Esraa Rashid is the Media Coordinator at the Egyptian Democratic Academy. The Academy runs the popular online radio program Almahrousa. In March 2008, Rashid established the April 6 Strike Group on Facebook in support of workers in Mahalla al-Kobra, an industrial city north of Cairo. This led to her being subject to the first arrest order issued for a woman by the Egyptian Interior Ministry and spending two weeks in jail. The success of the strike, the size of the Facebook group – over 70,000 members – and the notoriety she received for her jail term made her a well-known figure in Egypt and among human rights activists. Her blog focuses on human rights violations in Egypt.

 

It is a pleasure to stand here speaking before such an assembly that represents the values of solidarity and support for freedom and democracy all over the globe.

 

I do not know where to start, but I will speak within the limits of my personal experience as one of hundreds of young activists working for democracy in Egypt. We have faced various challenges, starting from the grip of security dominating all forms of public life in Egypt; the Emergency Law, sustained now for 30 years, that restricts all basic freedoms—freedom of belief and expression, and the right of peaceful assembly and association—and ending with the collapse of the simplest principles of the rule of law. Dominating corruption consumes the resources of our country and redistributes them in a way that doesn't secure basic needs for the majority of our people

 

In this context and as an extension of a long struggle, a current of young people working for democracy in Egypt has formed and spread.  We have used technologies, beginning with Internet forums and blogs, and then continuing with mobile phones, SMSs, and social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to organize ourselves, whether in traditional or unconventional structures.  Our use of technologies continues in a series of stop-and-go events since 2003.  We use technological means to organize ourselves on the Internet, then go out from the Internet into the streets, and then back to the Internet again to use different technologies we have developed to further organize ourselves and return again to the streets. This cycle will end only by attaining democracy in the country.

 

One cycle of this happened in relation to a strike on April 6, 2008, and I was close enough to it to consider it a personal experience.  A group of young people had started a Facebook group calling for a general strike in Egypt after an unprecedented wave of rising prices, particularly for bread and fuel.  Accordingly, Mahalla textile workers, the largest labor gathering in Egypt, announced that they would organize a strike on April 6, 2008, to make fair wages proportional to the skyrocketing prices.  Various political forces from right to left expressed their solidarity and called for a general strike on April 6

 

We young people, using Facebook and blogs, called for a general strike in Egypt on that day; we spread the word through Facebook, blogs, and online forums; we invited everyone on our friends lists to join; and we changed our profile photos and personal statuses into calls for the strike. The Facebook group grew at an unprecedented rate, reaching 77,000 members within only two weeks.  It was the first time 77,000 Egyptians on Facebook participated in a group with a political dimension, the calling of a general strike.

 

The youth members of the Facebook group developed ideas for reaching out to many citizens who did not normally use the Internet.  They wrote slogans calling for a general strike on banknotes; they designed posters for the strike and posted them in the streets; and they wrote statements urging people to participate, and distributed them in their universities and workplaces.

 

Talk of the strike was the main subject of the daily independent and opposition newspapers in Egypt, which played a great role in the promotion of the idea.  The authorities responded through a statement from the Ministry of Interior the evening before the strike warning citizens against participating in it, using mainstream media channels and governmental newspapers.  This reaction actually contributed to spreading the news of the strike to segments of the Egyptian population who do not use the Internet or read independent newspapers.

 

The result was impressive.  Forty percent of the labor force in Egypt did not go to work the day of the strike.  Those who did leave their homes on that day either went to work because of intense pressure from their employers, who were themselves under pressure from the government, or they were activists who participated in protests in the key squares.

 

Of course, freedom has a price and we paid the price of that day. More than 100 political activists were arrested, most of them detained under the Emergency Law.  More than 450 residents of Al-Mahalla town were arrested, and more than 80 of them have been referred to trial.  This wave of arrests and trials was the largest in many years, the only incident coming close to it being the arrest of many activists in spring 2006 for taking part in a protest in support of reformist judges who were themselves arrested and imprisoned for exposing the 2005 election fraud.

 

I myself was one of those arrested in April 2008.  I spent 18 days in jail, the first time I have been in prison in my life.  Perhaps what made it worse was knowing that I had been detained under the Emergency Law, which allows the authorities to keep individuals in prison until they decide to release them, and the authorities often seem to forget their opponents in prison after a while, as in the case of activist and blogger, Musaad Abu Fagr, who has been in prison since December 2007 despite 17 court rulings in favor of his release

 

Under all these circumstances, internal pressure and international solidarity have been very important and cannot be ignored.  I remember a phone call I received from an Egyptian colleague to express his support for me during the investigation process into my case.  I also remember solidarity activities undertaken by activists who were not detained and the tremendous pressure they put on the regime for the release of the April 6 detainees.  A wave of international solidarity was also built through existing solidarity networks among Egyptian activists and their counterparts abroad.  This also strengthened those networks to a point that now allows activists around the world to follow our struggle for democracy in Egypt and to express solidarity with it by disseminating the news of Egyptian activists to other global regions and putting pressure on their own governments to support democracy in Egypt.  Communication between domestic activists and their counterparts abroad for solidarity has been done using new technologies, such as the Internet and modern mobile phones that allow activists to publish their news via Twitter, Facebook, and email literally while being subjected to harm by the security forces.

