You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Selected Writings 2011-2021

by Alaa Abd El-Fattah

There is a lesson for us in the experience of our ‘Wefaq’ committees.2 Popular participation leads to a revolutionary charter composed in lyrical language calling for the doors of education and culture to be thrown open, while a closed-door meeting of experts results in a noted judge suggesting that the votes of educated people should carry more weight.

It’s on us to ask: what value is a constitution drafted without genuine popular participation? Even an exemplary text is nothing more than ink on paper without a balance of power to apply and protect

it. The Freedom Charter was written by the people. Together with the constitution that emanated from it, they gave rise to a real social contract and became a part of the people’s identity passed down through the generations. And the people became the protectors of their constitutional and revolutionary legitimacy.

Let us be more humble. Mandela and his comrades needed the public to educate them politically. Why assume that we’re any better? Since we’ve agreed that the constitution is one of the key goals of our ongoing revolution, why not include the revolutionary masses in its drafting?

if we listened to the fishermen on our lakes and heard their complaints about the destruction of fisheries by multinational corporations, we’d discover how urgent this issue is, how it’s linked to social justice and in need of genuine constitutional protection. Maybe we need to give the people of Burullus, who have long fought for potable water, a chance to educate us about what it means to be denied fresh water, and to remind us that water is a basic human right.

We first need to abandon the idea that drafting a constitution is a simple matter, one that a few experts can make short work of by referring to existing constitutions. A single major issue – such as the question of having a presidential system versus a parliamentary one – requires extensive, perhaps weeks-long, discussions. The discussions must be public and hearings should be held to allow citizens, civil society, and our grassroots and political movements to take part.

If we combine a popular document that reflects our shared aspirations and dreams, a representative Constituent Assembly elected by the people (directly or via Parliament), and operating mechanisms open to civil society, we will indeed establish a second republic based on a genuine social contract, real national consensus, and full constitutional, popular and revolutionary legitimacy. Then we can say that power is truly with the people.

On Friday, 30 September 2011, a mob of Islamists set fire to a church in Marinab, a village in the Edfu district of southern Egypt, and set about terrorizing local Coptic families. While Christian leaders were calling for help, the Governor of the province, General Mostafa al-Sayyed, appeared on several television channels denying anything was happening. This sparked a wave of anger among Egyptian Christians, Copts, and in the following days thousands of protestors

but with Muslim and secular allies – occupied the space outside the National Television & Radio Building, also known as Maspero. This sit-in was violently dispersed on 4 October.

‘My desire is to depart and to be with Christ, for that is far better.’ The phrase, in its Arabic version, is commonly used at the beginning of obituaries of Egyptian Christians.

Two days in the morgue, two days with corpses struggling to hold on to the glory of martyrdom in a crumbling government hospital, struggling against the whole of Mubarak’s unfallen regime, against Mubarak’s soldiers who

ran them over, Mubarak’s prosecutors who declined to investigate, Mubarak’s media who branded them not martyrs but murderers. Struggling against Mubarak-era superstitions that claim autopsies violate the dead and can never bring justice, against the clerics and priests of Authority who preach that those who seek justice in this life abandon the right to it in the next, struggling against Mubarak’s sectarianism that turns poor against poor and hides who has stolen their daily bread.

The hospital issued its report in line with state television’s broadcasts: did they die of heart failure, or was it a fight? The priests urged that they be buried quickly – it was hot and there are no fridges in the morgue. Here, we intervened, with the square’s ego and innocence: but what about justice? What about retribution? Their bodies are the last chance to prove guilt, so we need a forensic medical report.

What madness is this, to cut open our children’s bodies looking for a justice that we’ve never seen? Not even by accident? What justice when we are poor? What justice when we are Copts? What justice when murder reigns? Don’t you understand that we are the weak?

By the morning of the second day the prosecutor found half the families now demanding autopsies, so the judge issued his decree: he either issues burial permits for all, or requests autopsies. Are we not all equal in death?

After a long fight, the prosecutor produced the autopsy order for all the bodies, on condition that we guarantee the security of the forensic team. Yes, first we were responsible for securing our demonstrations; then we were responsible for securing public facilities; and here we are today, responsible for the security of state

employees when asking the state to act as a state. We didn’t bother to ask about the role of the police and the army: the answer was clear on the martyrs’ bodies.

At first we thought our role was like the riot police, but we soon saw how different it really was. After that day I’ll never understand how any security agency, anywhere in the world, can think that violence is an effective way to deal with a crowd – whether furious or terrified. Who convinced every government on earth that armed confrontation calms the masses down? We had no weapon to face down their rage but our embraces, and with tears of mourning we managed to drive out the fallacy of a militaristic sectarian reality with the truth of the dream of a free Egypt.

Ahmed and his comrades were only concerned about leaving the square to the paid-up mob marching under the blessing of the police and

the army, chanting for Islam. We all knew it was an orchestrated protest: an attempt to cover up a military massacre with a sectarian story and frame the Salafis.

disenfranchisement

Mostly, they’ve been randomly detained around major events in which it is the military who has committed the crimes and not the civilians.

So I guess I’m here as an activist, as a footsoldier in a revolution to talk about how tech companies can find ways to maintain and promote and protect and respect the human rights of their users. Now, that’s a topic I’m quite cynical about. Companies are not really likely to do any of that. Corporations are not really likely to do any of that. The conflicts … it’s not exactly that there is a conflict of interest. I think we’re all here because we know that it’s actually possible to go about our business without infringing on people’s rights and without allowing in tools that are being used to infringe on people’s rights, but the relationships, the structure of relationships between power is such that even if it’s possible,

even if it doesn’t cost much, even if it’s not going to affect the profit margins, it’s probably not going to happen, but it also sometimes conflicts with the profit margin in very funny ways. So, from the perspective of an activist, some very normal features can be quite annoying, can be quite problematic. Real name policies, rate limits on Twitter, real name policies on Facebook or anything like that, that is actually problematic. If you’re trying to mobilize people the way mobile companies are trying to monetize every single transaction: that limits what we can do. But this is the business model. I don’t expect either Twitter or Facebook or the mobile companies to change their business models just for activists, so that is not going to happen.

Companies… If governments are trying to pass legislation or change regulation and it’s going to affect their profit, then companies do stand up, do make a noise, do try and change things. But if the same governments are doing something sinister that’s going to affect humans, that’s going to affect their users, they’re not likely to talk about it. So, we’ve all heard about the ‘kill switch’, how Eg...

Vodafone and Co., their defence, their constant defence, is that this was the law, that there was nothing that they could do. But they knew about that law two years in advance. And they never made a ...

could do: you could act like any normal citizen, like any organization that is made of people, and engage with government normally. If you hear about plans, or if you’re getting orders that you do not like, challenge them. Challenge them legally. I’m not expecting corporations to become revolutionaries, but you can do things. You can take it to court, you can resist, you can ask for due process.

Well, here’s what you can do. Ignore the activists. Ignore the revolutionaries. We have to face bullets. We have to face military trials. It doesn’t matter really what you do. It doesn’t matter if Facebook is going to reveal my information or not. I have to assume that I’m being constantly watched, that everything about me is public. It doesn’t matter. But what matters is ordinary users, ordinary users who use your products to practise their agency. When you

decide that they cannot decide to choose a pseudonym, then you are negating them the right to negotiate their identity. The right to negotiate your identity is – it’s not in the Charter of Human Rights, but it’s actually essential to most rights – women know what I’m talking about because you have to negotiate your identity constantly: you are someone else in the home, and you’re someone else in the workplace, you have to negotiate who you are, sometimes I have to be nice and the mother type, sometimes I have to be the bitch at the office. If you’re gay, if you’re from a religious minority, if you’re whatever, negotiated identity is very important. I get to choose whether to reveal who I am and how to reveal who I am,

When you design products that help me assert my agency but then interfere in how I get to assert my identity, then you’re denying me something very important. Then you’re making teenagers threatened because their parents – and their peers – can continue the...

From their stories I heard the truth about the triumphant restoration of national security. Two of my cellmates are first-timers, young men without an atom of violence in them. Their charge? Organized crime! Yes, Abu Malek is an armed gang of one. Now I understand what the Interior Ministry means when it regales us every day with news of armed gangs it has arrested. We can congratulate ourselves on the return of security.

we accept that Egypt is like Tunisia then we must do as Tunisia did: unite and exert pressure until there is a complete transfer of power to the first elected body, whose legitimacy then supercedes any other.

announced the transfer of the Maspero investigation to the civilian Public Prosecutor.

Five days later, on 28 November, Alaa was brought before State Security Prosecution, which added more charges to his case file, including ‘murder, with the intent to commit an act of terrorism’.

Ganzouri

Khaled did his bit and waited for the judge, the lawyers made their arguments, Manal asked the judge for me to be released on bail to be with her at the birth. But I knew from the look that my ‘regular’ judge gave her that he would bring me no justice. My morale collapsed completely. I was drowning in fear and worry for Khaled and his mother. For the first time, I felt sorry for myself. My imprisonment had become absurd, and my mind, my heart, couldn’t bear absurdity. I understand being jailed by a State Security prosecutor. But a civil judge? Where’s our enmity? And what will happen now? Will I become one of the thousands of miserable creatures in Torah Prison? Waiting for months – years sometimes – for judgements that never

come, from judges for whom the law declares us innocent until proven guilty, for whom the constitution decrees that our freedoms and rights must not be infringed on without court sentencing – and yet. Will our imprisonment continue, our cases never end, forgotten by the world outside the prison walls? Everyone in the prison is pale and miserable, even the cats, their movements slow, their eyes spent and broken.

I fell asleep convinced of my fate: six months at least before my case will be heard, then months more of postponements before being found innocent. How would I bear it? Then came Khaled! The next day I got a message saying him and Manal w...

first photograph. The prison and its walls and its cats all vanished, everything vanished except my love for Khaled and my joy at his arrival. I slept content. On his third day, Khaled visited me. It was a surprise. I assumed the doctor wouldn’t let him visit for at least a week. Khaled was with me for half an hour. I held him in my arms for ten minutes. My God! How come he’s so beautiful? Love at first touch! In half an hour he gave me joy enough to fill the prison for a week. In half an hour I gave him love I hoped would surround him for a week. In half an hour I ...

prison will not stop my love, my happiness is resistance, holding Khaled is c...

The martyr is immortal, in our hearts immortal, in our minds immortal, in history immortal and in paradise immortal.12 But what happiness does immortality bring the father? His heart will burst with love for the remaining half hours of his life. Will he empty what’s in his heart in the arms of history? I wait for my release and I’m resilient. What does the father of the martyr wait for? That he follow the immortal to heaven?

So what is it that they want? A: They want ‘bread, freedom, social justice, and human dignity’. They want justice for the

martyrs. They want to understand why the old are planning for the future while children are writing their wills.

DYSTOPIAN

They’ve created a prison in the true sense of the word, then. For in prison, the majority don’t work, in prison also there is an underground smuggling economy (the currency is cigarettes). But it’s not real life.

But the difference in explicitly stating the Right is that it places greater responsibility on the State for those losing their right to life due to government negligence or failure to provide healthcare.

In modern constitutions, standard practice is to set out the basic rights explicitly, each in a separate article, and with each basic right list the relevant rights branching from it; followed by restrictions on the State; then, finally, its obligations.

it failed to mention newly created institutions, such as the National Telecom Regulatory Authority, which is no less important than the Central Bank.

In its current form, the Constitution permits abolition of the Telecom Authority, and so permits placing power to regulate this sector in the hands of the president, the prime minister, or even the minister of communications, without any oversight or accountability. We had hoped that the committee would be more original and understand that communications, especially the internet, have become more than just a technology or a market, but a basic resource, a critical infrastructure, and

a distinct right in itself. Its relation to knowledge is akin to the relationship between the road and transport network on one hand, and freedom of move...