Alaa Abdel Fattah named PEN Writer of Courage while in Egypt prison

British-Egyptian activist, Alaa Abdel Fattah, has been awarded this year’s PEN Writer of Courage honour. At 42, he remains incarcerated in Egypt, despite having completed a five-year sentence for allegedly “spreading false news.”

Sanaa Seif, Alaa’s sister, emphasised last month: “Let’s remember that this is an innocent man who has committed no crime. Yet, he will have served his time by September 29.”

Each year, the recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize selects a writer of courage from a shortlist of international authors proposed by the human rights organisation English PEN, all known for their defence of freedom of expression. Arundhati Roy, the 2024 PEN Pinter Prize winner, chose Alaa.

The Indian author expressed her wish to share her prize with Alaa, “for the same reason that Egyptian authorities have chosen to keep him in prison for two more years instead of releasing him last month. Because his voice is as beautiful as it is dangerous. Because his understanding of what we are facing today is as sharp as a dagger’s edge.”

Alaa rose to prominence in the Arab Spring uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak and became a symbol of suffering during the repression that followed.

The 2011 revolution gave hope to a generation of activists in Egypt and beyond, but Alaa quickly fell foul of successive security crackdowns. He has spent much of the decade since behind bars.

READ: Egypt must release activist after he served his sentence, family says

He was imprisoned for five years in 2014, the year incumbent Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi began heading the country, for protesting without permission. Released on probation in 2019, he was reunited with his young son, but was required to sleep each night at a police station.

The partial reprieve was cut short in September 2019, when he was detained, once more, amid a wave of arrests that followed rare protests against Al-Sisi. In December 2021, Alaa was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of spreading fake news, for sharing a social media post about the death of a prisoner. The accusation is commonly levelled at critics of the government and activists who post on social media.

Human rights groups say tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience have been detained under the Sisi regime, often without due process, and that they have suffered a range of abuses, including torture while in jail.

During a ceremony held at the British Library in London yesterday evening, Lina Attalah, the editor-in-chief of the independent Egyptian online newspaper Mada Masr, accepted the award on behalf of Alaa. She announced: “In his writing, newspaper articles, social media posts and prison letters, Alaa was finding the truth in and through language.”

“He has always been doing it not as a self-serving act of contemplation, but as an invitation to learn, think along and move on with it.”

Naomi Klein, an author and columnist for the Guardian US, also spoke at the event, praising Alaa who “embodies the relentless courage and intellectual depth that Arundhati Roy herself so powerfully represents, making her selection of him as the writer of courage profoundly fitting.”

Additionally, Roy announced at the ceremony that she would be donating her share of the prize money to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.