 

Among the most important examples of such solidarity is what happened to me and a large group of activists, including one colleague, who was supposed to be here at the Assembly as a winner of the World Youth Movement for Democracy’s annual essay contest on democracy, and another colleague who is here with us. We had been detained by the police for two days in southern Egypt while we were there to support the victims of the sectarian violence that happened on Christmas.  The level of international solidarity on that day deserves attention because most of the detainees were prominent activists who have good ties with counterparts around the world. The activists abroad launched a wave of international solidarity to put pressure on democratic governments to release official statements in support of the detainees. This had a significant impact and quickly led to our release. In this context, for instance, we felt the crucial role that the World Youth Movement for Democracy played.  We also recognized the importance of solidarity activities for prisoners of opinion and conscience orchestrated by activists around the world, as well as the role of statements by international human rights organizations that were a direct outcome of international solidarity.

 

Solidarity among youth activists in Egypt creates great internal pressure and is greatly inspired by communication tools, specifically for networking, through which individuals and organizations collaborate in independent and unstructured ways to come together for action, even if at other times they may seem scattered.  I do not claim that we have deliberately adopted such a form of networking, but the circumstances in Egypt, in the face of the grip of security forces, suffocating censorship, the absence of democratic political practices, and the low level of public participation for many years, have brought us to act in this way and to succeed in making a significant impact.  This networking pattern of our activism is in accord with the main tool we use in our communications and organization, which is the Internet.

 

Activists in Egypt are now entering a new battle using all the experiences they have acquired in previous years and the tools they have mastered in the past (as well as new ones), which now enable them to make greater progress in this new battle.  By this I mean the battle to amend the Egyptian Constitution and the electoral system to ensure free and fair elections in the country.  Egypt is now in a state of political mobilization given imminent parliamentary elections in 2010 and presidential elections in 2011, in addition to talk regarding the health of the President and the future of rule in Egypt, including the issue of presidential succession.  The general environment discourages independent candidates from running for president, not to mention that due to unattainable requirements imposed by Article 76 of the Constitution, which was recently amended, 99.9 percent of Egyptians cannot run for the post.  Parliamentary elections will be conducted in a similar environment of fraud and falsification.  Everyone lives in the completely police-dominated atmosphere, in which no month passes without police harassment of democracy and human rights activists under the Emergency Law, or articles of the Penal Code.  This harassment also may take place illegally, as happened just recently when State Security officers kidnapped an activist, Tarek Khedr, while he was collecting signatures to amend the Constitution.  He has been detained at the headquarters of the State Security police without any legal charges.

 

Other aspects of such an environment are permanent restrictions and security control over civil society organizations, either by using existing laws or by passing new ones that aim to restrict human rights work in Egypt.  This is a real blow to election monitoring and civic education activities that aim to promote and spread ideas of democracy, human rights, and political participation.

 

A new NGO law, which is currently in the drafting process, would not allow civil society organizations to be registered as civic companies, which is how the majority of human rights organizations in Egypt are registered.  It would also not allow civil society organizations to conduct their activities if they are not registered as associations with the Ministry of Social Solidarity.  This would put them under absolute security and government control, if they are even allowed to register at all. According to the draft law, any association must have a minimum of 20 founders and a minimum bank credit of 100,000 Egyptian pounds (about US$18,000), which is not a small amount for a non-profit organization in Egypt.  The law would also prevent NGOs from working in more than two predetermined narrow fields, in which case, for example, groups would not be allowed to operate under a broad or comprehensive field such as human rights.

 

We work within this restrictive environment to amend the Constitution, to reform the electoral system, and to challenge the Emergency Law, and we face security and censorship restrictions while trying to mobilize Egyptians and encourage them to participate.  This is what people were calling for through the general protest on April 6, 2010 (Black Tuesday) when security forces severely beat many protesters, especially girls, and arrested nearly 100 activists. Even in Kuwait, the authorities arrested a group of Egyptians working in the country and deported them back to Egypt because of their activities promoting change in Egypt.

 

There is now another Facebook group with more than 220,000 members calling for the independent presidential nomination of Dr. Mohammed El Baradei, the former director of the IAEA, as a symbol of those demands.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, we need your solidarity; we are proud of what you do to carry the burden of spreading democracy around the world; and, yes, we believe that people who want freedom will win.