Egypt

Once Upon a Revolution: A Story With No End

February 9, 2014 David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El-Sheikhfeb, www.nytimes.com Educate! Egypt, Movies

However stirring the images of Arab Spring idealism might seem to Western audiences, “The Square” is often painful viewing for those who lived through it, a heartbreaking reminder of hopes deferred and fears fulfilled. The film, made by the Egyptian-American director Jehane Noujaim and shot before she knew how the story would end, chronicles a handful of young rebels struggling to save their revolution from larger and more cynical forces: the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. Seemingly everyone here who has seen “The Square” has some complaint about omissions or distortions. The current military-backed government, possibly displeased with the depiction of the army, has not yet allowed it to be distributed in Egypt.

How the West Manufactures ‘Opposition Movements’

February 4, 2014 Andre Vltchek, , www.counterpunch.org Educate! Cuba, Egypt, Thailand, Ukraine, Venezuela

The West is continuously manufacturing and then supporting oppressive forces, be they feudal or religious. The more oppressed people are, the less disposed they are to fight for justice and for their rights. The more scared they are, the easier it is to control them. Feudalism, religious oppression and cruel right-wing dictatorships, all that serves perfectly well both the market fundamentalism of the Empire, and its obsession with controlling the planet. But such an arrangement of the world is abnormal, and therefore temporary. Human beings are longing for justice and, in their essence, are a sharing and decent species. Albert Camus, correctly, arrived at the conclusion in his powerful novel “The Plague” (analogy to fight against fascism): “there is more to admire than to despise in humans”. What the West is now doing to the world; igniting conflicts, supporting banditry and terror, sacrificing millions of people for its own commercial interests, is nothing new under the sun.

Egypt: Three Years From Revolution To Military Rule

February 1, 2014 Sharif Abdel Kouddous, www.thenation.com Educate! Egypt

January 25, 2011, was a transformative moment for Egypt. Thousands of protesters flooded the streets to call for the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s sclerotic regime, confronting the notorious security forces on National Police Day and sparking a mass uprising that reverberated around the world. This year, January 25 brings with it a feeling of the revolution’s undoing. A crude monument erected by the new military-backed government stands in the center of Tahrir Square—once the epicenter of autonomous mass mobilization, now a space controlled by the state and its security forces. Three protesters this week were sentenced to two years in prison for defacing the structure. The ruling barely registered in the news. Since the military ouster of elected president Mohamed Morsi last July, followed by the brutal crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood, the security establishment has emerged re-empowered, reinvigorated and out for revenge, cracking down on its opponents with unprecedented severity. Much of Egypt is awash in conformist state worship, fueled by the shrill narrative of a war on terror and the age-old autocratic logic that trades rights for the promise of security.

Egypt: Protesters Killed On Third Anniversary Of Revolt

January 25, 2014 Patrick Kingsley, www.theguardian.com Resist! Egypt

A few miles west, at Mostafa Mahmoud square, pro-democracy activists expressing the opposite viewpoint were prevented from gathering for a march by police. "As soon as I got to Mostafa Mahmoud, two cops came up to me, kept kicking me and telling me to get the fuck out or else they'll jail me," tweeted a leftwing activist, Tarek Shalaby. Police later attacked another leftist rally near Tahrir Square, continuing a crackdown on all forms of dissent that has seen thousands of Islamists and dozens of secular activists arrested since July. "This is not the Egypt that we are looking for," said a spokesman for the 6 April group, the youth movement that organised many of the first protests against Mubarak in 2011.

Egypt’s Prisons Full To Brim With Activists, Journalists

January 15, 2014 Louisa Loveluck, www.vice.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Egypt

Over the past three Fridays, Egyptian police have arrested over 700 protesters and killed another 27, according to official figures. There was a time when these numbers would have led the news bulletins; now, they're buried in half-hearted weekend round-ups. The news, it seems, is as tired with the situation in Egypt as the people who've retreated from politics in the years since the 2011 revolution. According to Wiki Thawra, a website dedicated to documenting the Egyptian revolution, over 21,000 people have been arrested since the 3rd of July, the overwhelming majority of them during protests against the military ousting of Mohamed Morsi. The former president's Muslim Brotherhood, leaders of the nation just seven months ago, are now among its most despised criminals; on Christmas Day, the interim Egyptian government declared the organisation a terrorist group, despite scant evidence to suggest that this is the case.

