Egypt two years after Mubarak

Vanguard April 2013 p. 10
A World to Win News Service

(Above: A bus is set alight to block roads in Port Said)

On the second anniversary of the revolt that brought down Hosni Mubarak, protesters against the Islamic government that replaced him found themselves still fighting the same police units and the same beatings, torture and killing at their hands.

Demonstrations in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities were marked by a rage at what many people consider the hijacking of what they call the "revolution" by the now-governing Moslem Brotherhood.

Many thousands of youth and others fought, and many died, more than 50 according to Al- Ahram, in the name of the same slogans raised against Mubarak – "The people want the fall of the regime" and "Bread, freedom and social justice".

This new round of upheaval against the government headed by Mohammed Morsi turned even more determined over the following days. On 25 January a court in Port Said sentenced 21 men to death for what it said was their role in a football stadium attack that killed 74 people. This provoked extreme outrage both locally and elsewhere, as a cynical attempt to make these football fans scapegoats for the killings.  

During a February 2012 match between the capital's al-Ahly and the Port Said club al-Masry, men armed with knives, swords and other weapons attacked the Cairo team's supporters and chased down players. People were thrown from the stands. The stadium lights were turned off; according to some reports exit gates were locked. Many died or were injured in the stampede of people trying to flee.

In a break with standard practice, the police did not search people entering the stadium and did not intervene to protect those under attack. Many Egyptians believe that this was not a question of official negligence, but rather that the authorities had prior knowledge about the attacks, encouraged them and perhaps organized them.

In contrast to these death sentences, no security officials or even police have been held responsible for the killing of more than 800 civilians during the 18 days leading to the fall of Mubarak. Not even Mubarak was sentenced to death after being convicted for those deaths.

Indignation at this injustice led to a situation bordering on an uprising in Port Said, where crowds stormed the central prison and attacked police stations and other state institutions. Several police were killed. In the Canal city of Ismailia, protesters burned down the headquarters of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Moslem Brotherhood's electoral wing. Coalitions of youth organizations were said to have been in the lead in these cities.

The authorities' eagerness to crush the Suez cities became even more apparent on 27 January, when police in Port Said opened fire at the funerals for the 30 demonstrators they had killed the day before. At least seven more people died. In the fighting that followed, the police were driven out of the city. Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets, chanting "Morsi leave", "Down with the Brotherhood" and "The people want the state of Port Said."

Although the fighting in Suez had its own particularities, in the protests everywhere there seems to have been a common sense of fighting an unjust power structure. Who organized the Port Said stadium massacres? What are the connections between the army, whose Supreme Council was governing the country at that time, the police, the courts and the now-governing Moslem Brotherhood? And who or what could replace them?

This is a complicated situation in which people full of righteous hatred for the situation have seen little alternative other than the prospect of some arrangement in which various parties that represent the status quo, whether Islamist or pro-Western and supposedly secular, would share in governing.

To be seen as more legitimate, the state Mubarak once led needs to present itself as a product of the revolt that overthrew him. The armed forces would continue to play a central role in politics in one way or another, ready to back the police in enforcing the existing order. And Islamism would very likely play a central ideological and political role as well. This "politics" is political horse-trading whose aim is to produce a governing coalition, and that alone should be an exposure of the "liberal" and "left" Salvation Front leaders.

The Brotherhood constitution seriously threatens the rights of the people, especially insofar as it makes religion the supreme source of values and criminalizes all sorts of things religion might deem offensive. It is especially odious in its blessings on the subjugated status of women. But for the Salvation Front parties, the cry for "freedom" most definitely does not mean freedom from an oppressive economic, social and political system. This is attested to by their willingness to set aside even the most elementary rights of women in order to form a governing coalition with forces that have a forthright stand in favour of patriarchy.

The police might feel they can do without Morsi, but Morsi clearly can't do without the police. But the question of what people will tolerate on every level is related to whether or not they think there is a real alternative, not only to hated regimes but the whole system whose logic these regimes represent.