Since protests began in Egypt on 20 September, nearly 2,000 people have been arrested and 81 children have been detained by the security forces. 42 of those were allegedly kidnapped and their parents remain uninformed of their whereabouts. A large number of women have also been forcibly disappeared; reports mention more than 38 women. Today, on 27 September, protests are continuing in many Egyptian provinces.
Despite the risks, some were determined to protest.
“I will go down and participate, because it cannot get worse than the current situation. We are not worth anything in this country,” said Fatma, a teacher from the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria, to the Guardian.
The protests against government corruption have been taking place across the country, in Cairo, Alexandria and several other cities as well as in the port city of Suez. They were prompted by a call from Mohamed Ali, an Egyptian businessman living in self-imposed exile in Spain who has been posting videos on social media since 2 September that accuse Mr Sisi and the military of corruption. Mr Ali had urged Egyptians to take to the streets on Friday 20 September to demand the president step down and has called for a “million-strong protest” on 27 September.
Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, there has been a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent, and protests are very rare. Public gatherings of more than 10 people without government approval has been banned since 2013, when Mr Sisi led the military’s overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, Mohammed Morsi.
More than 1,900 people have been arrested since the protests broke out and on 26 September, the ministry of the interior “affirmed that it will confront any attempt to destabilise the country with decisiveness”, according to local media. Central Cairo is heavily guarded as riot police, vans of security officials and plainclothes police spread out along the network of streets surrounding Tahrir Square, the epicentre of Egypt’s 2011 revolution.
The authorities have blocked news and political websites and interrupted other internet services that protesters relied on to communicate and document government abuses. The web-monitoring organisation NetBlocks reported that Egypt’s internet was experiencing increasing restrictions, including disruption to Twitter, Facebook messenger and Skype. Egypt’s media regulator said the BBC was “likely blocked,” due to its “inaccurate coverage”, of the protests.
“The government’s mass arrests and internet restrictions seem intended to scare Egyptians away from protesting and to leave them in the dark about what’s happening in the country,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. “The nationwide crackdown on protests suggests that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is terrified of Egyptians’ criticisms.”
The figures for the arrests were compiled by the Cairo-based NGO the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. Bystanders and others who had little to do with the protests were reportedly detained along with the demonstrators, and those arrested were being held across the country. According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of detainees are being held in the National Security Agency’s secret detention centers and in the camps of the Central Security Forces, Egypt’s riot police, both of which are illegal detention sites that lawyers cannot visit.
The award-winning human rights lawyer Mahienour el-Massry was seized outside a Cairo courthouse where she was defending protesters. Days later, journalist and opposition politician Khaled Dawoud was arrested, as well as the political scientist Hassan Nafea and Hazem Hosny, a former spokesperson for the former military chief of staff Sami Anan, who remains in detention after attempting to run for president last year.
There are an estimated 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt – most of them members of Morsi’s now-outlawed Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. Hundreds have been handed preliminary death sentences by courts, and activists say hundreds more have gone missing in apparent forced disappearances.
Ahmed Mohy, a lone protester who publicly held a sign in Tahrir Square demanding that Sisi step down, was arrested in March and is yet to be released. Twenty-one people were arrested last May and later imprisoned on terrorism charges for protesting against a fare rise on the Cairo metro.
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, praised Sisi during a bilateral meeting in New York this week, mentioning only “positive progress in our bilateral relationship”, and ignoring the crackdown back home. The US president, Donald Trump, who has called Sisi his “favourite dictator”, dismissed the protests in Egypt. “Everybody has demonstrations,” he said.
Egyptians’ living conditions have progressively worsened while the risks of speaking out have grown. An estimated 32.5 million people live below the poverty line according to the government’s own figures published in July. Citizens have weathered years of harsh austerity measures including deep subsidy cuts and price increases for basic goods. In July, official state figures revealed that 32.5% of Egyptians were now living in poverty, up from 27.8% in 2015.
Yet despite widespread discontent, many were troubled by fears that renewed protests could bring unrest and further destabilise the economy or create a fresh wave of repression that threatens to ensnare even more of the population.
“I never went to a protest, and I will never go. There is a lot of wrong things in the country, some people are literally eating from the garbage. But protesting and riots will make things worse,” said Sayed, a 34-year-old fast-food worker in Cairo, to the Guardian. “God knows I agree with what they say, but I’m alone and I have no one to defend me. So I can only focus on putting bread on the table,” he added.