Mass Protests Grow As Military Drags Egypt Back To Dictatorship

January 10, 2014 Roger Annis, www.truth-out.org Resist! Egypt, Wars and Militarism

The military-dominated regime that seized power in Egypt in July 2013 has escalated its attacks on freedom and democracy in the country. A series of pronouncements were issued in late December, including the banning of the country's largest political movement - the Muslim Brotherhood. By all evidence, Egypt's economic and military elite are taking the country back to the darkest days of the rule of former dictator Hosni Mubarak or even farther into the abyss. The regime's new measures have been accompanied by regressive court decisions and assaults on protesting citizens by police and soldiers backed by plainclothes thugs. A harrowing prospect threatens the country - that of a violent war by the regime and its backers against the population, similar to the bloody war that was waged by Algeria's government and military against the people of that country during the 1990s and 2000s. Courageous protests by growing sections of Egyptian society are blocking the road of civil war that the regime seems hell-bent on taking. Civilian protest and organizing offer hope that the country can return to a path of democracy and social justice that opened with the overthrow of Mubarak in February 2011.

Egyptian Protest Organizers Sentenced To Two Years In Jail

January 6, 2014 Staff, revolutionarysocialism.tumblr.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Egypt

MENA Solidarity Network reports that Mahienour el-Masry and Hassan Moustafa, two leading activists with the Revolutionary Socialists in Alexandria, Egypt, have been sentenced for defying anti-protest laws. They each face two years of hard labour in prison and a £4,000 fine. Four other Alexandrian activists, Lu’ay Al-Qahwagi, Amr Hafez, Nasir Abu-al-Hamd and Islam Muhamadein, received the same sentence. The activists were charged with organising a demonstration without police permission. This was made illegal in Egypt under new laws brought in late last year by General al-Sisi’s regime.

Egypt Court Jails Activists Who Organized Anti-Mubarak Protests For 3 years

December 22, 2013 Tom Perry, www.Reuters.com Resist! Egypt, Freedom of Speech and Assembly

Three leading Egyptian activists were sentenced to three years in prison each on Sunday in a case brought over their role in recent protests, escalating a crackdown on dissent by the army-backed government. Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel are symbols of the protest movement that ignited the historic 2011 uprising against President Hosni Mubarak. Each one was also fined 50,000 Egyptian pounds ($7,200) by the court. As the verdict was read, the courtroom erupted in chants of: "Down, down with military rule! We are in a state, not in a military camp!" The case stems from protests called in defiance of a law passed by the army-backed government in November that severely restricts the right to assembly. Activists say the army-backed authorities, already pressing a fierce crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood movement of former President Mohamed Mursi, have in recent weeks started to target members of the secular activist movement. The case against the activists relates to a protest that erupted outside the court where Maher turned himself into the authorities on Nov. 30, heeding a warrant for his arrest on accusations he organised a previous protest without permission.

Egyptian Groups Say Now Worse Than Mubarak Era

December 20, 2013 Staff, www.ecesr.org Resist! Egypt

The Egyptian government continues to commit violence and terrorism against the society under the cover of its war against terrorism. This highlights the continuous attempts to reconstruct the police state and reviving its power in the public sphere as it was during the reign of the deposed dictator Mubarak. In this context, the demonstration law was issued, contradicting the Egyptian constitutions and Egypt’s international obligations, aiming to oppress the right to demonstrate and the right to peaceful assembly. It was used in the last weeks to oppress several demonstrators, arresting different human rights defenders, fabrication of criminal charges and bringing them to unfair trials. The campaigns of intimidation and terror committed against civil society organizations; specifically, human rights organizations, with no political affiliations or bias but rather specialize in the defense of citizens’ rights. Therefore there is no doubt that the real reason behind these violent actions is to subject the public domain to full security control – an attempt to revive the pre-January 25th state.

This Is What Happens When You Outlaw Peaceful Protest

December 16, 2013 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Resist! Egypt, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Spain

In many of the countries that experienced dramatic social mobilizations from 2011 onward, terrified elites are now drawing up laws banning the type of street demonstrations that kick-started the Age of the Protester, desperately trying to institutionalize their Thermidorian counter-revolution now that the movements appear to be on the retreat. But everywhere these type of anti-protest legislations are being passed, the attempted closure is only drawing people back into the streets. And so we find ourselves at a historical crossroads: now that the ruling elite can no longer command the voluntary consent of the ruled, they will increasingly resort to the use of force in order to retain their position of privilege. This leaves the movements in a frightening predicament. If the state’s inner bestiality is taking over from its limited human capacity to dialogue and reason, can we really keep fighting it through the same means? Does it really make sense to reproach a rabid and murderous beast with the cunning reason of man? What is the point in peaceful protest if the state simply outlaws it and arrests us for disagreeing in public? What future is there for us if we are to be mercilessly jailed or bankrupted, our lives destroyed, simply for calling on our fellow human beings to peacefully speak out against injustice? What direction is the state driving us into? And can the movements be held responsible for what comes next?

