Middle East
Egyptian bloggers rally against military
Hundreds risk potential prosecution to voice criticisms of post-revolution
military rule and slow pace of reforms.
Evan Hill Last Modified: 23 May 2011 19:34
Kareem Amer was the first blogger to face trial in Egypt; such prosecutions
have continued under the army [Evan Hill]
Hundreds of Egyptians have staged an unprecedented show of online defiance
against their country's military leadership, taking to their blogs to write at
times scathing critiques of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that
assumed power after longtime president Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February.
The show of anger on Monday came ahead of a "million-man" protest that
activists have called for Friday, one they hope will be the largest since the
revolution and will demonstrate widespread public support for their call to put
former government officials on trial and restrain the power of the armed forces.
Criticising the military in any form is a dangerous act in Egypt and is
sometimes considered a crime. Maikel Nabil, a pacifist who blogged against the
army, was tried and sentenced to three years in prison by a military court in
April. It was the first trial of a blogger since the revolution.
But on Monday, the military appeared to strike a different tone.
"This is freedom of expression, and we have no problem with it," a spokesman
told Al Jazeera.
The bloggers - the vast majority of whom published in Arabic, but a few in
English - said they believed their sheer numbers, and their tone, would help
spare them from arrest. By Monday afternoon, at least 203 blogs criticising the
Council had been published, according to one widely cited count on Facebook.
"I'm 10 per cent worried, but I specifically write in very sarcastic ways, and
I never directly insult," said Amr Bassiouny, a research manager at a real
estate investment and development firm. "So no matter what I say, all they can
do is take me in for making fun of them."
Mohamed Abdelfattah, a freelance journalist, said the point of the day was to
blog collectively and mitigate the risk of being singled out.
"The military council cannot silence hundreds of bloggers who are adamant at
showing its violations and mistakes," he said. "We said we will all blog on May
23rd, and they can arrest us all if they want."
The blogging campaign was mirrored by a continuous stream of commentary on
Twitter, where a multitude of well-known activists and other users were making
scores of remarks every minute with the "noSCAF" hashtag.
"I am now, for the first time in my life, setting up a blog," wrote Noor Noor,
the son of once-jailed opposition presidential candidate Ayman Nour. "This step
is ignited by my dissatisfaction with the SCAF."
The day of online activism also happened to coincide with the release of dozens
of people who had been arrested by the army at a May 15 protest at the Israeli
embassy and put before military trials. The majority of the prisoners were
handed one-year suspended sentences.
Mosaab Elshamy, one of the men arrested, wrote on Twitter about his
mistreatment while in army custody, spurring more attention for the
anti-military campaign. Soldiers allegedly used homosexual slurs to describe
prisoners with long hair or beards, and everyone was routinely made to watch
soldiers abuse newly arrived detainees.
Near the end of their detention, an officer spoke with the group in an attempt
to convince them of the military's good intentions. He said Egyptians were
living in "turbulent times," that the country was on the verge of bankruptcy,
and that it was "naive" to protest. At the end of their stay, Elshamy said,
another officer told him that he would likely be under surveillance by military
intelligence for years.
"The sheer spite they had for us and for the revolution will never be
forgotten," he wrote.
Backwards from Mubarak
Most of the bloggers on Monday focused on the need to achieve what they said
were the revolution's twin goals: freedom and social justice. Military rule
presents an obstacle to achieving those goals, and in some cases represents a
step back from the Mubarak era, they wrote.
"This post is simply a comparison between back then in the Mubarak days and now
in the SCAF days," wrote Mostafa Sheshtawy, a 23-year-old graduate student in
computer science. "Back then, in the Mubarak days, protesters used to be beaten
up by the [Central Security Forces] and arrested, then tortured by them in the
prisons. Now the army arrest the protesters, beat them up and torture them in
their military prisons."
Amira Mikhail, who helps run a student leadership scholarship programme at the
American University in Cairo, quoted Vaclav Havel, the post-Communism president
of Czechoslovakia, as she described the qualities she hoped to see in Egypt's
new politicians.
"[Havel] wrote of the 'higher responsibility' that is placed on politicians and
leaders," Mikhail wrote. "When I hear these words from a man who at the time
was leading his country through a transition to democracy, similar to that of
Egypt's now, I ask myself if the men that lead my country now are also grounded
in the same principles and values that guided Havel."
Mikhail noted that 100 days had passed since Mubarak's ouster, and she had not
seen evidence of Havel's "higher responsibility" in the army's conduct.
