An Egyptian man walks past Arabic writing that reads "search with the people" written above a stenciled portrait of a security officer on a side road of Cairo's Tahrir Square on 28 December 2011. (Photo: AFP - Filippo Monteforte)
Despite the campaign to criminalize protests, political movements, human rights organizations and prominent activists, protests and strikes have persisted, as has dissent against the military regime.
Cairo – Egypt’s state-run and, more recently, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated media outlets are sparing little effort to make dissidents out to look like criminals. But the campaign has yet to succeed.
“Pressure not only on activists but also on the Egyptian population as a whole is failing to turn people away from the revolution’s demands,” said Azmi Ashour, managing editor of Al-Ahram Democracy Review.
“Bread, freedom and social justice” were among the core demands of the revolution that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. “Those demands have yet to be met,” said Ashour. “Though the revolution is under pressure, my reading is that it is continuing.”
Factors contributing to the failure of the regime’s attempts to dissuade many Egyptians from revolutionary action included “excessive violence against protesters, in particular women, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) inability to cater to popular demand for economic justice,” Ashour said.
The state-run media has blamed protesters in central Cairo for economic instability in Egypt since the January 25 revolution broke out.
Trading ceased on the floor of the Egyptian Stock Market between 27 January 2011 and 23 March 2011, while the Central Bank of Egypt announced that the country had lost US$16 billion in foreign reserves over the year, according to Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper.
“The thing is, though, that with time, more and more people are coming to grips with the fact that the SCAF, as the ruling authority, is responsible for such failures – not the protesters,” said Ashour. “At any rate, the economic situation in Egypt has suffered from massive inequality for decades. That’s part of the reason why people rose up in the first place.”
Suffocating the population by proxy
While the military was received with widespread popular support when Mubarak handed over power to the SCAF, the military regime’s unpopularity over recent months has grown significantly.
Violence against protesters, no economic improvement, and the continued use of Mubarak-style tactics to stall non-compliant, independent political movements from flourishing, have increased the resolve of a growing number of protesters who are challenging the SCAF.
In response, the authorities intensified a media campaign aimed at tarnishing the reputation of numerous political movements and figures. Human rights organizations who worked to expose crimes allegedly committed by the army and security forces over recent months were also targeted.
Among the targets of this media campaign were the Revolutionary Socialists, a Marxist organization whose members worked secretly from their inception in 1990 until the January 25 revolution.
According to labor rights lawyer and organization member Haitham Mohammadein, the reason why the Revolutionary Socialists have been targeted under both Mubarak and the SCAF is because they “have been instrumental in coordinating labor strikes, while continuously expressing solidarity with workers and educating them.”
Labor actions such as the Mahalla strikes that kicked off in 2006, and which by 2008 had developed into a full-scale uprising, were considered key signals that major changes were underway in Egypt.
Karama Party MP and long-time labor rights activist Kamal Abu Ayta summarized the importance of such strikes, saying “the revolution neither began on January 25, nor did it finish on February 11,” when Mubarak stepped down.
While they continued to support ongoing labor strikes in the post-Mubarak era, the Revolutionary Socialists had two cases filed against them by a group of 12 former National Democratic Party (NDP) members, and, interestingly enough, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The latest set of charges was filed on 1 January 2012.
The charges included “the intention to bring about the collapse the state, burning of institutions and revolting against the January 25 revolution,” said Mohammadein, laughing as he shared the third charge.
He stopped smiling when he added, “Considering the lack of judicial independence in Egypt, some of us may well face prison sentences.”
Mohammadein believed that pressure on the Revolutionary Socialists was in fact a mechanism for pressuring the labor movement as a whole.
“The state attacks us, because we are the weakest link in the chain,” he said. “If they used force against, say, the transport workers who have continued to strike over recent months, the consequences would be disastrous.”
In December, numerous Egyptian ports and Cairo International Airport saw intermittent strikes, whose demands varied from basic economic demands such as higher wages, to rejecting military control over a civilian airport.
“Such actions constitute a direct challenge against the SCAF, in that forces with real sway on the ground are making political and economic demands,” said Mohammadein. “Of course, such advances do not come without a cost.”
In spite of the pressure, the media campaign that accompanied the filing of legal charges “has sparked the interest of many previously uninvolved young people in the work of the Revolutionary Socialists,” said Mohammadein. Activists may be undergoing a difficult period, “but overall there is hope,” he said.
