Exactly ten years ago, on January 25, 2011, Tahrir Square in the Egyptian capital Cairo filled with protesters demanding the resignation of then President Hosni Mubarak – with success. But has the situation of the Egyptians improved since then?
When Mubarak are on day eighteen of the demonstrations step down announced through his vice president, the crowd in Tahrir Square erupted in cheers. “The people have brought down the regime,” they shouted. It seemed that one of the revolutions of the Arab Spring was ending.
Ten years later, however, the atmosphere in Egypt has changed. The three main demands of the hundreds of thousands of protesters (freedom, social justice and better economic conditions) have not been met. Since President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi came to power 6.5 years ago, the situation has worsened.
Military dictatorship instead of democracy
After the revolution in 2011, things first seemed to be heading in the right direction. Egypt got its first democratically elected president: Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. But there was a lot of dissatisfaction with his policies, which led to him being deposed by the military after a year. A transition to a democratic system failed to materialize. When President Al Sisi, a former army general, came to power in June 2014, Egypt turned into a military dictatorship.
According to various researchers and human rights activists, the current situation cannot be compared to Mubarak’s Egypt. There was still some room for opposition under the former president, but there is now little more of it.
Worst human rights crisis in decades
According to human rights organization Human Rights Watch, Egypt is experiencing the “worst human rights crisis in decades. ”In the annual world report The organization states that in 2020 the Egyptian authorities stepped up the crackdown on government critics and ordinary citizens. As a result, there is hardly any room left for freedom of expression and association.
Egypt has tens of thousands of political prisoners, including journalists, scientists, writers, human rights activists and even children. They face human rights violations such as torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests.
A common tactic to bypass a fair trial is to renew it remandso that political prisoners do not receive a fair trial. According to Egyptian law, this is allowed for a maximum of two years, but that period is regularly exceeded. Furthermore, 2020 was a record year in terms of the number of exports executions in Egypt. In October 53 people were killed. That was more than the average in the years before.
In recent years, the state has taken tough action against employees of non-governmental organizations. In a report of Human Rights Watch, Said Boumedouha, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa program, writes that “Egypt’s civil society is treated as an enemy of the state, rather than a partner for reform and progression” . Employees are arrested, convicted, banned from travel, or their finances frozen.
Worsened economic situation
The better economic conditions have not materialized either. According to the Egyptian statistics agency CAPMAS, a third of the population now lives among the poverty line. That is about 30 to 33 million people.
Purchasing power has also fallen sharply due to a measure by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reform the Egyptian economy: the Egyptian pound was decoupled from the US dollar, allowing it to ‘float’. At the same time, energy subsidies went down, and electricity bills and prices for transport and food went up. This means that the burdens of the poorest people in particular have increased in recent years.
Much of the economy is now owned by it leger. There are billions invested in major government projects, such as the construction of a new administrative capital just outside Cairo.
Rare protests erupted in 2019 after Mohamed Ali, a former contractor of the military and actor, from self-imposed exile, published YouTube videos in which he exposed widespread corruption. However, the efforts of Ali and the protesters were to no avail: the system did not change in any way.
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