Egypt on the verge of several Days of Rage

by Ahmed Zidan (Egypt)

I’m reporting what’s happening in Egypt at the moment, which doesn’t necessarily imply my personal view, but rather the timeline of incidents for the past 2 week until this very critical moment.

My friend and colleague Ahmed Aggour has already contributed a good intro to the Day of Rage 4 days ago here on this website, but no one has ever imagined the extent of what’s going on so far, which might continue for several coming days until the government responds.

The call for the protest has all started from the FB pages El Shaheed, and the English “We’re all Khaled Saeed“, which have around 416,000 members collectively. Then another event was created called “Day of uprising against torture, poverty, and unemployment” which has nearly 100,000 attending members, and increasing, which has called for people’s uprising on Tuesday 25th of Jan 2011, which commemorates The National Day of the Police Forces, an annual holiday witnessed in Egypt.

The creators of the event, which is purely inspired by the Tunisian Jasmine Revolt, has 3 clear demands:

One: Raising the minimum wage to 1,200 EGP and providing subventions to the unemployed.

Two: Ending the State of Emergency which has been caused a long paralysis to the Egyptian civil and political life for more than 3 decades, and releasing all the detainees who are prisoned with no definite charges.

Three: Dissolution of the People’s Assembly of Egypt, the Egyptian Parliament, and changing the constitution to limit the presidential terms to two only.

In brief, Tunisia has made people, not only in Egypt but all across the region, to believe that the ousting of any totalitarian regime is within reach, if people actually march into the streets, not only on the internet. Signs of releasing anger has spread all across Egypt by tearing Mubarak’s pictures in several areas.

The demonstrations has reached a critical level, but I don’t think it’s irreversible yet, at which police was forced to use violence against protesters who have gathered in many different areas of Cairo and other Egyptian provinces. This new tactic, separate groups of massive protesters, has severely distracted the Egyptian police forces, known for their infamous violations, torture, and crackdowns against many individual rights.

The regime has resorted by midday to cut any means of transportation to Down Town, the vital heart of Cairo, and some reports of one dead man in Suez which is under curfew. Massive demonstrations have been reported from different provinces, including Alexandria, Tanta, Mansoura, Mahala, which has led before to 6th of April Strike in 2008, and many other provinces. The police forces have used tear gas bombs, water cannons, electric shock batons, and even live ammunition in Mansoura.

The underground metro, Cairo’s most vital way of transportation, was closed by midday, according to some reports too. Not only metro, but Twitter was blocked across Cairo to prevent live feeds from demonstrators.

Twitter was the main way of communication between all protesters, and it was only the main and most vital live news update to everyone worldwide through #Jan25 and #Cairo hashtags. However, the Egyptian authorities have blocked it, and it’s still blocked until the moment of writing this. The live update didn’t stop to flood, but Twitter blockade has caused a slight shortage of news, especially from inside the demonstrations. Plus, all the mobile and internet communications are totally blocked in Down Town area in Cairo; to suffocate the live feeds of the demonstrators which has helped in accumulating news and even more demonstrators using this gigantic tool called Twitter. However, this procedure, from my point of view, might cause more riots and trouble to the Egyptian government, because now we’re facing a new infamous violation against freedom of speech, just like Tunisia under the reign of Ben Ali and its infamous Ammar 404. I think this will backfire at the Egyptian government indeed.

Bambuser, the video streaming website, also has been blocked across Egypt’s different ISPs in the country’s biggest clampdown against freedom of speech and freedom of internet content.

Egyptian authorities haven’t blocked any internet content before, however they’ve tracked, detained, and censored Egyptian activists, bloggers, and netizens. Not only that, but even the Egyptian ministry of interior has a specialised department to monitor Facebook users in Egypt. All these violations rank Egypt as an internet enemies in the Reporters Without Borders annual report. Look here for 2010 report from page 15 to 17.

Worthy to mention that the state-controlled, namely private, oligopolistic ISPs and mobile networks have shown their ugly faces by complying with the strict orders of the government through blocking users’ communications, especially through Twitter, the main hub of everything 25th of January!

The negative thing about what happened today is some reported cases of vandalism of unknown sources. However, the worst case scenario, from my point of view, would see the Islamists riding the wave of these undirected and non-idiologised riots like they’ve done in the past in many countries. Maybe this is the worst scenario here in Egypt or there in Tunisia. Yes, we absolutely need reform, but we don’t want Islamists.

Reports say that 3 protesters in Suez and 1 serviceman in Cairo have died amid the unrest, in addition to hundreds of casualties.

I think that 25th of Jan, the Day of Rage, might extend to a week or maybe a month of rage. Who knows?!

“Mubarak Dégage” would be the most relevant slogan for the Tunisian-inspired-Egyptian-Day-of-Rage. Actually, the fall of Tunisia’s dictator broke a psychological barrier, across the Middle East, by exposing the weakness of a seemingly entrenched Arab regime, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Follow our live updates of the Day of Rage in Egypt on CrowdVoice here. And, if you’re an Egyptian resident, there are more than one way to circumvent Twitter’s blockade, one by using our page at CrowdVoice, as we update via #Jan25. And an another method by using AlKasir, Mideast Youth supported circumvention application, to get around the government’s blockade to online content. Download it from here.