Hope in times of trouble
Anxiety, fear of the future and confusion were sentiments widely felt across a city whose activist community has continued to push for change but remains vilified.
Activists and their platforms, including the April 6 movement, were described on various occasions in December 2011 by Al-Ahram newspaper as treacherous, agents for a foreign agenda, destructive and conspiratorial.
Blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah called for perspective on this media campaign, clarifying that it has been “ongoing since Mubarak was in power.”
Imprisoned from October 30, charged for allegedly inciting violence, and tried by military court, Abdel Fattah was released nearly two months later, though he remained under investigation.
“We once dealt with the army as essentially different from the police, which was the main tool of oppression under Mubarak,” said Abdel Fattah. “Now it is clear that the two use the same methods. If anything, the military is even more violent.”
In November and December, two separate crackdowns on protesters in central Cairo only brought more people out onto the streets.
The first crackdown – centered on Mohammed Mahmoud Street just off Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt’s revolution – ran from November 19 to 23, and killed up to 40 people, according to rights groups. The second, centered on nearby Qasr al-Aini Street, killed 17, according to field medical volunteers.
Both crackdowns prompted mass popular action, including a protest by hundreds of thousands in Tahrir Square on December 23, denouncing sexual violence by the army against women protesters during the Qasr al-Aini clashes earlier in the month.
“For years, the army was a taboo subject, a force that could not be publicly criticized,” said Abdel Fattah. “But now the use of violence against protesters, including the use of live fire, has exposed the army to criticism. There is no going back from here.”
Abdel Fattah’s wife, Manal Hassan, gave birth to a baby boy while he was in jail. The couple named him Khaled, after Khaled Said, who died from a beating in police custody in June 2010 and in whose name thousands protested on 25 January 2011, kick-starting the revolution.
Considering that “the road ahead is long, and the struggle is ongoing,” Abdel Fattah remained optimistic. “At least now there is hope,” he said. Under Mubarak’s regime, “we knew that each day was going to be like the next and the one after that. There may be uncertainty now, but uncertainty leaves room for positivity.”
As a father, Abdel Fattah feels that the day Egyptians would be able to count on a dignified education and health care system is far closer now than it was this time last year.
“There may be an ongoing crackdown on the revolution’s goals,” he said. “But surely the system against whom people rebelled is not going to fall easily. It’s going to take work and struggle.”
Human rights organizations under pressure
“We are living today under the shadow of the counter-revolution,” said Nasser Amin, director of the Cairo-based Arab Center for Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession. Amin’s was one of up to 17 civil society organizations raided by police, military forces, and staff of the public prosecutor’s office on December 29.
Other organizations affected included the US-based National Democratic Institute (NDI), chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and the Republican Party-funded International Republican Institute (IRI).
A significant part of the regime’s efforts at undermining the legitimacy of forces calling for the SCAF to hand over power to a civilian regime was characterized by attempting to associate those forces with imperialist powers’ agendas.
“One method the SCAF uses, is to call us traitors,” said Amin. “In reality, we have been accused of this since we started working 15 years ago, when Mubarak was in power. The only real difference is that our offices are being raided now.”
More than 30 Egyptian civil society organizations issued a joint statement on December 29, denouncing the raids. The signatories to the statement did not include either the NDI or the IRI.
Egyptian laws governing civil society organizations, inherited from the Mubarak era, allow foreign funding but only on a case-by-case basis, according to Amin. “The government chooses when to allow foreign funding, and when not to,” he said. In this way, the work of human rights organizations that “lead efforts to fight the system’s abuses through legal methods” is systematically hampered, Amin said.
Fundamentally, “the raids had little if anything to do with funding. They had more to do with continuing to turn public opinion against human rights organizations, because we have worked to expose the SCAF’s use of force against civilians,” Amin said.
Some criticized the SCAF for using patriotic rhetoric when Egypt continued to receive US funding after the toppling of Mubarak. Up until this year, Egypt received $1.3 billion in security assistance, according to the Associated Press, making it the second biggest beneficiary of US aid after Israel.
According to the report, published December 17, the global financial crisis was forcing a reconsideration of this sum. Meanwhile, the US Congress pegged the continuity of aid on respect for the Camp David Peace Treaty with Israel and the transition to a civilian government through free, transparent elections.
