[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