Six years after then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced from power, the activists behind Egypt’s 2011 uprising are facing a new crackdown and struggling to see much reason for hope.
Rights groups accuse Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi of cracking down on freedoms won during the revolt, with many activists now facing prison, asset freezes and travel
Critics of the former army chief — who was elected after he toppled former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 — say al-Sisi does not tolerate any dissent.
“The situation is miserable,” said Esraa Abdel Fattah, a 38-year-old activist now banned from travel, as she passed by Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the January 2011 uprising.
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians protested in the square for 18 days, setting up tents and makeshift hospitals, and demanding an end to Mubarak’s 30-year rule.
“I’m sad for the blood that has gone to waste,” Abdel Fattah said, remembering the hundreds killed in the streets as security forces tried to suppress the protests.
Ahmad, a 32-year-old pharmacist who only gave his first name, also took part in the 2011 demonstrations.
“Before, I was ready to die for this country, now I just want to leave,” he said.
“I have transitioned from struggling for democracy and human rights to fighting a daily battle to provide for my family’s basic needs,” Ahmad said. “It’s a daily struggle for survival.”
Egyptians have faced shortages of basic goods such as medicine and sugar, with prices soaring after the government floated the currency and slashed fuel subsidies in November last year.
Those measures were part of economic reforms to meet conditions for a US$12 billion loan from the IMF.
“There is latent anger” because of the economic situation, political scientist Mai Mogib said. “But despite this, nobody wants another revolution. Egyptians are exhausted after a revolt that didn’t produce the results they were hoping for.”
In the months after the ouster of Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected civilian president, hundreds of his Islamist supporters were killed and thousands more jailed. The crackdown then expanded to leftist and secular activists, with scores in jail on accusation of participating in unauthorized street protests.
Egypt has also been investigating civil society groups on suspicion of receiving illegal foreign funding in a controversial probe criticized by the UN.
This month, a court ordered a freeze on the assets of Nazra for Feminist Studies and its founder Mozn Hassan, as well as of Mohamed Zaree and his Arab Penal Reform Organization.
It came after the assets of five other human rights defenders and three non-governmental organizations were frozen in September last year over similar accusations.
“The revolution is back to square one,” said Hassan, who was also issued a travel ban a few months ago. “We have to defend ourselves in court against accusations [of crimes] we didn’t commit.”
The secular April 6 movement, one of the groups that called for the Jan. 25 protests in 2011 and helped ignite the uprising, has been banned by the authorities.
Ahmed Maher, 36, one of its founders and a leading figure in the 2011 revolt, was released this month after spending three years in prison on accusations he organized an unauthorized protest. but for the next three years, he must spend 12 hours each night at a police station near his home.
“I’m a half-prisoner,” he said.
Journalist Ahmad Gamal Ziada, a photojournalist who spent two years in jail after his arrest at a protest he was covering, is just as disillusioned.
“We’re exhausted,” he said.
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