Since the Gaza war began on 7 October, the security blows dealt to the public sphere in Egypt have intensified, with a number of activists, workers, feminist activists and students arrested, in a security attempt to control any movement in support of the Palestinian cause or any social protest triggered by the worsening economic crisis.
Students for Palestine in the Grip of Security
At dawn on Thursday 9 May, Egyptian security forces arrested students Ziad Basyouni, a third-year student at the Academy of Arts in Giza, and Mazen Ahmed Darraz, a student at the Faculty of Medicine at Mansoura University. They were forcibly disappeared for four days before the prosecution ordered their detention for 15 days pending investigation in case No. 1941 of 2024, Supreme State Security investigation, charging them during the investigation with joining a terrorist group and spreading false news and statements.
This came after the creation of a Facebook page called “Students for Palestine” and the issuing of three statements: one supporting Palestinian students’ education in Egypt and their exemption from tuition fees, another condemning the invasion of Palestinian Rafah, and a statement on the importance of the boycott, calling on the Ministry of Education to ban products that support the occupation, according to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms.
Commenting on the students’ arrest, politician and human rights defender Mostafa Shawky, one of the founders of the student movement “Resistance”, tells Zawia3: “The authorities at this moment are acting with great confusion born of fear of any popular protests, even those in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The slogans raised in the solidarity protests in recent months and the chants of demonstrators were linked at the same time to rejection of the political regime, so the demonstrations set out rejecting the mandate the President called for to confront external pressure to displace Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, and demanding more decisive positions from the Egyptian authorities on stopping the war on Palestine, which created a state of terror among the authorities.”
He adds that the Egyptian regime began its security crackdown by arresting or harassing protesters in front of the Journalists’ Syndicate, then feminist protesters who held more than one event: it besieged them on their march from downtown to the Palestinian Women’s Union, and at the second protest, in front of the UN Women office, arrested about 18 of them, to send the message that “there is no chance for protests or mobilisation on the Egyptian street”.
Shawky continues: Student mobilisation remains highly distinctive, for several reasons, including the broad global student solidarity with the Palestinian cause, especially at American and European universities. This pushes any student, especially an Egyptian one, to act on the basis that it is neither right nor reasonable for European and American students to show solidarity with the Palestinian people while students separated from Gaza only by a border line are prevented from doing so. He stresses that the Egyptian student movement has a long history of supporting the Palestinian cause, but the regime fears that global student solidarity will spread to Egyptian universities, as the authorities have nationalised the public sphere inside universities. He points out that since 2014 student leaders at Egyptian universities have received successive security blows, until in 2017/2018 the authorities managed to impose a complete siege on universities, and therefore “these authorities will not decide to deal with any student movement with any degree of leniency; if students were allowed to move, there would be the beginnings of a student movement, and from it we would see the return of activity inside unions and protests by activists and politicians, which the authorities absolutely do not want.”
In a statement, the Committee for the Defence of Prisoners of Conscience, founded on 8 May within the Civil Democratic Movement, called for the release of students Ziad Basyouni and Mazen Ahmed, stressing that continuing security policies will only lead to more tension.
Arresting Supporters and Regime-Backed Demonstrations
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights says that over the past seven months, its lawyers attended in defence in eight different cases before the Supreme State Security Prosecution, in which at least 120 people were listed in connection with supporting Palestine and accused of “terrorism”, 90 of whom, including at least two children, remain in open-ended pretrial detention.
Among the incidents the organisation cited was the arrest of five young men from their homes by security forces in Alexandria on 30 April, over their activity in the Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The State Security Prosecution ordered their pretrial detention in case No. 1644 of 2024, Supreme State Security. Earlier the same month, the Supreme State Security Prosecution questioned at least six other citizens, including two children, and ordered their pretrial detention in case 952 of 2024, merely for attempting to write slogans supporting Palestine on the Dar El-Salam bridge in Cairo.
According to the initiative’s report, the first case of Palestine supporters emerged in October 2023, when on 24 and 25 October the Supreme State Security Prosecution began questioning at least 28 defendants arrested around Tahrir Square after the dispersal of demonstrations condemning the Israeli aggression on Gaza. The prosecution ordered them held under Article 40 of Anti-Terrorism Law No. 94 of 2015, without informing their families or allowing them to inform lawyers, in violation of the law. The prosecution listed the defendants in case 2468 of 2023 and brought the same list of charges against them.
