'Voci X Patrick – Music and Art for Patrick Zaki'

After the great success of the online music marathon for Patrick Zaki, made on February 8, one year after his imprisonment, now, twenty months later, Amnesty International Italy, MEI - Independent Labels Meeting e Voices for Freedom they return to turn the spotlight on the Egyptian student with a new event, scheduled for Saturday October 2, on the occasion of the MEI in Faenza: “Voci X Patrick – Music and Art for Patrick Zaki".

It will be an opportunity to reiterate the call for the immediate release of the Egyptian student, who is being held as a prisoner of conscience for his human rights work and political views expressed on social media.

The event, scheduled from 15pm to Gallery of the Molinella Vault, in the historic center, will be accompanied by an exhibition with the 10 winning posters of “Free Patrick Zaki: prisoner of conscience”, the special edition of the international social communication competition “Posters For Tomorrow".

There will be speeches by Giordano Sangiorgi, patron of the MEI, Rita Monticelli, coordinator of the Gemma Master at the University of Bologna, Michela Montevecchi, senator of the human rights commission, Iustina Mocanu of Amnesty International Bologna University Group and Roy paci winner of the 2019 Amnesty Award in the Big section. Michele Lionello, artistic director of Voci per la Libertà, will coordinate.

During the meeting there will be space for acoustic sets by Blindur, HER e In the end William and the video report of the festival will be screened "Voices for Freedom – A song for Amnesty 2021”, dedicated to Zaki and created by Andrea Artax Artosi.

In the evening, Blindur will perform in Piazza Nenni as the winner of the Amnesty International Italia Award, emerging section, at Voci per la Libertà 2021.

The promoters say: “It is time to stand united and more determined than ever. Patrick Zaki must return to his studies in Bologna. Patrick Zaki is a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for his human rights work and political opinions expressed on social media. We dedicate this initiative to all prisoners of conscience who have been kidnapped, tortured, disappeared and illegally detained. And to all those young women and men who travel the world to study, research, share and build a better society.".

Patrick George Zaki, an Egyptian activist and researcher, has been held in pretrial detention until further notice since 7 February 2020. He is a prisoner of conscience held solely for his human rights work and political views expressed on social media.

On February 7, 2020, Patrick Zaki, an Egyptian student of the Gemma (Erasmus Mundus Master's degree program in “Women's and Gender Studies”) at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, was stopped at Cairo Airport, just after landing on a flight from Italy.

In his country he was supposed to spend only a vacation in the company of his loved ones during a short academic break. And instead the nightmare began.

After several hours of forced disappearance, he reappears the next day, February 8, before the Mansoura city prosecutor's office to validate his arrest. The arrest warrant contains charges of threatening national security, inciting an illegal demonstration, subversion, spreading false news, and propaganda for terrorism.

After exhausting postponements, the first two hearings of the trial were held only in July. In the second, on Sunday 26, the young student – ​​visibly thinner – met his lawyers for the first time since March 7. On August 25, 2020, again for the first time since March, he saw his mother, for a brief conversation.

On December 7, the judge of the third section of the Cairo anti-terrorism court announced the renewal of his pre-trial detention for 45 days. On December 19, Patrick met his mother again in Tora prison.I am physically and mentally exhausted, I can't stand being here anymore and I get depressed at every stage of the academic year while I'm here instead of with my friends in Bologna“, he tells her. In these months the family has received only two short letters compared to at least 20 that the boy had written and sent.

Due to the spread of Covid-19 in Egypt, Patrick, like tens of thousands of other Egyptian prisoners, has very strong concerns about the health emergency.

After more than a year and a half of detention, Patrick Zaki will be tried for denouncing human rights violations in Egypt. This alone should be enough to raise fears for the fate of the Egyptian student: after more than 500 days in prison, without the possibility of verifying his state of health, now begins a trial that could end with a sentence of 5 years.