Dear Secretary Blinken,

We, the undersigned, are asking that you withhold $300 million in military aid to Egypt. Egypt is one of the largest recipients of US military funding, second only to Israel. Egypt’s human rights record is abysmal, and sending more money to President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi cannot be justified. 

Every year, Egypt receives $1 billion in military funding from the United States. In the coming weeks, you will be asked to decide, based on Egypt’s human rights progress, if the country should receive an additional $300 million. 

But the human rights situation in Egypt is abysmal. Estimates are that President Sisi is currently holding 60,000 political prisoners. The Geneva-based Committee for Justice rights group reported that at least 92 opponents of Sisi’s regime have been executed since 2013. From 2019 to 2020, the number of executions in Egypt tripled. Most of those executions have been prisoners of conscience. Egypt regularly practices mass trials where no true justice can be found, and dozens of people are sentenced to death or prison at once. If the US is a country that truly cares about the values of free speech and democracy, the US should not be sending more military aid to Egypt. 

At the beginning of your tenure as Secretary of State, you said that you were going to be “putting human rights at the center of foreign policy.” One way to do that would be witholding the $300 million in military aid, so at least that portion of US taxpayer dollars to Egypt cannot be used to fund political repression and torture. We look forward to seeing how you will honor this request. 

Sincerely,