Fourteen citizens from Alexandria were brought before the State Security Prosecution in case No. 2469 of 2023, accused of helping a terrorist group achieve its goals, spreading false news and taking part in an unlawful assembly. In addition, the Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered the pretrial detention of 11 citizens in case 2635 of 2023, after they were arrested around Al-Azhar and the Mousky following the demonstration held near Al-Azhar Mosque in support of Palestine on 27 October 2023. The State Security Prosecution also ordered the pretrial detention of 11 citizens in case 2526 of 2023 over posts supporting Palestine on social media. In addition, 90 defendants remain in pretrial detention in six State Security cases.
On the other hand, 30 others were released in two cases. The first, case No. 1277 of 2024, concerns 14 people arrested separately from their homes after taking part in a protest supporting Palestine on the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate in early April; they were released days after the State Security Prosecution ordered their detention for 15 days pending investigation. The second, case No. 1567 of 2024, known in the media as the UN protest case, emerged after security forces arrested 19 people, most of them women researchers, lawyers, journalists and students, who took part in a feminist protest in front of the regional office of UN Women in Maadi in solidarity with the women of Palestine and Sudan and demanding an end to the genocidal war in Gaza. The prosecution released the group on bail of between EGP 5,000 and EGP 10,000, after more than 24 hours of secret detention and accusations of joining an “illegal” group and taking part in an “unlawful” assembly.
At the same time, Egyptian newspapers and websites published photos of a demonstration in a square in Sharqia Governorate, in Egypt’s Delta, purportedly in support of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, in support of the Palestinian cause and rejecting the displacement facing the Palestinian people at the hands of the occupation army.
Commenting, politician Khaled Dawoud believes the regime has decided not to tolerate or be lenient with any form of protest or solidarity with the Palestinian people, and on that basis the authorities have taken a harsh stance towards these peaceful protests, pointing out that popular protests strengthen the Egyptian government’s position in negotiations, which is why the government should have understood them. He explains that the opposition supports the state’s official position rejecting displacement and genocide, but it also does not accept the repression of peaceful protesters in this way.
On the demonstrations that recently came out in support of the President and of Palestine, he says: “It is incomprehensible that the state controls protests on the Egyptian street while, at the same time, protests are manufactured under the sponsorship of the relevant security agencies.”
In the same context, politician and feminist Elham Eidarous, founders’ representative of the Bread and Freedom Party (under formation), believes that the manufactured demonstrations in support of the Egyptian authorities in recent days are not the first of their kind, recalling the mandate demonstrations last October.
Eidarous explains that the regime needs these manufactured protests for two reasons: first, for appearances before the Western world, as every country in the world is demonstrating in support of Palestine while Egypt, the neighbouring state, has no protests, which pushed the regime to manufacture protests to improve Egypt’s image before the world; second, Egypt as a state is now in a thorny position and needs to tell the international community, Tel Aviv and its allies that what the occupation is doing puts pressure on the authorities and is unacceptable at both the state and societal levels.
The Bread and Freedom founders’ representative adds that the authorities need protests supporting Palestine and rejecting displacement and the occupation’s practices, but at the same time fear allowing spontaneous mobilisation, so they resort to manufactured protest. “But the world is not naive, and the difference between spontaneous and manufactured is clear; presenting manufactured protests as spontaneous expressions of the people does not convince the world outside, because they know well that the regime is repressive and does not allow protests.”
The Gains of the National Dialogue: No Opening and No Pardons
Against the backdrop of the National Dialogue that began in May last year, a number of activists, politicians and human rights defenders who had spent years in pretrial detention were released, and a limited number of presidential pardons were issued for others. Among the main motives that pushed political forces, specifically the Civil Democratic Movement, to take part in the National Dialogue were the release of prisoners of conscience, closing the file of pretrial detention, and trying to reopen the public sphere and restore political participation. But the authorities’ retreat from these demands, their continued security prosecutions and their refusal to allow any outlet in the public sphere pushed political forces, one after another, to freeze their participation in the National Dialogue, while the Civil Democratic Movement issued a statement announcing that its participation had ended with the end of the sessions shortly before the presidential election, and that its return for the second round was conditional on several demands, foremost among them the release of prisoners of conscience, of those arrested during the last presidential election and of those who showed solidarity with Palestine against the Israeli aggression, as well as an end to the policy of arresting citizens for peaceful expression and the closure of the pretrial detention file. The authorities did not respond, and the second round began without the opposition political forces.
Commenting, politician and feminist Elham Eidarous says: “Any limited easing of restrictions, or even the concern for a democratic appearance that did occur at the time of the National Dialogue, was reversed long ago; the Pardon Committee stopped working and the pardon lists disappeared, and the National Dialogue itself, as a space for expression and for involving the public, even if only as spectators, was cheapened. The first phase was extremely disappointing, and the second began without involving the public or broadcasting the sessions live.” She points out that any slight changes the public sphere saw with the National Dialogue have disappeared, and any mobilisation related to economic and social rights, such as workers’ actions, or to democratic and national issues such as the Palestinian cause, is stifled, because the authorities rest on repression alone and know that their economic policies are harsh and pressing on Egyptians, while their policies on democracy and freedoms are purely security policies, not to mention that the Palestinian crisis is frustrating for a large segment of citizens; so the authorities fear any mobilisation that escalates and forces them to change their policies. Economically, meanwhile, the authorities do not want to retreat from their economic policies because of the debt trap they created.
