Why We Should Demonstrate Tomorrow

 

Why We Should Demonstrate Tomorrow

 

 

 

by Alaa El Aswany

 

What would you do if you came out of work and found a group of people you didn't know attacking you for no reason, shouting the vilest insults at you and hitting you in public? The natural reaction would be to defend yourself and resist. But if you found that the balance of power was not in your favour, prudence would require you to run away to safety and to save your life. That was the situation revolutionary journalist Nawara Negm faced last week. She came out of work at the television building to find a gang of thugs awaiting her. The thugs attacked her, hit her and insulted her in the most vulgar terms. Mubarak's followers, gloating over Nawara's ordeal, have been passing around the video of this assault. This video illustrates several facts: first, that the people who attacked Nawar were an organized group with a leader, who supervised the assault and gave orders that are clearly audible in the recording: "Hit her … Hit her again … Film her being beaten." Second, that the attack on Nawara was specifically to punish her for her criticism of the military council, because the leader of the thugs can be heard telling passers-by that they are hitting Nawara because she "is stirring up strife between the army and the people". Third, that the attackers deliberately did not hit Nawara in a way that would cause injury or leave any marks. The purpose was not to injure her but to humiliate her. They had planned to ensure she was filmed being beaten and insulted, and then to distribute the video, which they thought would humiliate Nawara and break her will. Fourth, Nawara showed rare and commendable courage. She stood completely alone against a group of thugs who could have killed her at any moment. Nawara confronted them and took the blows with truly noble resilience. She did not retreat or run away, she did not cry or even appeal for help from the passers-by. Why didn't Nawara run away? In fact her tenacity was the best way to thwart the assault and empty it of both meaning and content. They wanted to take pictures of Nawara crying or running away in panic but she triumphed over them. Anyone who sees the video has to admire the courage of this Egyptian girl, who sticks to her position and her opinion whatever the sacrifice. The purpose was to break Nawara's will but she emerged from the attack stronger and with greater pride in herself. Revolutionary Egyptian women have been repeatedly assaulted with one objective – to humiliate them. During the sit-in at the cabinet offices Ghada Kamal, a young pharmacist, was detained, brutally beaten and seriously injured by soldiers, but the worst part was the vile sexual insults by the officer, who kept repeating: "Tonight we're going to have a sex party with you." The purpose was to make Ghada Kamal feel that she had been humiliated in a way that made it difficult for her to maintain her self-respect, but what happened was quite the opposite. Ghada emerged with more self-respect and won the respect of others for her courage and resilience. Last March the military police arrested a group of women demonstrators from Tahrir Square. After giving them a brutal beating and dragging them along the ground, they stripped them and displayed them naked to the men who were present. Then they were molested on the pretext of giving them virginity tests. As usual the aim here was to deprive the women of their self-respect after stripping them and abusing their bodies in front of men. But this heinous crime also failed to achieve its purpose, because the victims included a brave Upper Egyptian woman called Samira Ibrahim. She was neither defeated nor embarrassed. In fact she reported the crime and insisted on challenging and prosecuting the criminals. The same thing happened several times when all the women (even the elderly) were pulled by the hair, stripped and molested. The purpose was always to humiliate them but, thank God, the aim was not achieved. The women who were abused emerged with more respect, more determined to pursue the perpetrators and more committed to the revolution. They want to humiliate the revolutionaries because all other methods against them have failed. The young revolutionaries constitute the rock on which all attempts to abort the revolution founder. The military council has preserved the Mubarak regime in power (the council is in fact part of the regime), and it was natural for the Mubarak regime to  try to undo the revolution through a carefully made plan that was executed in stages: starting by manufacturing a succession of crises that made life extremely difficult for Egyptians, such as the deliberate breakdown in law and order, the price rises, the shortages of petrol, gas and basic foodstuffs, then by letting groups of people block roads and railway lines for days on end in full view of the civilian and military police, who did nothing to stop them, then by discrediting the revolutionaries and accusing them of working for foreign powers and trying them on trumped-up charges, and finally by supporting and financing Mubarak's supporters and giving them media space so that the revolution becomes just one point of view against another point of view, rather than an objective fact that has changed the whole country. The purpose of all this is make Egyptians sceptical about the value of the revolution, so that they hate it and even regret it. This plan almost succeeded, were it not for the young revolutionaries. They were the first to call for revolution, they paid the heaviest price and they are still prepared to die for its sake. They cannot be intimidated or bought off either. They have no personal interests and they do not want seats in parliament or positions in the cabinet. These young people who are protecting the revolution had to be dealt a crushing blow after which they would be frightened, tremble in fact, at the idea of demonstrating or staging a sit-in. So three massacres against them were planned: at Maspero, in Mohamed Mahmoud Street and at the cabinet offices. Eight-four people were killed with bullets or with gas, and many lost their eyes to shotgun pellets, like the two heroes Malik Mustafa and Dr Ahmed Harara, a dentist who lost both eyes, besides the abuse of women with a brutality that the British army never used against Egyptian women during decades of occupation. But in the end the young revolutionaries emerged victorious, after bravely withstanding unarmed the assaults of armed professional soldiers. The will of the revolutionaries did not break and they did not weaken. In fact they came out of the massacres more resilient and more determined to complete the revolution.  There were also massive demonstrations in most Egyptian provinces supporting the revolution and in solidarity with the revolutionaries. The Mubarak regime realized it wouldn't be able to undo the revolution as long as millions of young people were defending it so fiercely, so all they could do was try to break the spirit of the revolutionaries and humiliate them. Revolutionaries who are not afraid of death, who take bullets in their chests and keep smiling when they lose their eyes, might lose their self-respect and their spirit might be broken if they are humiliated in public. But even this last attempt totally failed and in the aftermath of every assault the revolutionaries come back more proud of their dignity and more determined to achieve the aims of the revolution.

