11 October 2022
Dear Hartwig Fischer, George Osborne and the Trustees of the British Museum,
We are writing to you as you prepare to open the Museum’s next major exhibition – ‘Hieroglyphs: unlocking ancient Egypt’ – to urge you not just to look to Egypt’s past but to take a stand in support of human rights in Egypt today. Egypt, under President Sisi’s rule, is experiencing its worst human rights crisis in its modern history. Tens of thousands of government critics including journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition parties, have been arbitrarily detained, many held in lengthy pretrial detention, and subject to inhumane conditions.
These include Alaa Abd El-Fattah, an Egyptian-British writer and activist, and nephew of former trustee Ahdaf Soueif, who has been imprisoned for nine years. Alaa has been on hunger strike since April 2022 to demand his right to consular access by the British Embassy – which the Egyptian authorities have still not granted. On August 25th, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson “expressed his hope for swift and positive progress on the issue” in a call with President Sisi. The fact that the British Museum will open a new Egypt exhibition without acknowledging that this major diplomatic issue is happening could put a British citizen’s life at further risk. Egyptian authorities observe such events closely and use them to deflect criticism abroad.
The Museum will be aware that the new exhibition, sponsored by the oil and gas giant BP, opens just weeks before the COP27 Climate Summit takes place in Sharm-El-Sheikh. As hosts of the summit, the Egyptian government is seeking to present itself as a progressive leader on climate change. In reality, the ongoing violent crackdown and restrictions on freedom of assembly and expression severely undermine the meaningful participation of civil society at the summit.
BP is also eager to present itself as a responsible climate leader ahead of the summit. By allowing the company to sponsor this exhibition, the Museum is actively assisting BP in projecting a misleading picture of its business. BP has partnered closely with successive governments and regimes in Egypt and the same laws and practices that limit the role of civil society and have condemned thousands to imprisonment have aided the expansion of BP’s fossil fuel extraction in the country. In the town of Idku, a short distance from where the Rosetta Stone was excavated, the local community successfully resisted the construction of a BP gas processing plant but, following the introduction of a regressive anti-protest law, that kind of community opposition became all but impossible. BP is now extracting close to 1 billion cubic feet per day of gas from its West Nile Delta gas fields.
As the Museum puts Egypt in the spotlight it has both a position of influence, and the responsibility to use it. It should not celebrate Egypt’s cultural past while ignoring the human rights situation in the present, or the climate impacts Egypt faces in the future. Museums are not neutral. Representatives of the Egyptian government and BP will no doubt have been invited to attend the exhibition’s opening and we call on you to take the opportunity this week to raise the case of Alaa’s imprisonment and support the international call for the release of all prisoners of conscience before COP27 opens.
Signed,
- Khalid Abdalla, Actor
- Ahdaf Soueif, Author
- Valeria Luiselli, Author
- Yasmine El Rashidi, Author
- Brian Eno, Composer and Musician
- Gareth Spencer, President, PCS Culture Group
- Ackroyd & Harvey, Artists
- Professor Rodney Harrison, Professor of Heritage Studies, Institute of Archaeology, UCL
- Elizabeth Bast, Executive Director, Oil Change International
- Yasmin El-Rifae, Writer and Author
- Mark Rylance, Actor
- Juliet Stevenson, Actor
- Bianca Jagger, Founder, President and Chief Executive of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation
- Maxine Peake, Actor
- Steve Coogan, Comedian, Actor and Screenwriter
- Harriet Walter, Actor
- Kyle Lewis Jordan, British Museum Friends Advisory Council Member and Curating for Change Fellow (Ashmolean and Pitts River’s Museums, Oxford)
- Dr Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director, Scientists for Global Responsibility
- Sue Willman, Assistant Director of Clinical Legal Education & Supervising Solicitor, King’s Legal Clinic, KCL
- Kate Anderson, Green New Deal Rising
- Tori Tsui, Speaker, consultant and Co-founder of Bad Activist Collective
- Elaine Gilligan, Chief International Advisor, Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and Northern Ireland)
- Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike
- Omar Robert Hamilton, Writer and Film-maker
- Caryl Churchill, Playwright
- Kamila Shamsie, Author
- Isabella Hammad, Author
- Sarah Woolley, General Secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU)
- Julie Christie, Actor
- Mike Leigh, Director
- Miriam Margolyes OBE, Actress
- Ava Bruges, UKSCN London
- Victoria Brittain, Author and journalist
- Tessa Khan, Director, Uplift
- Dorothy Guerrero, Head of Policy and Advocacy, Global Justice Now
- Gareth Evans, Adjunct Moving Image Curator, Whitechapel Gallery
- Dr Nadine El-Enany, Reader in Law, Birkbeck School of Law, and Co-Director of Centre for Research on Race and Law
- Ken Loach, Film Director
- Loraine Monk, Joint Chair of Artists Union England
- Helena Wilson, Equity for a Green New Deal
- Roy Battersby, Filmmaker
- Pankaj Mishra, Author
- Peter Kosminsky, Screenwriter and Director
- David Calder, Actor
- John Keane, Artist
- Francesca Willow, Writer, Artist and Activist
- Prof. Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, Filmmaker
- Hilary Westlake, Chair, Artists for Palestine UK
- Carmen Calill, Writer and Publisher
- Penny Woolcock, Filmmaker
- Bella Freud, Fashion Designer
- Trevor Griffiths, Playwright
- Adam Broomberg, Artist
- Paul Laverty, Screenwriter
- Es Devlin, Artist and Designer
- Roger Waters, Musician
- Brigid Keenan, Author
- Dr Mirjam Brusius, FRHistS, Editor ‘100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object’
- Dr Gavin Grindon, Senior Lecturer in Curating, Dept of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex
- Miranda Pennell, Artist and Filmmaker
- Professor Jacqueline Rose, Co-Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
- Zoe Lafferty, Artists On The Frontline
- Zita Holbourne, FRSA Artist, Author, Curator, Human Rights Campaigner, National Chair BARAC UK
- Will Attenborough, Actor
- Paul Valentine, Equity Councillor
- Mary Church, Head of Campaigns and Interim Co-director, Friends of the Earth Scotland
- Suzanne Jeffery, Chair, Campaign Against Climate Change
- Andrew Simms, New Weather Institute
- Louise Hazan, Co-founder, Tipping Point UK
- Dr Chris Garrard, Co-director, Culture Unstained
- Richard Solly, Co-ordinator, London Mining Network
- Poppy Flint, BP or not BP?
- Asad Rehman, Executive Director, War on Want
- Hannah Davey, Liberate Tate
- Gemma Jackson, Production Designer
- Clara Paillard, Coordinator, Liverpool Climate Justice Coalition
- Robert Noyes, Co-director, Platform
- Dr Gail Bradbrook, Co-founder, Extinction Rebellion
- Leo Murray, Co-director, Possible
- Professor Sara Chandler KC (Hon)
- Green Party Trade Union Group
- Dr Drew Pearce, Imperial College London
- Imperial Climate Action
- Yara Rodrigues Fowler, author
- Dr Rebecca Hillman, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communications, Drama, Film and TV, University of Exeter
- China Miéville, Author
- Alexei Sayle, comedian, writer
Culture Unstained 