#jan25two : Revolution reloaded

January 25 is a bittersweet day for us Egyptians. Last year on January 25 thousands of courageous protesters were heading to Tahrir to start the Egyptian revolution. 18days and 890 victims later, Mubarak was stepping down and each of us was exploding with joy. One more month, and we were waiting in queues to vote as free egyptian citizen for the first time; tears of joy, pride, happinness. Alas; the military rule continued the repression, tried 12’000 Egyptians in military courts when Mubarak was granted a civilian trial, forces shot protesters and caused massacres, the most opaque elections ever took place. Our revolution was technically hijacked by the army.

The story would be over if the Egyptian people weren’t unsubmitted by nature. Revolution lost in popularity in Egypt; because it is exhausting, because life is hard, still it is alive in every one of us, only waiting for the right impulsion, the right firestarter. Maybe is January 25 2012 that firestarter? Revolution is a long road still in construction; it is not a highway, it is a mountain road and we encounter difficulties, but in the end, we’ll cross the mountain, we’ll get to see what is behind.

The Egyptian people is too great to be defeated when it stands like one man. We know it is only a matter of time. The day is coming where the victory will be complete. Until then, the revolution is a continuous state of mind.

Like Sheikh Imam told us: Eshee ya Masr (Wake Up Egypt)

Tahrir “Blue Bra Girl”, you are the pride of my country

I thought this kind of images belong to the past. To the hard times where our voices were shut. I thougth the day our people united and rose, we became too strong to be humiliated. Alas I was wrong. The events at Tahrir Square this week-end, where the SCAF beats and kills protestors prove that we still have to deal with tyranny in Egypt.

There is this video/pictures of a  niqabi girl lying on the floor, surrounded by not less than 5 soldiers, her jilbab torn off revealing a white skin and a blue bra and beaten, again, and again. I can hardly imagime the terror, the pain, as well as the shame she must have felt at this moment. I wish I could take some of it to bear with her. Alas I can’t; all I can do is to tell her, I swear to God, she embodies the dignity and the pride of my country, of our great Egypt. She is the strentgh, she is the truth, she is the right fight. She is the only human being I see on this picture.

Today and tomorrow, she is the hero.

Why I am boycotting the coming Egyptian elections

As an Egyptian living abroad, voting would have been one of the very few means my voice would have been significant for Egypt. Indeed, if I am not able to be physically on Tahrir square protesting for the future of my country, is there anything else than a voting ballot to have an influence? But alas, regarding to the events of the last weeks, I took the decision to boycott the Egyptian elections.

The main reason for me to boycott the elections is the growing brutality of the SCAF and the police with the Egyptian people, acting like the dictator they promised to protect us from. The transitory period should have lasted 6 months, but we are today 9months after Ferbruary 11th, and nothing changed in Egypt. There is no reform of justice, protestors are targeted with tear gas, if not with real bullets, some of them die.Freedom of speech has not improved in Egypt, where 12’000 people had to face military trials, sometimes only for emitting opinions. The regime didn’t downfall with Mubarak, it is continuing with the SCAF. If I went voting, I would feel like I am spitting on the bodies of the martyrs of Tahrir and Maspero, and all the others; indeed, it would be like approving the way the SCAF is running the country.

The other reason for me to boycott the elections is that the organization is very opaque, and we can’t be confident in it. The elections are not organized by an independant institute like were Tunisian elections and SCAF and Ministry of Interior that are today attacking the people in the streets are those who manage the process. We know nothing of the details of the monitoring and there is no independant observers. Everything is left to the random mood of the SCAF. Where is the difference with Mubarak-era elections? Why would we participate to such a mascarade?

The Armed Forces led by General Tantawi are all-powerful in Egypt and I don’t want to contribute with my voting ballot to chose their civilian puppets. Six months were more than enough for such a mighty institution to transfer the power to the people and organize fair and transparent elections. And they didn’t.

In conclusion I would just say that as a half-tunisian half-egyptian, I had the chance to vote last month for the Tunisian elections. My eyes still fill up with tears of joy thinking back of that day where Tunisian citizen could freely vote for their leaders, without any form of threat coming from the army or another institution. And even if I didn’t vote for Ennahda, the fact that they were elected by my fellow-citizens whom were given a free choice is enough for me. And that is no more no less what I wish for Egypt, my other country. Today I can be a proponent or an opponent in Tunisia. Sadly, I don’t think we can say the same about Egypt; boycotting the elections is my way of disapproving the hijack by the SCAF of the revolution made by the great people of Egypt.

