Egypt protests

If demonstrations continue, security forces - already accused of enforced disappearances & torture, will up the ante

A weekend of protests in Egypt has led to the arrest of over 365 people as security forces in some cities beat protesters and used tear gas, rubber bullets, and even live ammunition, according to some reports. Those arrested included noted human rights activists and even people who were only filming the protests. The protesters have a singular demand — the ouster of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who seized power in a military coup in 2013. Sisi, incidentally, is out of the country to attend the UN General Assembly moot in New York.

The protests were apparently instigated by online videos by Mohamed Ali, who The New York Times describes as a “45-year-old construction contractor and part-time actor who says he got rich building projects for the Egyptian military and then left for Spain to live in self-imposed exile.” Unusual for a protest leader, Ali does not paint himself as a saint. He admits one of his major grievances is that the government owes him millions of dollars for construction work. He also accuses Sisi of wasting government funds on vanity projects like multimillion-dollar presidential palaces.

In a country where, by the government’s own admission, one in three people live in poverty, that is enough of a rallying cry. It doesn’t help that for many Egyptians burned by Sisi’s austerity measures, the only shade in sight is under those presidential palaces. It also doesn’t help that Sisi has legitimised Ali’s claims by not only failing to refute them but doubling down instead. “Yes, I have built presidential palaces, and will build more,” he said recently. “I will continue to do more and more, but not for me. Nothing is in my name. It is in Egypt’s name.”

Given Sisi’s record of political crackdowns to silence critics and jailing thousands — while making his country one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists — there are legitimate fears that if protests continue, the security forces, already accused of widespread enforced disappearances and torture, will up the ante.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2019.

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