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The Lessons of Egypt's Long Road to Revolution

September 23, 2021
in Democracy In Exile, Egypt
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  • Hossam el-Hamalawy
    Hossam el-Hamalawy

    Hossam el-Hamalawy is a photojournalist and a member of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists.

    View all posts

عربي

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi's regime recently unveiled a "national human rights strategy" that is as dystopian as it sounds in a country whose jails are overflowing with more than 60,000 political prisoners. In touting the "strategy"—which claims to protect human rights through legal and other institutional reforms but, in fact, includes plans to build more new prisons and expand surveillance and censorship—Sisi gave a speech about 2022 being "the year of civil society" in Egypt. This is the same autocrat who has spent his eight years in power brutally cracking down on civil society, with mass arrests of journalists, activists and any political dissidents.

In that speech, Sisi once again also attacked his favorite target: the 2011 uprising. "The year 2011 and the January revolution were a death certificate for the Egyptian state," he declared. State media echoed his rhetoric, calling the so-called human rights strategy another sign of Egypt's "new republic" under Sisi—his latest, absurd bit of propaganda. For a dictator who calls the 2013 coup that brought him to power "our glorious revolution," Sisi obviously still fears the real revolution in 2011, even with his grip on power. He rules in the shadow of Hosni Mubarak, whose own dictatorship was brought down not by a sudden and spontaneous eruption of mass protest, but by a slower and steadier buildup of dissent over nearly a decade despite his regime's repression. Sisi is following Mubarak's path.

All photos by Hossam el-Hamalawy

Sept. 27, 2003: Sixty-three year-old Aisha Abdel Salam, a villager from Kerdassa, Giza, whose three sons—the youngest was 14 years old—were tortured and forcefully disappeared for years in the 1990s.

In 1991, as he was starting Egypt's neoliberal transformation under the sponsorship of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—through what was dubbed the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Program—Hosni Mubarak also cracked down on dissent of all shades. He launched a self-proclaimed war on terrorism against anyone suspected of Islamist sympathies. Police were given a free hand to assassinate dissidents, forcefully disappear suspects and impose collective punishment on families of prisoners. Workers' strikes and other industrial actions were rare and swiftly met with brute state force. Street politics in Egypt was clinically dead.

March 10, 2005: A peasant boy standing in front of his destroyed house. Feudal landlords, with the help of local police, attacked villagers in Sarando, Beheira Province, to take over farmlands given to the peasants under former President Gamal Abdel Nasser's agrarian reforms. Police arrested men and women, brutally torturing them, and killing one female villager.

In the countryside, the situation was no better. The neoliberal transition saw the reversal of the agrarian reforms of the 1950s and 1960s, alongside a renewed onslaught on small farmers, from 1997 onward, in favor of the descendants of the pre-1952 landowning elites.

Feb. 22, 2003: Young school students join a march protesting the war in Iraq, held by leftists in front of Cairo University.

The outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada, in September 2000, was a rock in still water. Mass protests engulfed Egyptian cities, mainly centered on university campuses, high schools and professional syndicates. Though the trigger of the protests was an issue in the wider Arab world—solidarity with Palestinians, and later Iraqis during America's march to war in Iraq—the demonstrators linked the regional with the local. They voiced criticism of the Mubarak regime, from its cozy relations with Israel and the United States, to its bare-knuckle tactics against peaceful dissent, to its neoliberal economic policies, which exacerbated social inequalities.

Sisi rules in the shadow of Mubarak, whose own dictatorship was brought down not by a sudden and spontaneous eruption of mass protest, but by a slower and steadier buildup of dissent over nearly a decade.

- Hossam el-Hamalawy

June 26, 2004: Activists demonstrate in front of the public prosecutor's office, marking the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

The continuous mobilizations from 2000 to 2003, right up to the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, managed to create a margin for street protest, fought for tooth and nail and with huge sacrifices by Egypt's local activist community, whose members faced imprisonment, torture and defamation campaigns by the Mubarak regime. The same Palestine solidarity activists and anti-war campaigners raised the ceiling of dissent by organizing the first ever protest against torture by the police, in the heart of Cairo, in the summer of 2004.

Dec. 12, 2004: Kefaya activists held their first anti-Mubarak protest, in downtown Cairo.

Emboldened by the gradual revival of street politics, Egyptian dissidents decided to take on Mubarak himself, who had remained the biggest taboo over the previous two decades. Under the umbrella of Kefaya—Arabic for "Enough"—activists held their first anti-Mubarak protest in downtown Cairo, calling on Mubarak to step down and to scrap any plans for grooming his son, Gamal, for succession.

July 14, 2005: Kefaya activists demonstrate against Mubarak in Abdeen Square, downtown Cairo.

