why does Russia get 
sanctioned and Egypt get showered with $1.3 billion in military aid 
each year?
  Now, yes, there are important lines of cooperation between Egypt and 
the United States, and this explains some of that difference. Egypt's 
1979 peace treaty with Israel remains one of the most significant 
diplomatic achievements for the promotion of Arab-Israeli peace. For 
the last 40 years, Egypt has been a peace broker between the Israelis 
and the Palestinians. We rely on them historically. Egypt contributed 
forces to the first gulf war in 1990. The United States and Egypt often 
cooperate on counterterrorism work. Our ships often get preference in 
going through the Suez Canal, although we pay for that privilege.
  All that is important, but none of it is enough to justify the damage 
done to U.S. power and prestige when the whole world watches America 
deliver this giant blank check each year to Egypt while Sisi engages in 
this repeated, brazen violation of human rights. How do you tell Russia 
and China to stop their campaigns of political repression when we so 
openly endorse the grandiose scale of Sisi's?
  No, Egypt has come to believe that it can act any way that it wants, 
that it can carry out a massive campaign of political repression and 
that the Congress and the American President, whether he be a 
Republican or a Democrat, will just keep the money coming. And it is a 
stunning amount of money. The $1.3 billion security assistance package 
that Egypt gets every year from U.S. taxpayers is bested by only one 
other country in the world, and that is Israel.
  Most outrageous of all in light of this policy, Egypt arrests and 
imprisons American citizens with near impunity. Mohamed Soltan is not 
the only Egyptian American to be arrested and tortured as a political 
prisoner. Mustafa Kassem from Long Island, NY, was arrested in 2013 
while visiting family, just visiting family in Cairo. He died in an 
Egyptian prison in January of last year. There have been dozens of 
other American citizens.
  It is unacceptable that we would be providing over $1 billion in 
assistance to Egypt while they are holding a single American in prison 
for political crimes. When countries accept our money and continue to 
thumb their noses at our values, it makes America look like a patsy. It 
makes us weaker as a nation.
  So many of us cheered when President Biden took office declaring that 
there would now be ``a foreign policy that unites our democratic values 
with our diplomatic leadership, and one that is centered on the defense 
of democracy and the protection of human rights.'' President Biden's 
team has been outspoken on human rights in our foreign policy by 
calling out abusive dictatorships who imprison their critics and muzzle 
free speech, reuniting our democratic allies in Europe against Russian 
election interference and Chinese misinformation, and sanctioning 
corrupt oligarchs all over the world. That is great news.
  The Biden administration has chosen to make democracy and human 
rights a priority because they see this coming fight between Chinese- 
and Russian-modeled autocracy and American-led democracy. And over the 
last 4 years, Donald Trump's affection for dictatorship, it gave our 
adversaries in the autocratic world a headstart. President Biden knows 
the future of the world depends on our willingness as a nation to take 
a strong, immediate stand right now for democracy everywhere.
  And so let's be clear. An administration that wants to lead on 
democracy and human rights cannot send another $1.3 billion to Egypt 
with no strings attached. To do so would be to endorse Sisi's crackdown 
and send a bright, blinking message to the world that America talks a 
big game on democracy but isn't willing to do much about it.
  Luckily, Joe Biden doesn't have to take the heat when it comes to a 
change in Egypt policy. He can simply blame Congress and tell Sisi that 
he is just upholding the law.
  Why?
  For more than a decade, Congress has been conditioning some of the 
aid we

[[Page S5130]]

give to Egypt on its human rights record, hoping that if we tied a 
portion of the $1.3 billion to things like holding free and fair 
elections, or releasing political prisoners, allowing the media space 
to operate, that the Egyptian Government would make progress.
  But nearly every single year, the State Department waives those 
conditions and just gives Egypt the money, even when the conditions 
aren't close to being met. Only once--and I will give them credit for 
this--in 2017, Secretary Tillerson cut $95 million and temporarily held 
up another $195 million of Egypt's aid money, but even that $195 
million was released before all the conditions were met.
  Never has the State Department just said the obvious: The conditions 
weren't met. We are not going to waive them. You are not getting the 
money.
  And we are talking about a portion of the money, this year, $300 
million of the $1.3 billion.
  It is painfully clear that the lesson Egypt has learned over the 
years is a simple one: America is not serious about human rights, and 
so we don't need to invest in improvements; we are going to get the 
money anyway.
  This year, Congress has said that the Secretary of State should 
withhold $300 million of military aid to Egypt if Sisi doesn't 
substantially reverse his campaign of political repression and 
intimidation. What we know, unequivocally, is that no meaningful 
progress has been made. The latest arrests of Mohamed Soltan's family 
were done in February of this year. That was kind of like a thumb in 
the eye of the new administration and the new Congress.
  Like clockwork every year, right before the annual waiver is given by 
the State Department, Egypt normally does release a few of the most 
egregiously detained prisoners or announces some minor change in 
policy, but it is always window dressing. The trend from year to year 
is always the same: more human rights violations, more intimidation, 
less free speech, less democracy.
  This year, the United States must withhold the $300 million, in 
accordance with the law passed by this Congress. It will send a message 
to Egypt that we are serious about reform and, maybe more importantly, 
it will send a message to the world that we are willing to walk the 
walk, not just talk the talk.
  Now, this town freaks out whenever the security assistance gravy 
train goes off the rails, even for a moment. Keeping the pipeline of 
American arms flowing to brutal regimes, it makes a lot of people rich 
in Washington. And those people are whispering in the ears of Congress 
and the administration right now, making the claim, as they do every 
single year, that the sky is going to fall if Egypt doesn't get its 
$1.3 billion--all of it, all of the $1.3 billion--as they have every 
year since 1987. They will say that all the lines of cooperation that I 
mentioned earlier will disappear.
  But in reality, the return on investment for our military aid to 
Egypt, it has been diminishing for a long time now. And there is no 
reason that the things that we get from Egypt--Suez access, overflight 
rights, continued upholding of the peace treaty with Israel--will be 
overturned should they get only $1 billion rather than $1.3 billion 
this year.
  Why is that?
  Well, because in 1987, those benefits Egypt provides were arguably 
concessions to our requests. But, today, Egypt does those things not 
because we pay them to do it, but because they have their own reasons 
to do them.
  For years, the United States looked the other way while another 
regional power, Saudi Arabia, carried out its own dizzying campaign of 
repression against its own people. We did virtually nothing. We said 
virtually nothing. Instead, we rewarded Saudi Arabia with record 
amounts of armed sales. And then one day, they kidnapped a U.S. 
resident and they chopped him to pieces. And America was made a fool in 
the eyes of the world, and, in some ways, we have had a hard time 
recovering from that day.
  Mohamed Soltan, just like Jamal Khashoggi, believes that there is no 
other nation in the world that cares more about standing up for 
democracy and civil rights than America. Egypt doesn't care. They 
harass and imprison his relatives at will--the relatives of a high-
profile American citizen--because they can. Let's not make the same 
mistake with Egypt that we made with Saudi Arabia.
  Egypt notices when we talk tough and do nothing, so does the rest of 
the world. And so withholding $300 million of their $1.3 billion until 
Egypt makes real concessions on reform, it won't fundamentally harm 
U.S. interests in the Middle East. It will only make us more safe.
  It is the best opportunity for the Biden administration to show that 
we mean it when we say that the stakes in the fight between autocracy 
and democracy are sky high and that we are willing to do more than just 
talk about our values. America has the capacity to live them as well.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas