Egypt’s Counter-Revolution: 21 Women and Girls Harshly Sentenced, Liberal Bloggers to be Arrested
The new anti-protest law in Egypt
is roiling the country. On Thursday, a
student at Cairo University was killed by police using live ammunition against
a student demonstration.
Youth leaders of the 2011 revolution are now also being
targeted for calling for demonstrations against the law, including
Ahmad Maher of April 6 and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah. Maher and other
members of the left of center April 6 youth organization had also been
prosecuted for protesting by the deposed government of Muhammad Morsi.
On Wednesday, an
Egyptian court sentenced 11 adult women to 14 years in prison for
protesting, and the teenaged girls arrested with them (one 15) were ordered to
juvenile prison until they turn 21. They are members of the banned Muslim
Brotherhood. Egypt ’s
military-backed government, which deposed Muslim Brotherhood President Muhammad
Morsi on July 3, has just passed a Draconian anti-protest law. Ironically, it
has much in common with a law proposed by the deposed government of Morsi,
which also prosecuted protesters.
Muslim Brotherhood members widely defied the law to protest
against it, despite
the law’s resemblance to the one they had wanted to impose on the country last
year this time. Likewise, liberals, leftists and youth activists have come
out to defy the law. It establishes “protest zones” (a la George W. Bush),
requires 3 days advance notice of intent to protest, police permission, allows
police to use birdshot on protesters, forbids sit-ins, and imposes heavy fines
and harsh prison terms on demonstrators who defy the military state. Coming in
the wake of the 2011 revolution against dictator Hosni Mubarak, the law is a
further attempt by what is left of the old Egyptian elite to put the genie back
in the bottle and return to authoritarian governance.
Here is liberal blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah’s statement on the
arrest warrant issued for him, as translated
by novelist Ahdaf Sueif:
Ahdaf Soueif - Alaa Abd El Fattah’s today’s statement in English (my version)
Statement of my intention to hand myself in to the
Prosecutor’s Office on Saturday mid-day:
A Charge I don’t Deny and an Honour I don’t Claim
For the second time the Office of the Public Prosecutor
sends out an arrest warrant through the media – instead of my address –
well-known known to them because of their history of fabricating charges
against me in the eras of Mubarak, Tantawi and Morsi.
For the second time the office of the Public Prosecutor lets
itself be a tool of government propaganda, this time on the orders of the
murderer, (Minister of Interior) Muhammad Ibrahim, instead of the Morshid (of
the Muslim Brotehrhood). Their reason: that I incited people to demand that
trials should be fair and should be the responsibility of an independent civil
judiciary. As though it’s bad for the Prosecutor’s Office to respect itself and
be respected by the public, it must prove its subservience to any authority
that passes through this country –no difference here between a Prosecutor
illegitimately appointed at the instructions of the Morshid, and Prosecutor
correctly appointed – but at the instructions of the Military.
The charge – it appears – is that I participated in inviting
people to protest yesterday, in front of the Shura Council building, against
placing – for the second time – an article in the constitution legitimizing the
court-martial of civilians.
The strange thing is that both the Prosecutor and the
Ministry of the Interior knew that I was present for 8 hours at First Police
Station New Cairo in solidarity with the people arrested yesterday on the same
charges. But neither the Prosecutor nor the MOI ordered my arrest at the time
or demanded that I be questioned. This probably means that they intend to put
on a show where I play the criminal-in-hiding.
So, despite the following facts:
That I do not recognize the anti-protest law that the people have brought down as promptly as they brought down the monument to the military’s massacres –
That I do not recognize the anti-protest law that the people have brought down as promptly as they brought down the monument to the military’s massacres –
That the legitimacy of the current regime collapsed with the
first drop of blood shed in front of the Republican Guard Club –
That any possibility of saving this legitimacy vanished when
the ruling four (Sisi, Beblawi, Ibrahim and Mansour) committed war crimes
during the break-up of the Rab’a sit-in –
That the Public Prosecutor’s Office displayed crass
subservience when it provided legal cover for the widest campaign of
indiscriminate administrative detention in our modern history, locking up young
women, injured people, old people and children, and holding in evidence against
them balloons and Tshirts –
That the clear corruption in the judiciary is to be seen in
the overharsh sentences against students whose crime was their anger at the
murder of their comrades, set against light sentences and acquittals for the
uniformed murderers of those same young people-
Despite all this, I have decided to do what I’ve always done
and hand myself in to the Public Prosecutor. read more:
