How is al-Sisi’s Egypt handling the protests
What happens in Egypt? The comment by Giuseppe Gagliano
As indicated in a previous article, the protests of the Egyptians both in the suburbs and in the rural villages continue steadily.
The reaction of the police and the army was timely and widespread because it was able to preventively arrest several thousand activists – young and old – inevitably causing civilian victims such as Awais al-Rawi – at whose funeral there army fired on people commemorating him – or as 25-year-old Sami Wagdy Bashir killed in the village of al-Blida in Giza.
The protests have now reached about 160 and are present in numerous villages resulting in 400 arrests that must be added to the 1000 detentions and 4000 still detained for protests in the square last year because they are accused of belonging to terrorist groups.
The importance of these protests for a country like Egypt is soon said: the very fact of protesting in a country with an authoritarian regime is equivalent to either prison or death since freedom of expression and association are now low due to the widespread repression put in place by al-Sisi.
The Egyptian president is in fact terrified of the possibility of committing a mistake similar to that of his predecessor Mubarak who avoided a widespread and preventive repressing the opposition organizations.
According to reports by Amnesty International and Human Right Watch al-Sisi has in fact not only imprisoned over 60,000 political prisoners – that is, Islamist opponents, liberals, communists, progressives, journalists, bloggers, lawyers, activists and trade unionists – but has closed sites web, news agencies, newspapers, opposition parties such as that of the Muslim Brotherhood expanding, with the complicity and guilty connivance of magistrates and jurists, excessively the concept of terrorism.
On the one hand, the repression policy of the Egyptian president which has led to hunger and poverty – 60% of Egyptian society lives below the poverty line – and on the other hand the adoption of economic policies that – with a real reversal of those put in place by Nasser – have increased the social divide by increasing inflation.
As for the rearmament policy implemented by the current president, it must not be misleading: this is in fact supported by both the UAE and Saudi Arabia who have a decisive role in supporting Egypt both in terms of economic and military policy, guaranteeing enormous investments and financing.
One last observation. It seems paradoxical that many European countries underline the violation of human rights in China when it is precisely European countries – such as Italy, France and Germany – that have increased Egyptian military power by exporting arms. Perhaps more coherence and less hypocrisy would be needed.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-sta-gestendo-le-proteste-legitto-di-al-sisi/ on Sun, 04 Oct 2020 05:40:43 +0000.