    Tomorrow, on January 25, a full year will have passed since the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution. We have to ask ourselves which of the revolution's aims have been achieved.

    Have Egyptians regained their humanity and their dignity?

    Unfortunately the forces of repression are still arresting, detaining, torturing and abusing innocent civilians. In fact new agencies of repression have been added to the old. Besides the State Security Investigations department, there is also the military police, who have proved that they excel at torturing Egyptians and ignoring their dignity.

    Have Egyptians regained their sense of justice?

    The judiciary is still as it was in the days of Mubarak. The exceptional and military courts try civilians and the judicial system itself is not independent because the Judicial Inspectorate  is subject to the minister of justice, who is appointed by the military council. The judges who supervised the rigged elections are still in their positions. In fact those responsible for killing demonstrators and molesting female demonstrators have still not been tried. On the contrary, opponents of the military council's policies have been referred to sham trials, exactly as in Mubarak's time and on the same false charges such as disturbing the peace, sowing confusion in society, to which has recently been added the charge of "giving public opinion the false impression that corruption still exists".

    Has there been just retribution against those who killed demonstrators during the revolution?

    Police officers have been subjected to slow and endless trials in which sessions are delayed for many months and at the end of each session the officers are released to go back to their offices because they have all retained their positions, and many of them have been promoted, as if in reward for killing Egyptians.

    Has a minimum of social justice been achieved?

    The Egyptian state is still run in the interests of the rich, ignoring the rights of the poor. Prime Minister Ganzouri insists on seeking international loans and aid from Arab countries in a way that is humiliating to any Egyptian and at the same time Ganzouri, and the military council behind him, ignore the matter of 55 billion pounds deposited at the Central Bank in the name of Hosni Mubarak, which none of them dare transfer to the state budget. They disregard the sum of 90 billion pounds in private funds, from which Mubarak protégés are paid without any oversight by the state. They disregard the existence of hundreds of consultants in the ministries, most of whom are not consulted but each of whom receives hundreds of thousands of pounds a month from the money of Egyptians, half of whom live in abject poverty and put up with inhuman conditions. The Egyptian people paid a heavy price for this revolution: 1,100 people were killed and 1,800 Egyptians lost their eyes, besides the tens of thousands of injured. And then, a full year later, we discover that the aims of the revolution have not been accomplished, other than putting on trial Mubarak and some members of his gang, in trials that many professors of law see as show trials that are not serious or useful. We all have a duty to go out on the streets across Egypt tomorrow, to organize peaceful demonstrations to assert the aims of the revolution. We will go out on Wednesday, not to celebrate, because we cannot celebrate a revolution that has not fulfilled its aims, but to demonstrate and show that they are still faithful to the revolution and that we insist on fulfilling its objectives. January 25 will be a decisive point in the history of Egypt and in the fate of the revolution. If few people come out to support the revolution, it would mean, God forbid, that the plan to undo the revolution has achieved its purpose (if only temporarily) If millions of Egyptians come out to support the revolution, the message will be clear to all those concerned: that the Egyptian revolution, in spite of all these conspiracies, is still alive and is continuing, and that it will undoubtedly triumph, God willing.    

    Democracy is the solution.                                    

 

    

 

 

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