Cairo: A host of Egyptian big-name entertainers left on Tuesday for Germany to show solidarity for President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi during a ground-breaking visit, triggering controversy at home over the significance and cost of their trip.
Al Sissi is due on Wednesday to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the start of his first visit to Berlin since becoming president in June last year.
The Egyptian leader insisted on going ahead with the two-day visit despite criticism from some German politicians of Egypt’s human rights scene, local media reported.
Famed actors Yussra, Ilham Chahin, Hala Sedki, Lebleba and Ezzat Al Alaili are among around 20 celebrities, who on Tuesday boarded a private plane heading for Germany, which is believed to be a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood, a nemesis of Al Sissi.
Egypt’s entertainment community are staunch backers of Al Sissi, who led the army’s 2013 overthrow of president Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood following enormous street protests against the Islamist leader’s one-year rule.
Head of Egypt’s Actors Association, Ashraf Abdul Gafour, denied his union was involved in arranging the entertainers’ travel to Germany.
“The association has no link to the choice of the artists for this trip and has not borne any cost for this,” Abdul Gafour told private newspaper Al Masry Al Youm.
Famous film director, Khalid Yousuf, said before leaving for Germany, that the trip was financed by the independent Chamber of Media and some private satellite TV stations that have also sent prominent anchors to cover the presidential visit.
“The presence of a big number of artists in this visit is important because art is a major sector in Egypt and has a big weight on the Arab and international arenas,” Yousuf told the paper.
“The artists’ trip to Germany comes as an honest expression of the majority of the Egyptian people’s stance against the black propaganda spread by the Brotherhood in Germany and most European countries against the ruling system in Egypt.”
Critics of the celebrities’ trip to Germany see it as a waste of money and of little influence on Western public opinion.
Actress Yussra, a participant in the visit, disagrees.
“It is not true we are boarding the presidential plane. All of us are going to Germany at our own expense,” Yussra told private TV station Al Mehwar on Monday. “Like other citizens, we want to back the president. The aim of our visit is to face the Brotherhood lobby in Germany.”
A series of heavy-handed verdicts, including death sentences, issued against Islamists in Egypt recently have recently drawn international condemnation.
Shrugging off the criticism, the Egyptian government has said it does not interference in court rulings and that the sentences can be appealed.
