Political forces and youth from political movements were divided on evaluating the April 25 protests against the cession of the islands of Tiran and Sanafir in the Red Sea. Some considered these protests the seed of real opposition and popular movement but others were pessimistic due to the security’s siege and the growing number of detainees, which reached 382 in two weeks.
Ability to mobilize
Political forces and youth from political movements were divided on evaluating the April 25 protests against the cession of the islands of Tiran and Sanafir in the Red Sea. Some considered these protests the seed of real opposition and popular movement but others were pessimistic due to the security’s siege and the growing number of detainees, which reached 382 in two weeks.
Ability to mobilize
Hamed Jabr, leader at the Democratic Current and Al-Karama Party, considers the protests that took place on Sinai Liberation Day as positive since they proved that the Egyptian youth were able to repeat their activism as on January 25 and June 30 and that they were able to mobilize people despite the authority’s counter propaganda. However, the crisis of organization, which political movements have suffered from in the last five years and was the reason behind many failures, persists.
Jabr indicated that the youth groups, regardless of their affiliations, urgently needed a certain degree of organization, unity, prioritization, more connection with people and avoiding the use of the currently repulsive slogans calling for toppling the regime and similar, especially since ordinary people feared for their lives and were not willing to fight ideological wars.
“All have alternatives, namely to support the ordinary people’s needs without being forced to meet other demands imposed by a higher authority,” he said. On the other hand, Jabr believes that the security apparatus’ oppression and resorting to Mubarak’s people to manage its battle with the revolution’s youth indicate its wrong practices. He adds that if the current methods continued, there was a chance that the Islamic currents would go back, especially in light of the current deterioration and the absence of organization among the civil forces.
Insistence on defiance
Mo’taz Shinnawi, member of the Socialist People’s Alliance Party, concurs with Jabr saying the security apparatus’s panic, using the media affiliated with the authority against the revolution’s youth and the political forces and besieging the parties did not succeed in suppressing people and thwarting their protests which rejected the cession of the Egyptian lands. That led scores of protestors to take to the streets in the poor areas and further spread the idea of rejecting the demarcation of the boundaries agreement.
More important is the insistence of the revolution’s youth on defying the tight grip of the security forces which made several arrests prior to April 25 and continue to do so until now.
Shinnawi says that one of the gains from the April 25 protests is the attempts at unity and coordination among all, even those who supported the state on June 30, due to the security apparatus’s violations which reached the extent of besieging the Journalists’ Association and attacking some journalists. The security grip led many of those sitting on the fence to express their support for the political forces, including the associations of journalists, lawyers and engineers, denoting the growing anger among many categories of the Egyptian people.
Subservient political forces
Amira Abdulmajid, member of the ‘Egypt’s Students Art Not for Sale’ Campaign, believes that the absence of organization devalued the April 25 protests and transformed them into a pursuit between the security forces and the young people in the streets, with no significant positive results. She says that the drooping official political forces who supported the authority especially the presidential candidates who called on young people to take to the streets but stayed at home on April 25 weakened the student movements and spread fear of the security oppression, which managed to deter thousands of students through arresting their colleagues.
She says that the only way out of what she called the elite’s absence and weakness is to stop coordinating with these political forces and parties which, despite being besieged by the security apparatus and the arrest of their leaders, are still adopting moderate policies when it comes to dealing with the authority. The protests, she adds, should be held in poor, highly-populated areas rather than in the center of Cairo, which might yield popular momentum that can strike a balance between the oppressive state and the elite.
As for upcoming activities, Abdulmajid says: “The exams approached and the great majority of students who were interested in the issue of Egypt’s cessation of the two islands are now either looking for hundreds of their colleagues who were arrested or runaways who left their home for fear of arrest.”
Mohamed Ali, member of the April 6 Youth Movement, stresses that the protests on April 25 and the preceding week managed to break the total silence of the Egyptian people over the last year and opened the door to speak about the economic and social crises which the Egyptian people suffer from, including the dollar’s rising prices, the absence of social justice and the return of the police’s malpractices and many others.
At the same time, however, they do not qualify as a fourth wave of the January Revolution, especially since the people’s forces do not have the same ability to mobilize people particularly in light of the Ministry of Interior’s harsh methods of dealing cracking down on protestors. The streets have become military bases and thugs are used to disperse protests.
As for the upcoming activities of the April 6 Movement, he says that the movement will adopt new strategies such as awareness-raising campaigns and swift protests in the poor, highly-populated areas like what the movements of “the Youth for Change” and Kifaya did under the toppled president Hosni Mubarak.
