Abdelfatah al Sisi, a decade restricting freedom and democracy in Egypt

2023-07-03 17:52:48

On July 3, 2013, a military coup overthrew Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Since then, his successor Abdelfatah al Sisi has modified the Constitution to restrict freedoms and repress all opposition. There are at least 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt today, according to human rights organizations.

First modification: 03/07/2023 – 17:52

With the RFI correspondent in Cairo, Edward Dropsy.

In the chaos of traffic in Cairo, taxi drivers no longer hide their opinion out of fear. “We have no freedom in Egypt. We are fed up with al Sisi!” one of them told RFI. In the last decade, Egyptians were mainly concerned about falling living standards.

Egypt had inflation of 33% in less than a year. A third of its 105 million inhabitants live below the poverty line. All these years freedom was not a priority, as long as the Egyptians could feed themselves.

Read alsoEgypt’s economic crisis hits the poor and suffocates the middle class

Safety instead of freedom

“When Sisi came to power in 2013, there were many attacks,” recalls Mohamed Lotfi, director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), a human rights NGO, one of the last in Egypt. “Many people chose security in time of freedom”; he adds.

The then Defense Minister, Abdelfatah al Sisi, presented himself as the solution to the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood, through the figure of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president in the history of Egypt.

At that time, the ruling party “modified the Constitution, introducing articles that allowed the establishment of an Islamic State and a religious State. All of this greatly annoyed a majority of the Egyptian people, who took to the streets to wrest power from the Muslim Brotherhood.” explains Amr Alshobaky, a specialist in political Islam.

A year after being elected, Mohamed Morsi was ousted and imprisoned on July 3, 2013. For more than a month, in the middle of Ramadan, in the sweltering heat of Cairo, his supporters rallied to demand the return of the president.

From August 14 to 16, the military regime opened fire on protesters gathered in Rabia al Adawiyya Square. By the Egyptian authorities’ own admission, at least 638 people died. The NGO Human Rights Watch described this crackdown as “the largest massacre in modern Egyptian history.”

In the blink of an eye, a state of emergency was declared and the Muslim Brotherhood was classified as a “terrorist organization”, which multiplied the mass trials.

For human rights activists, who were still very much aware of the “Arab spring”, it was very painful to see the return of military rule.

Since then, anyone who criticizes the power of al-Sissi or the army has exposed themselves to danger. “The country has been without a local government for ten years,” explains Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for the Rights of the Person (EIPR). “The authorities use arrests as the main tool to govern. And it’s not just about political prisoners “Anyone can be arrested. Once in prison, there is no legal process and it is not known when you will be released,” he details.

A third term planned

According to human rights organizations, there are 60,000 political prisoners in Egyptian jails. These are figures that the authorities for their part deny. Mohamed Morsi died in prison in 2019.

Elections will be held in a year and al Sisi seeks to be a candidate for re-election. That is why he has decided to launch a great national dialogue. “It is actually a mosaic of monologues, not a dialogue,” Lotfi denounces. “We demanded commitments from the government, particularly regarding the release of political prisoners. Between April 2022 and April 2023, they released 1,600 prisoners. But for On the other hand, they detained another 3,600, which is why we refused to participate in their dialogue,” he says.

Due to the economic crisis that is shaking the country, the United States and the European Union are going to closely follow the 2024 presidential elections, out of the need to maintain some stability in this country located in a very politically unstable region.

In Egypt there is no opposition, so al Sisi can easily get a third term. “He does not accept criticism; he believes that he has been sent by God to save the country,” says Hossam Bahgat. “The president has decided to destroy the state institutions and manage everything on his own account, so he is now solely responsible for the situation in Egypt,” he concludes.