The Security Crackdown Reaches Workers… Is There a Retreat?
Since the start of this year, a number of companies and factories in Egypt have seen labour protests, from the strike by the Mahalla spinning workers to the protests by temporary workers at water companies in several governorates. Following the labour protest at the Mahalla spinning company, two workers, “Wael Abu Zeid and Mohamed Mahmoud Tolba”, were arrested and have been held in the “10th of Ramadan prison complex” since they were brought before the “Supreme State Security Prosecution” on 10 March, in case No. 717 of 2024. The prosecution charged them with joining a group formed in violation of the law and spreading false news. While they remained in detention, the company’s management issued dismissal warnings to them on the grounds of absence from work.
The “Committee for Justice” (a non-governmental human rights organisation based in Geneva), in its labour justice bulletin for January and February 2024, documented four labour strikes, three protests and two sit-ins against economic and professional violations. Most of these, six events, involved workers at private-sector companies and institutions, two involved workers at public business sector companies and institutions, and one involved workers at a government institution.
In this regard, Eidarous points out that what happened to the Mahalla spinning workers, who demanded the application of the minimum wage on a par with the government sector, is a kind of slaughter of labour mobilisation, carried out by the authorities to impose control, as the state does not want monitoring, follow-up, review or discussion, and therefore moves to slaughter any mobilisation from the start.
For his part, Hisham Fouad, a socialist journalist specialising in labour affairs, believes that the security grip affects workers’ actions and may succeed in postponing some and aborting others, but it is not the only party in the equation; many factors play an important role, most importantly the economic factor, in terms of the state’s ability to control inflation and its commitment to raising the minimum wage.
He adds: Workers are now waiting to see how things turn out, which will become clear with the May and June salaries, pointing out that public business sector workers are the ones who did not benefit from the minimum wage increase and are waiting for compensation in the form of, for example, a higher meal allowance, while private-sector workers are waiting for the minimum wage increase to be applied, some of them working for businessmen who refused to apply the previous increase of EGP 3,500, not to mention that the decision opened the door to exemptions that allow businessmen to evade it.
Fouad stresses that the situation is unstable for political, economic and regional reasons, and therefore going back and imposing total control through security is no longer possible, “but we are not on a rising line either, so I do not think we will return to a stage of total silence; conditions will not stabilise because the Egyptian regime continues the same policies.” He concludes that the presidential election, especially the experience of Ahmed Tantawy, who faced restrictions that forced him to withdraw, and the broad solidarity with the Palestinian people proved that there are generations who want change, and that workers, professionals and social groups are seething and living conditions will not improve, because the authorities follow the same policies, biased towards the rich and hostile to the poor.
Trade Unions Have Not Escaped Restrictions
Contrary to the Egyptian constitution’s guarantee of the right to organise, the union of workers at the Suez Canal Authority clubs is being targeted, finding itself forced to confront a suspension of its activity by the Ministry of Labour, which hampers its ability to meet its financial obligations to its members, including paying staff salaries and securing the union’s headquarters and facilities. In addition, part of the workers’ February 2024 salaries was deducted as the monthly union subscription, without the money being transferred to the union’s account so far.
Karam Abdel Halim, head of the union of workers at the Suez Canal Authority clubs, believes the decision to take part in the National Dialogue was made in the hope of opening space for freedoms and freedom of expression, including union freedoms, and also in the hope that the state and those running it would listen to a large section of the people, namely workers, whose demands could be resolved through negotiation, explaining that the opposite happened, as the authorities pressed ahead with the approach and policies they have followed for years, including arresting Mahalla spinning workers, restricting them and union freedoms, intimidating unionists, and the closure of the union of workers at the Suez Canal clubs by the Ministry of Manpower in agreement with the employer at the Suez Canal clubs. He asks: why did the state call for dialogue if it wanted to continue its policy of restricting and abusing workers, intimidating them and closing unions?
Twenty-four parties and labour entities criticised the campaign waged by the Ministry of Labour and executive agencies, describing it as illegal and aimed at liquidating the union of workers at the Suez Canal clubs, encroaching on the authority of its general assembly and depriving its workers of the right to organise and choose their representatives, in violation of the constitution, according to a statement published by the Union Solidarity Federation on its page.