Indeed the third and last round of parliamentary elections kicked off on January 3, with no significant incidents reported yet and with voter turnout looking to be as high as in previous rounds through December.
Under the shadow of the counter-revolution
What remained unclear in spite of advances in the Egyptian movement for change was whether progressive forces would be able to counter pressures against them with programmatic work, and the proposal of proactive solutions.
The military’s overwhelming capacity for the use of force to terrorize the population into complicity, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood’s increasingly pro-establishment discourse and modus operandi, were challenges that were not lost on those who believed the revolution had to continue until its goals were met.
Part of the military regime’s strategy has been to try and isolate a community of so-called revolutionaries from the rest of the population.
Protesters sitting in at the gates of the Cabinet building, demanding that the SCAF hand over power to a civilian regime for three weeks leading up to the Qasr al-Aini clashes, were labeled as “thugs.”
Meanwhile, the range and nature of accusations leveled against approximately 12,000 people who have reportedly been subject to military trials since 25 January 2011 has been broad, including the intention to destroy the state and incitement to murder.
According to Amin, Egypt has never witnessed such widespread use of military trials against civilians since the days of the pre-1952 revolution monarchy. In the face of this campaign, hopes that the campaign to criminalize the revolution would fail were pegged to the fact that no single force could claim ownership or leadership of the phenomenon that has gripped Egypt since January 2011.
“The reality is the revolution has no leadership,” said Ashour. “The revolution broke out on a series of demands, and unless the SCAF imprisons everyone in the country, the revolution will continue.”
The analyst added that the country’s youth, whose future rested on the success of the revolution, would ensure its continuity. According to the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) 2010 Human Development Report, 40 percent of Egyptians are between the age of 10 and 24, while almost 60 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds are jobless.
“Some forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood have, for the moment, opted out of continuing the revolution. To them, it was over when Mubarak was forced out of power,” said Ashour. “But the popular forces behind the revolution don’t have that choice, because their lives have yet to change.”
While the regime’s campaign to tarnish better known activists’ reputations persisted, young people with a revolutionary agenda, but little structural organization to speak of, continued to plan nationwide protests for 25 January 2012.
“Does that lack of traditional political organization make the revolution weaker? On the contrary,” said Ashour. “To me, the phase the revolution is at now is healthy. Following the revolutionary euphoria in the early stages, what we are doing now is pushing every individual and every force to show their true face.”
Cairo – Egypt’s state-run and, more recently, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated media outlets are sparing little effort to make dissidents out to look like criminals. But the campaign has yet to succeed.
“Pressure not only on activists but also on the Egyptian population as a whole is failing to turn people away from the revolution’s demands,” said Azmi Ashour, managing editor of Al-Ahram Democracy Review.
“Bread, freedom and social justice” were among the core demands of the revolution that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. “Those demands have yet to be met,” said Ashour. “Though the revolution is under pressure, my reading is that it is continuing.”
Factors contributing to the failure of the regime’s attempts to dissuade many Egyptians from revolutionary action included “excessive violence against protesters, in particular women, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) inability to cater to popular demand for economic justice,” Ashour said.
The state-run media has blamed protesters in central Cairo for economic instability in Egypt since the January 25 revolution broke out.
Trading ceased on the floor of the Egyptian Stock Market between 27 January 2011 and 23 March 2011, while the Central Bank of Egypt announced that the country had lost US$16 billion in foreign reserves over the year, according to Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper.
“The thing is, though, that with time, more and more people are coming to grips with the fact that the SCAF, as the ruling authority, is responsible for such failures – not the protesters,” said Ashour. “At any rate, the economic situation in Egypt has suffered from massive inequality for decades. That’s part of the reason why people rose up in the first place.”
Suffocating the population by proxy
While the military was received with widespread popular support when Mubarak handed over power to the SCAF, the military regime’s unpopularity over recent months has grown significantly.
Violence against protesters, no economic improvement, and the continued use of Mubarak-style tactics to stall non-compliant, independent political movements from flourishing, have increased the resolve of a growing number of protesters who are challenging the SCAF.
In response, the authorities intensified a media campaign aimed at tarnishing the reputation of numerous political movements and figures. Human rights organizations who worked to expose crimes allegedly committed by the army and security forces over recent months were also targeted.
Among the targets of this media campaign were the Revolutionary Socialists, a Marxist organization whose members worked secretly from their inception in 1990 until the January 25 revolution.