Tel-Aviv is not Tahrir

People say Tahrir Square inspired the world. Revolutionnaries from everywhere will use this template for carrying revolts and ask for dignity, freedom and rights. So when a social unrest movement started in Israel in July 14th, many commentors wanted to see in it one of the many waves generated by the ‘Arab Spring’. The Israelis are gathering in Tel-Aviv in increasing numbers since three weeks (when a young activist settled a tent on Rotschild street) to protest against high rents in Israel. The number of participants have reached 300’000 people.

Even Israelis sometimes say themselves they were inspired by Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. A famous picture shows a protestor carrying a sign saying “Walk like an Egyptian“, and sometimes signs are written in hebrew and in arabic.

But alas, Tel-Aviv is not Tahrir. It is not sufficient to claim making an arab-like revolution for it to be truly one. Our Arab revolutions were, before to be about costs of living (even if it’s true they were too about it), about justice and freedom, end of violence and torture. One of the famous Tunisian mottos even was “Bread and Salt, but not Ben Ali” (“bread and salt” is a Tunisian expression meaning eating very poorly); many Libyans droped out the oil income Gaddafi was giving them and the privileges Arabs had among Berbers in Libya, because they know the Libyan people freedom knows no price high enough to be sold; Bahraini were among the first to rise in February although they are certainly not the poorest in the Arab World, because they don’t want to live in a golden cage.

The problem with the Israeli protests is that they are claiming against Netanyehou government for the very wrong reasons. They complain about high rents but without firmly condemning the aspects of the housing policy that discriminates Palestinians, excludes them out of towns, encourages settlements and land expropriation. By silenting on these issues, they just say they will buy it, if only a little more discount is made. Paying too much taxes is an issue for the Israeli citizen, but nor apartheid, nor the crimes of Tsahal are. The fact that a war criminal like Tzipi Livni endorses the unrest demands proves that the rights of Palestinians are totally out of interest for the July 14th movement.

Many activists say they don’t mention the Palestinian issue in the protests demands because they want the movement to keep “apolitical”. Way of pushing aside the embarrassing questions: indeed, unjustice and human rights violations are beyond ‘politics’ in real democracies, while it is political only in phantom democracies. For the huge majority of the people in the streets in Tel-Aviv, if a little effort is made by the government to lower rents or find solutions to build a new campus for Israeli students, they will easily leave the streets, and carry on with their lives, satisfied with themselves as revolutionnaries with this revolution on the cheap.

Thus, the current Israeli unrest is the negation of Justice, it is the negation of the Tahrir spirit.

May 27: Egypt’s Second Revolution

The Revolution was never finished on February 11th: Egypt is in a continuous revolutionary state since then. So many has to be done, and it is not the new constitution or the first trials of Mubarak ministers that will end this. Now Egyptians are facing a new challenge: the Supreme Council of Armed Forces of Egypt (SCAF) that is ensuring the management of Egypt during this period of transition, is going too far beyond its duties. Arbitrary detention of activists, unability to secure the country, lack of concrete decisions for Egyptians standard of life. And many more. On May 27th, Egyptians are back in the streets, in Tahrir Square and on other squares all over the country, to ask to the SCAF to meet the duties the people entrusted them with.

Here are some of the demands of the Egyptians, like very well discribed here:

1. Setting up a minimum wage for workers in public sector as well as in private sector. Only a decent living for all can make of Egypt the land of free Egyptians.
2. End of military trials, back to civil justice, end of emergency law. The psychological and physical intimidation of activists must end. When protestors are arrested and “kindly” told that they are contributing in unstabilizing the country, they are not doing anything different than what was under the old regime.
3. Transparency in the affairs of the State. It is not a few trials of some personnalities that are going to end the whole systemic corruption. Concrete measures have to be taken to ensure a corruption-free and transparent state.
4. Getting back the police in the streets to secure the country. Police is extremely absent from the streets since the Revolution. The army arrests activists and brings them to military trial, but who arrests thiefs, rapists and thugs?
5. Dismantling the extremists groups. Like we saw with Embaba violent confrontation of Muslims and Christians, the SCAF puts very few effort to identify the extremists among the two communities. How can SCAF let a violent escalade happen in Embaba without intervening, and on the other side the same SCAF violently repress a protest in front of the Israeli Embassy where nobody’s life was ever threatened?
6. Compensation for victims and family of victims of the January 25th Revolution.