"SCAF, a ruling military council, is making the mistake of functioning in the
old manner of dictatorship, where instead the people need them to speak and lay
things out transparently," she wrote.
In the months since Mubarak stepped down, activists say the military has
illegally arrested, imprisoned and tried as many as 10,000 civilians, without
providing access to lawyers or family members. The army has been criticised for
routinely breaking up demonstrations with violence, not bringing enough former
regime officials to trial, and not moving quickly to transfer power to a
civilian government.
Mikhail and Amr Moneib, another blogger, described how any trust they might
have had in the military's leadership had disappeared since the revolution.
"The Egyptian army has long been seen as the saviour of this country ... Yet,
we can't and we shouldn't forget that those officers who have implemented the
[1952] coup d'etat ... sent us to 60 years of ultimate dictatorship," Moneib
wrote. "Four months later and we can see that every single person who had his
doubts was right and all those who handed their revolution on a silver plate to
the SCAF were so naive that they almost lost us everything."
The military has muffled freedoms of speech and assembly, made unilateral
decisions about electoral laws, overseen "charade" trials of former regime
officials, and failed to defend churches and protesters from damage and attack,
he wrote.
In Arabic, the same demands
The hundreds who wrote their entries in Arabic expressed similar anger, though
some tied the United States and the West into the army's conduct.
"What we are doing now is not just fighting against the remnants of the regime,
because in my opinion they are really only a tool for implementing the vision
of those who do not want a truly democratic Egypt," wrote Mohamed Effat, an
independent journalist who was briefly detained at the Israeli embassy protest.
"Come and let's look at those who don't want want true democracy to begin in
Egypt: Israel, America, and Europe, timidly."
Those countries, Effat wrote, had provided enormous military aid to Egypt,
filling the coffers of the army, which was loyal and close to Mubarak's regime.
The army also continues to maintain its massive investments in the state,
including factories, hotels, tourist resorts and agriculture, he said.
The first step, Effat wrote, is to change the leadership of the Egyptian media
and remove the "hypocrites" on television who opposed the revolution during its
early days. He echoed calls for a large protest on Friday.
Mona Seif, an activist who helps lead the No to Military Trials for Civilians
campaign, appealed to anyone who had suffered from the armed forces:
"If you know a relative or a friend or anyone who was beaten in a protest by
the army ... If you were standing before a military court that should not try
your case ... If you turned on Egyptian [state] television to Channel One and
found a picture of your brother bearing marks of beating and torture and under
that the word 'thug,' ... join us and monitor the military council, by
writings, video, pictures, sound recording, blog entries, [and] notes on
Facebook."
Some bloggers appeared to have taken up the call. Tamer Saleh, an information
technology worker in Alexandria, wrote that the "noSCAF" campaign had inspired
him to write again, and his entry on Monday was his first in 2011.
"Most Egyptians agree on one demand ... and we are all prepared to sacrifice
ourselves for it. The demand is freedom and justice," he wrote. "Around 100
days after Mubarak's ouster, we have discovered that nothing we demanded has
been achieved and also that the military council has sold to us the same
package that we refused to buy from Mubarak."
Maged Roland, a blogger who wrote in both Arabic and English and identified
himself as a part-time mechanic employed in the tourism industry, wrote that he
believed the military leadership was deliberately provoking fears of a security
vacuum and economic breakdown to make the public feel they need them.
This fall, when Ramadan arrives, those suffering from high food prices are
likely to revolt again, he said.
A revolution online, and perhaps in the streets
Though hundreds took to the Internet to criticise the Council, some activists
wondered how much of the Egyptian public held the same opinions.
"Sadly, I don't think it is that widespread," Mikhail said. From taxi drivers
to her upper class colleagues, most tell her that the armed forces are the only
power Egypt has left, and that without them, the country will become like Iraq
and fall into anarchy.
Bassiouny agreed, but said the situation had been similar before the revolution.
"We're back to being a small base of educated aspiring Egyptians who want to
create real change, and the rest just want to get along with their lives," he
said.
He anticipated that the turnout on Friday would be similar to those who
protested on January 25, the first day of Egypt's uprising, but that the
military and remnants of Mubarak's regime would send people to make trouble.
Bassiouny said he did not think the new wave of protests would reach "critical
mass," as happened during the revolution. The media does not back the
anti-military movement, he said, and the army is "a much more dangerous animal
than the police ever was".
"When the [Central Security Forces] used to attack, we could stand up and fight
them," he said. "But then what do you do against military soldiers? You run."
Source:
Al Jazeera
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