According to labor rights lawyer and organization member Haitham Mohammadein, the reason why the Revolutionary Socialists have been targeted under both Mubarak and the SCAF is because they “have been instrumental in coordinating labor strikes, while continuously expressing solidarity with workers and educating them.”
Labor actions such as the Mahalla strikes that kicked off in 2006, and which by 2008 had developed into a full-scale uprising, were considered key signals that major changes were underway in Egypt.
Karama Party MP and long-time labor rights activist Kamal Abu Ayta summarized the importance of such strikes, saying “the revolution neither began on January 25, nor did it finish on February 11,” when Mubarak stepped down.
While they continued to support ongoing labor strikes in the post-Mubarak era, the Revolutionary Socialists had two cases filed against them by a group of 12 former National Democratic Party (NDP) members, and, interestingly enough, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The latest set of charges was filed on 1 January 2012.
The charges included “the intention to bring about the collapse the state, burning of institutions and revolting against the January 25 revolution,” said Mohammadein, laughing as he shared the third charge.
He stopped smiling when he added, “Considering the lack of judicial independence in Egypt, some of us may well face prison sentences.”
Mohammadein believed that pressure on the Revolutionary Socialists was in fact a mechanism for pressuring the labor movement as a whole.
“The state attacks us, because we are the weakest link in the chain,” he said. “If they used force against, say, the transport workers who have continued to strike over recent months, the consequences would be disastrous.”
In December, numerous Egyptian ports and Cairo International Airport saw intermittent strikes, whose demands varied from basic economic demands such as higher wages, to rejecting military control over a civilian airport.
“Such actions constitute a direct challenge against the SCAF, in that forces with real sway on the ground are making political and economic demands,” said Mohammadein. “Of course, such advances do not come without a cost.”
In spite of the pressure, the media campaign that accompanied the filing of legal charges “has sparked the interest of many previously uninvolved young people in the work of the Revolutionary Socialists,” said Mohammadein. Activists may be undergoing a difficult period, “but overall there is hope,” he said.
Hope in times of trouble
Anxiety, fear of the future and confusion were sentiments widely felt across a city whose activist community has continued to push for change but remains vilified.
Activists and their platforms, including the April 6 movement, were described on various occasions in December 2011 by Al-Ahram newspaper as treacherous, agents for a foreign agenda, destructive and conspiratorial.
Blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah called for perspective on this media campaign, clarifying that it has been “ongoing since Mubarak was in power.”
Imprisoned from October 30, charged for allegedly inciting violence, and tried by military court, Abdel Fattah was released nearly two months later, though he remained under investigation.
“We once dealt with the army as essentially different from the police, which was the main tool of oppression under Mubarak,” said Abdel Fattah. “Now it is clear that the two use the same methods. If anything, the military is even more violent.”
In November and December, two separate crackdowns on protesters in central Cairo only brought more people out onto the streets.
The first crackdown – centered on Mohammed Mahmoud Street just off Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt’s revolution – ran from November 19 to 23, and killed up to 40 people, according to rights groups. The second, centered on nearby Qasr al-Aini Street, killed 17, according to field medical volunteers.
Both crackdowns prompted mass popular action, including a protest by hundreds of thousands in Tahrir Square on December 23, denouncing sexual violence by the army against women protesters during the Qasr al-Aini clashes earlier in the month.
“For years, the army was a taboo subject, a force that could not be publicly criticized,” said Abdel Fattah. “But now the use of violence against protesters, including the use of live fire, has exposed the army to criticism. There is no going back from here.”
Abdel Fattah’s wife, Manal Hassan, gave birth to a baby boy while he was in jail. The couple named him Khaled, after Khaled Said, who died from a beating in police custody in June 2010 and in whose name thousands protested on 25 January 2011, kick-starting the revolution.
Considering that “the road ahead is long, and the struggle is ongoing,” Abdel Fattah remained optimistic. “At least now there is hope,” he said. Under Mubarak’s regime, “we knew that each day was going to be like the next and the one after that. There may be uncertainty now, but uncertainty leaves room for positivity.”
As a father, Abdel Fattah feels that the day Egyptians would be able to count on a dignified education and health care system is far closer now than it was this time last year.
“There may be an ongoing crackdown on the revolution’s goals,” he said. “But surely the system against whom people rebelled is not going to fall easily. It’s going to take work and struggle.”