Over the course of two years, from 2004 to 2006, Kefaya organized protests in the streets—largely in downtown Cairo, Alexandria and a few other cities—in support of democratic reforms.

June 1, 2005: Kefaya and women activists held an anti-Mubarak demonstration in front of the Press Syndicate in Cairo, to protest sexual assaults against female protesters and reporters by thugs from the ruling National Democratic Party, who had been working with the police.

The regime's response varied from police crackdowns to countermobilizations, during which plainclothes criminal thugs attacked pro-democracy demonstrators. Women activists were sexually assaulted on several occasions, most notoriously on May 25, 2005.

May, 11, 2006: Central Security Forces and police block access to the High Court and the Press Syndicate building to prevent a pro-democracy rally in downtown Cairo.

Finally, the Mubarak regime moved with full force, crushing the joint protests organized by Kefaya and the Muslim Brotherhood, in solidarity with reformist judges, in May 2006, arresting hundreds of people, some of whom endured torture and sexual abuse while in custody. The events came to be known as the "Cairo Spring" in the Western media, and locally were dubbed the "judges' intifada." This was, in effect, the end of the Kefaya movement.

We were defeated by the coup in 2013 that brought Sisi to power, but the specter of Jan. 25 continues to haunt our rulers, as Sisi's constant attempts to discredit the uprising's legacy make clear.

- Hossam el-Hamalawy

Feb. 8, 2007: Textile workers in Kafr El-Dawwar, south of Alexandria, celebrate their strike victory.

Kefaya was not successful in overthrowing Mubarak, but it managed to electrify the political scene by destroying the dictator's taboo once and for all. This encouraged other sections of Egyptian society to organize and take action. A strike, in December 2006, by more than 20,000 textile workers in Ghazl El-Mahalla triggered the longest and most sustained wave of labor strikes in Egypt since 1946, in every sector of the economy. 

May 30, 2007: Qal'et El-Kabsh slum residents demonstrate in front of Parliament in downtown Cairo.

The domino effect of protests extended to the urban poor in Cairo and other cities, who started to fight against forcible evictions and the government's program of "slum clearance." Many residents who faced eviction accused local municipalities of corruption, saying that government-provided alternative housing was only available to those who paid bribes.

May 9, 2007: Around 300 workers, mostly women, staged an occupation in their factory in the town of Talkha in Daqahliya Province in the Nile Delta, to demand their late salaries and bonuses, as well as to stop the sale of their company, which was going to be privatized.

In both the strike wave and the riots of the urban poor, Egyptian women were among the strongest participants.

Aug. 9, 2008: The trial of 49 citizens from Mahalla El-Kubra, in a Tanta court, who were taken as scapegoats by the police for their workers' uprising.

The militancy of factory workers escalated in the Delta, exploding into a two-day uprising in the industrial city of Mahalla El-Kubra, in April 2008. It was suppressed brutally by police and paramilitary troops.

Aug. 18, 2009: Workers from the Tanta Flax and Oils Company, on strike to protest the company's privatization and layoffs, demonstrate in front of the Cabinet building in downtown Cairo.

Despite the state repression, the labor strikes and industrial actions continued, and workers from the provinces regularly sent strike delegations to downtown Cairo, to besiege the Cabinet building and Parliament.

June 13, 2010: Activists in downtown Cairo protest Khaled Said's death in police custody.

The protests and campaigns against police torture did not cease, either. The murder of a young man by police in Alexandria, Khaled Said, galvanized the protests further, and drew a section of the previously apolitical youth into the ranks of dissent.

Jan. 29, 2011: Protesters march against Mubarak in Cairo's Nasr City, on the fifth day of the uprising.

The Jan. 25 uprising wasn't spontaneous, but the climax of a decade-long process. Dissent had been brewing, exploding into mini-uprisings and accumulating struggles all over Egypt. It was neither a local nor foreign "conspiracy," as the Mubarak regime tried to brand it. It was not created by social media. It had been seeded by brave factory workers in the Delta, striking for better wages and against Mubarak's crooked privatization schemes, and by women protesting evictions and the destruction of their homes.

We were defeated by the coup in 2013 that brought Sisi to power, but the specter of Jan. 25 continues to haunt our rulers, as Sisi's constant attempts to discredit the uprising's legacy make clear. Next time, hopefully, we'll be more ready, and better organized, to rid Egypt of dictatorship once and for all.

Hossam el-Hamalawy's entire photography archive is available on Flickr under Creative Commons license, which allows for its commercial and non-commercial use, free of charge. If you want to support his work, you can leave a donation at his PayPal.

Source: Hossam el-Hamalawy

Tags: Abdel Fattah al-SisiArab UprisingEgypt
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