None of the Egyptians ignore that we are living a crucial and difficult phase of the revolutionnary process. We know and understand that the SCAF task is not only critical but also essential. The SCAF and the people must cooperate to achieve the goals of the Revolution, but Egyptians cannot let the SCAF take too much power. Egypt will never be a military dictatorship hidden behind a superficial democracy like Turkey, where one can vote but where one can be thrown 10 years in jail if one speaks in kurdish in the Parliament or mentions the Armenian genocide. And when the people sees Egypt’s SCAF taking the same kind of path that Turkey’s,  they say NO.

After Jan25, May27 revolution is our new grant for freedom!

To all the Tahrir Squares in the World

At the end of 2010, with the events of Sidi Bouzid, I felt something had changed in Tunisia, but it took me a few days to me like to most of us to realize that it was more than a local revolt. A Revolution. I remember the tears of joy on January 14 and the pride I felt to be Tunisian, and I remember thinking Tunisians changed Arab History forever. At that time I wished so strongly that it could happen to my other country, Egypt, but I was afraid to be too optimistic: when you walk in Tunisia streets, you are afraid of the police, secret services and a powerful extended presidential family, but when you are in Egypt, you fear an Intelligence agency almost at level of Mossad and an army potentially stronger than Saddam Hussein’s, all in hand of one strong olligarchy. But they did it: a wave of millions of people, on Tahrir Square and everywhere else in Egypt made it, they made the Revolution. And since there is no limit to my optimism. There is an empirical statement that basically says: what happens in Egypt, ends happening in the rest of the Arab World.

I dreamt about two things: first, that the Revolutions spread, second that it’ll breaks enough of Israel’s self-confidence and arrogance to force them to accept a Palestinian State. Both of hopes are “in progress”. Everywhere in the Arab World we are seeing Revolutions, and though it seems sometimes difficult, we know and hope, it’ll end coming. Change Square in Yemen, Pearl Square in Bahrain, inspirations of Tahrir Square (in fact, they are inspirations of simultaneous Egyptian Tahrir Square and Tunisian Qasba events, that took place after January 14 and was for real the second revolution in Tunisia in less than one month).

But once again, things went beyond my hopes: Tunisia and Egypt are inspiring more than the Arab World. An Eritrean Revolution is in preparation and a facebook event annouces a start for the movement in May 28 in Asmara. And now a “Tahrir Square model of revolt” is taking place in Spain. In Puerta del Sol, youth is gathering every day after 7pm or so, for protesting: unemployement, injustice, lack of means, like in Tahrir square and Qasba the crowds were gathering every day to protest through the simple act of civil desobediance consisting in sleeping on the ground of the place, just because it challenges curfews and non-authorizations to protest. They are in revolt actually against a whole European political and economical system that broke their country. Almost half of young people in Spain are unemployed. Yet they don’t call for “toppling the regime” like Arabs (“Al Chaa’b yorid isqat an-nizam“), for they have the chance we didn’t have to be able to change their regimes with free elections, but their demands are so similar to Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions that it is clear that they are part of the same wave of freedom. In fact, Europeans do not live in autocratic states, but the fact that European politics totally escapes the direct control of people makes European citizens almost as powerless as were Tunisians under Ben Ali or Egyptians under Mubarak.

This wave of change begins to sweep Europe and represents the only serious effect to oppose the rise of populist right wing in Europe. With this new wind of freedom, Europeans stand to say their problem is not immigration, but the unsocial policies of the econimical Europe, the big capitalist  machine crushing nations in their lost battle against debt. Belt-tightening policies when the banks are back to profit, bonus and risky markets?

And after Spain, don’t we see it coming? Portugal, Greece, Italy,… And one day, isn’t it going to reach the core of politcal economical Europe: France and Germany? Tahrir Squares will blossom all over Europe. Tunisia and Egypt, you changed Arab History, you also  might have changed the World History.