Egypt’s permanent delegate to the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), Alaa Youssef, expressed on Tuesday Egypt’s concerns over the rise of racial rhetoric in Europe, the rise of hatred against foreigners, and discrimination and violence against minorities and immigrants, including Muslims, Arabs, and Africans.
While delivering Egypt’s speech before the meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva following the death of Egyptian student Mariam Moustafa, Youssef strongly condemned using the rhetoric of countering terrorism and preserving national security to justify taking measures against foreigners and forcibly deporting them after detaining them in inhumane detention centres in countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, and Finland.
The Egyptian delegate strongly condemned the “crime of assaulting to death the Egyptian national Mariam Moustafa in Nottingham city in the UK, and the racial motives behind the incident.” The delegate also demanded the UK authorities conduct an immediate and transparent investigation into the crime in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Moustafa, an 18-year-old Egyptian national who was born in Rome, died of her injuries last week after falling into a coma for about 24 days as a result of an assault outside a shopping mall in the city of Nottingham on 20 February.
Youssef stressed the necessity that the UN Human Rights Council pay more attention to the issue of discrimination and violence against minorities and immigrants, and it called upon European countries to cooperate with the council to spread values of tolerance and accepting the “other.”
