Alaa Abd El-Fattah (Egyptian writer, technologist and pro-democracy activist; long-imprisoned) — open letter to the RightsCon conference smuggled from Tora prison, 2017: "Fix your own democracy... the only possible answer," and a warning that human-rights advocacy must not become "a weapon in a cold war... [as] the Arab revolutions were lost when revolutionaries found themselves... recruits in proxy wars between regional powers."

Fix your own democracy: This has always been my answer to the question “how can we help?” I still believe it is the only possible answer. Not only is where you live, work, vote, pay tax, and organize the place where you have more influence, but a setback for human rights in a place where democracy has deep roots is certain to be used as an excuse for even worse violations in societies where rights are more fragile.

We lose much when you allow your work to be used as an instrument of foreign policy no matter how benign your current ruling coalition is. We risk much when human rights advocacy becomes a weapon in a cold war (just as the Arab revolutions were lost when revolutionaries found themselves unwitting and unwilling recruits in proxy wars between regional powers).

[Source is English — Alaa Abd El-Fattah wrote this letter in English (an Arabic translation was published later); editorial context, not a translation. The letter was smuggled out of Egypt's Tora prison to the RightsCon human-rights conference, 2017.] Declared positions of Alaa Abd El-Fattah — Egypt's best-known political prisoner: a secular writer, technologist and revolutionary-democratic activist of the 2011 uprising, jailed by successive regimes and held for most of the period since the 2013 coup (he later became a British citizen and undertook a long hunger strike). His outlook is a third way that rejects BOTH military-authoritarian rule and Islamist authoritarianism — in the same letter he names a global authoritarian wave ("a coalition between Trump, Sisi, Duterte, Orban, Modi, Erdogan, Putin, Bin Salman") and asks to be protected "from both prosecution by the establishment and exploitation by the well-funded fringe extremists." The two passages here capture (1) "Fix your own democracy" — his standing answer to would-be Western helpers, that deepening democracy at home matters more than intervention, since rollbacks in established democracies become an alibi for worse repression elsewhere; and (2) "Don't play the game of nations" — a warning that human-rights advocacy must not become an instrument of foreign policy or a Cold-War weapon, because "the Arab revolutions were lost when revolutionaries found themselves... recruits in proxy wars between regional powers," favouring instead universal values and grassroots solidarity. This is the secular, civil-society, revolutionary-democratic pole of Egyptian politics — distinct from both the Sisi establishment and the Muslim Brotherhood documented elsewhere. [Axes: democracy (deep / participatory), civil-liberties (free expression, digital rights), regime-stance (anti-authoritarian — against both military rule and Islamist authoritarianism), regional-stance (anti-proxy-politics / non-alignment).]