JERSEY has provided a temporary, welcome haven to a human rights lawyer from Egypt who was imprisoned for three months in 2015 and is unable to return to her home country due to ongoing threats.
Maha Attia still supports Egyptian women through legal advice and advocacy – but from the safer surrounds of Selby in North Yorkshire. She also supports migrants seeking asylum in the UK, as she has successfully done for herself and her two daughters.
Maha and her children’s week-long respite break in the Island was organised by the Prisoners of Conscience Jersey Holiday Fund, a charity which invites around six guests a year through partner agencies – in Maha’s case, the York Centre for Applied Human Rights.
She said: “I am a human rights lawyer focusing on housing and education rights, climate change and women’s violence. Combined with being a woman and a single mother, that role put me in danger with the government and its supporters, who saw me as a threat.
“After I went to prison, officials and the police would phone me or visit my home and I felt a lot of stress, particularly for my daughters. I am a strong woman but, in the end, we successfully claimed asylum in the UK.
“Now I am in a safe place, I can continue to help women in Egypt as well as other countries. I also volunteer to support asylum seekers going through the process in the UK.”
Maha works online with colleagues in Egypt to campaign against the internationally proscribed practice of female genital mutilation both there and worldwide.
When she lived there, she faced serious risk due to her human rights work with an organisation called the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms.
In 2014, she was arrested while conducting research in the densely populated city of El-Khasos, and her colleagues have subsequently faced arrest and prison. She was increasingly targeted personally, which included state monitoring, and associates and family members were questioned about her work and whereabouts.
Maja said that the risk to her was ongoing and she had good reason to believe that she would be arrested if she were to return.
After she was accepted onto York University’s Protective Fellowship Programme, her brother was summoned to the National Security office and questioned about her possible return.
During the past year, two lawyers working with ECRF were interrogated and asked whether Maha intended to return to Egypt and whether she was continuing her work from abroad.
In York, as well as work remotely, she advocates locally for women’s rights and against domestic violence. Last week, she gave a moving presentation on these topics to JCG Year 12 students.
Anyone who would like to know more about the charity’s work can contact its chairwoman, Jurat Collette Crill, on 07797 717012 or cozcrill@gmail.com
