One murder too far: How the Regeni case turned the tide on Egypt

Wael Haddara, middleeasteye.net

Image from article, with caption: What no one counted on was Paola Regeni, who stood up not only for her son, but for all the other Egyptian victims of the regime

Excerpt:

Much has been made of the Egyptian regime’s obtuse response to the Italian government’s request for a thorough, credible and transparent investigation into Giulio Regeni’s murder. Regeni, a PhD student at Cambridge, was in Egypt researching labour movements when he suddenly disappeared on 25 January. His body was eventually found in a ditch with extensive signs of torture. ...

Over the course of the two years following the military coup, a number of prominent Egyptians opposed to the regime warned diplomats in Western Europe and the United States that the Egyptian regime will understand normalisation of relations as a carte blanche for more abuses; silence and so-called quiet diplomacy will fail to move the Egyptian regime towards any mitigation of human rights abuses. We argued that the Egyptian regime will correctly understand the mild condemnations to be nothing more than the trappings of public diplomacy.

I believe that is exactly what happened. The Egyptian regime found its abuses not only unpunished, but indeed rewarded. Democratic governments had asserted that they are unconcerned by the murder of hundreds, if not over a thousand Egyptians, detentions of tens of thousands of other Egyptians, systematic rape, extra-judicial killing and rampant torture and forced disappearances. ...