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En bref
After Egypt’s 2013 coup, when the only safe way to criticize the regime was to focus on poor economic conditions, ten Egyptian women held up banners with messages like, “Who would accept… such high gas bills?”
Since the 2013 military coup in Egypt, the country witnessed an unprecedented state of despair. People were afraid to talk about politics due to the regime’s brutality: ten thousand detainees, several hundreds martyrs, and thousands of victims of torture, all due to the widespread state violence. The situation was intolerable particularly because it followed a wave of fearless struggle, full of sacrifices, for freedom and dignity that actually achieved the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 - a victory against decades of tyranny and dictatorship.
Under such repressive circumstances, it was logical for activists and people in general to be wary of criticizing the authorities and the military. In response, myself and nine women initiated a safe way to provoke people towards expressing their resentment of the regime and restore their desire for change while maintaining a low risk of being arrested or otherwise repressed by the authorities.
Without making any direct criticisms of the regime, our campaign was nonetheless able to indirectly criticize the corruption and incompetence of the military dictatorship.
We established a movement called “Free June 30” and we worked on two campaigns, one of which was “Who Would Accept” that addressed politics through economic arguments.
The target audience of both campaigns was the general public. Our main goal in the first campaign was to encourage people to find their courage, and to realize that there are safe ways to speak out. The campaign spoke only about “non-political” issues: high gas prices, garbage in the streets, bread shortage, electricity blackouts, water shortages, extreme poverty, and many other economic problems. Without making any direct criticisms of the regime, our campaign was nonetheless able to indirectly criticize the corruption and incompetence of the military dictatorship, since, obviously, these problems were happening under their tenure.
The campaign began by holding small demonstrations with big banners.
We wrote the hashtag, #whowouldaccept (يرضي_مين#), on the banners, and then we wrote on each banner one sentence describing a specific problem, such as: “ high price of gas”, “unemployment”, and so on.
This initiative attracted all sorts of reactions. Some bypassers would react to us with anger, which we understood because at the time the media was portraying all activists as traitors who are serving America, Turkey and Qatar. Nonetheless, the majority of people appreciated our efforts with many coming by thanking us for our courage or saying “May Allah bless you”.
Our demonstrations took place twice a week over a period of six months, until one morning the police came and we were forced to flee. We decided to suspend the demonstrations to avoid further security escalations.
Théorie clé
It was obvious what we were standing for: decent economic conditions and the right to criticize the regime. The message and purpose were evident in the action itself and thus no one needed to ask why were we demonstrating. Our presence per se told a story, and the slogans on the banners were straightforward and self-explanatory.
Tactique clé
Our simple, portable banners could be easily unfurled and quickly concealed again. We mostly hid our faces with the banners, and would assemble without warning in a public location, prepared to scatter if the police arrived. It was a good idea to hide our faces instead of putting on masks, as masks sometimes make both police and members of the public suspicious and distrustful.
Principe clé
From the beginning of this campaign we chose to avoid a direct political attack on the regime because it would have likely led to a police response, and probably arrest. Instead, we implicitly, and more safely, criticized the regime by highlighting everyday economic issues. This was our central insight, which allowed the protest to succeed, and continue for six months. This choice also reduced the public anger we experienced, and created a safer space for the public to share their own complaints, as well.