Driven By ‘State Injustice’, Egypt’s Revolutionaries Rise Up

December 7, 2013 Hatem Maher, www.english.ahram.org.eg Resist! Democracy, Egypt, Hate, Human Rights, Revolution

But now that the heavy-handed tactics have come to the doorstep of the fundamental rights they earned by revolting in 2011 to unseat autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, they are back on the streets. “Many people did not go out on the streets because of the absence of a clear demand. But, after a while, things have become clear again. The state is still trying to preserve and renew its oppressive tools,” socialist activist Khaled Abdel-Hamid told Ahram Online. “The interior ministry and all the security apparatuses are doing their utmost to exact revenge on the symbols of the January 2011 revolution,” added Abdel-Hamid, a member of the Way of the Revolution Front, founded in September as a third political force opposed to both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Monday: Unchain The Gaza Sea

December 1, 2013 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Egypt, Food and Agriculture, Israel, Palestine

We are sailing at 10 am in the morning, keep us safe and keep us in your prayers. We need you to raise Awareness about us, fishing for freedom, we are going to Implement the International law. Sumud and Justice for Fishermen Freedom Flotilla. Armed only with international law, Palestinian and international activists will join Gaza's fishermen on Monday 2nd December at 9am, to Peacefully challenge the Israeli sea blockade of Gaza. Sumud and Flotilla considers that for too long, the international community has stood by the while Israel, and now even Egypt, Prevents Gaza's fishermen from sailing in their own territorial seas, and using the wealth of their own waters. "The fishermen of Gaza are Unable to support Themselves or our economy, and we are fishing for freedom under the international law and struggling to end this illegal blockade of Gaza and # advice I United Nations to protect Fishermen and Palestinians in the Sumud and Justice now Flotilla "said one of the Organisers, Majed Abusalama.

Egypt: “We Don’t Need Permission To Protest”

December 1, 2013 Comrades from Cairo, www.roarmag.org Resist! Egypt, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights

The protest law, draconian and kafkaesque in its very essence, is not the first time that laws effectively criminalizing protest have been passed since 2011. The army and the Muslim Brotherhood both attempted and failed to pass and enforce such laws. This new one comes under the trappings of the rule of law, supposedly free of political weight, but its intention is clear: to crush dissent and further empower the police to use violence and lethal force. Egyptian lawmakers even have the gall to use oppression abroad to justify a crackdown at home. This is not a call to reform the protest law. This is a rejection of all such laws and the system behind the law — a system that is merely a new face to the one we confronted on January 25, 2011. Following the military’s coup on July 3, the army’s head of command appointed a government that is made up of liberals, retired police and military generals as well as a few individuals considered participants in the January 25 revolution. In their attempt to outlaw any opposition on the street, the role of the liberals and deemed “revolutionaries” is to whitewash the violence of the security regime. These figures are the handmaidens of the attempt to re-create a pre-January 25 Egypt where the regime’s murder and torture becomes the norm. It is their role to prevent outrage on the street.

Tear Gas, Stones, Clashes In Cairo Amid New Anti-Protest Law

November 30, 2013 Staff, rt.com Resist! Egypt, Freedom of Speech and Assembly

Police fired tear gas and used batons to beat back stone throwing protesters in Cairo on Saturday, as Egypt's constitutional panel began voting on a new constitution's final draft, amid fears that one of its laws may curb the right to peaceful protest. The clashes erupted between riot police and protesters a few kilometers away from Egypt's constitutional committee headquarters where the 50 member panel had begun debating the final recommendations for changes to the 2012 Islamist constitution. The demonstration was to condemn the detention of 24 activists who were arrested on Tuesday after taking part in an unauthorized protest. Among the protesters arrested was Ahmed Maher, who was one of the leaders in the 2011 uprising that ousted long serving president Hosni Murbarak. One of the changes to the constitution includes a law enacted last Sunday which allows security agencies to ban protests, which have not been previously reported to the Interior Ministry. It also sets high fines and prison terms for protesters who break the law.

Egypt Passes Law Restricting Public Protests

November 25, 2013 Gregg Carlstrom, Resist! Egypt, Human Rights

Egypt's interim president, Adly Mansour, has signed a restrictive new "protest law" that would require Egyptians to seek approval days in advance before organising demonstrations. The law will take effect later this week once the final text is published in the official state register. It gives police wide latitude to use force against demonstrators, which could give the government a pretext for a widespread crackdown. The law has gone through numerous revisions, but rights groups say the latest version requires protesters to seek approval from police three days in advance, and allows the interior ministry to block rallies that could "pose a serious threat to security or peace". Election campaign events are subject to a 24-hour notification period in some drafts, and "processions" of more than 10 people are only allowed for "non-political" purposes. Violators could face fines of up to $4,360.

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