Human rights organizations under pressure
“We are living today under the shadow of the counter-revolution,” said Nasser Amin, director of the Cairo-based Arab Center for Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession. Amin’s was one of up to 17 civil society organizations raided by police, military forces, and staff of the public prosecutor’s office on December 29.
Other organizations affected included the US-based National Democratic Institute (NDI), chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and the Republican Party-funded International Republican Institute (IRI).
A significant part of the regime’s efforts at undermining the legitimacy of forces calling for the SCAF to hand over power to a civilian regime was characterized by attempting to associate those forces with imperialist powers’ agendas.
“One method the SCAF uses, is to call us traitors,” said Amin. “In reality, we have been accused of this since we started working 15 years ago, when Mubarak was in power. The only real difference is that our offices are being raided now.”
More than 30 Egyptian civil society organizations issued a joint statement on December 29, denouncing the raids. The signatories to the statement did not include either the NDI or the IRI.
Egyptian laws governing civil society organizations, inherited from the Mubarak era, allow foreign funding but only on a case-by-case basis, according to Amin. “The government chooses when to allow foreign funding, and when not to,” he said. In this way, the work of human rights organizations that “lead efforts to fight the system’s abuses through legal methods” is systematically hampered, Amin said.
Fundamentally, “the raids had little if anything to do with funding. They had more to do with continuing to turn public opinion against human rights organizations, because we have worked to expose the SCAF’s use of force against civilians,” Amin said.
Some criticized the SCAF for using patriotic rhetoric when Egypt continued to receive US funding after the toppling of Mubarak. Up until this year, Egypt received $1.3 billion in security assistance, according to the Associated Press, making it the second biggest beneficiary of US aid after Israel.
According to the report, published December 17, the global financial crisis was forcing a reconsideration of this sum. Meanwhile, the US Congress pegged the continuity of aid on respect for the Camp David Peace Treaty with Israel and the transition to a civilian government through free, transparent elections.
Indeed the third and last round of parliamentary elections kicked off on January 3, with no significant incidents reported yet and with voter turnout looking to be as high as in previous rounds through December.
Under the shadow of the counter-revolution
What remained unclear in spite of advances in the Egyptian movement for change was whether progressive forces would be able to counter pressures against them with programmatic work, and the proposal of proactive solutions.
The military’s overwhelming capacity for the use of force to terrorize the population into complicity, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood’s increasingly pro-establishment discourse and modus operandi, were challenges that were not lost on those who believed the revolution had to continue until its goals were met.
Part of the military regime’s strategy has been to try and isolate a community of so-called revolutionaries from the rest of the population.
Protesters sitting in at the gates of the Cabinet building, demanding that the SCAF hand over power to a civilian regime for three weeks leading up to the Qasr al-Aini clashes, were labeled as “thugs.”
Meanwhile, the range and nature of accusations leveled against approximately 12,000 people who have reportedly been subject to military trials since 25 January 2011 has been broad, including the intention to destroy the state and incitement to murder.
According to Amin, Egypt has never witnessed such widespread use of military trials against civilians since the days of the pre-1952 revolution monarchy. In the face of this campaign, hopes that the campaign to criminalize the revolution would fail were pegged to the fact that no single force could claim ownership or leadership of the phenomenon that has gripped Egypt since January 2011.
“The reality is the revolution has no leadership,” said Ashour. “The revolution broke out on a series of demands, and unless the SCAF imprisons everyone in the country, the revolution will continue.”
The analyst added that the country’s youth, whose future rested on the success of the revolution, would ensure its continuity. According to the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) 2010 Human Development Report, 40 percent of Egyptians are between the age of 10 and 24, while almost 60 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds are jobless.
“Some forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood have, for the moment, opted out of continuing the revolution. To them, it was over when Mubarak was forced out of power,” said Ashour. “But the popular forces behind the revolution don’t have that choice, because their lives have yet to change.”
While the regime’s campaign to tarnish better known activists’ reputations persisted, young people with a revolutionary agenda, but little structural organization to speak of, continued to plan nationwide protests for 25 January 2012.
“Does that lack of traditional political organization make the revolution weaker? On the contrary,” said Ashour. “To me, the phase the revolution is at now is healthy. Following the revolutionary euphoria in the early stages, what we are doing now is pushing every individual and every force to show their true face.”
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