Revolution 2.0. Wael Ghonim

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      Employees of the government and public sector, who amount to more than six million Egyptians, were given orders to vote for President Mubarak. The final tally was ludicrous: 88.6 percent for Mubarak. Mubarak then cracked down on the two true opponents. One was Ayman Nour, head of Al-Ghad (“Tomorrow”) Party. Nour was sentenced to five years on allegations of fraud. Similarly, Noman Gumaa, head of Al-Wafd Party, was removed from his position and expelled from the party’s headquarters. If you ran against Mubarak and you really meant it, you suffered.

      We all knew it was a sham. The question was, would we put up with it?

      Egypt’s economy continued to suffer despite the new cabinet’s optimistic promises. The regime had been selling off state-owned companies since the 1990s, in an attempt to privatize and vitalize major sectors of the economy. Yet the public was convinced that those deals had been corrupt, and in practice economic conditions had not improved. As a result of their incessant suffering, workers could no longer stay silent. Egypt began to witness a new wave of strikes in 2006 and 2007, in numbers of up to 26,000 protesters at a time seeking social justice. It became obvious that a snowball was gradually forming.

      In 2008 workers at Al-Mahalla Textiles called a strike on April 6. This time, Internet activists decided to support the strike, following a suggestion made by a prominent dissident to spread it to all of Egypt. One of the strike’s Facebook pages attracted over 70,000 members — this at a time when most opposition demonstrations attracted barely a few hundred protesters.

      Several forces helped make the April 6 strike a popular one, if not enormously so. Many groups promoted it, including Kefaya, the two opposition parties (Al-Wasat Party and Al-Karama Party), and several professional associations (the Movement of Real Estate Taxes Employees, the Lawyers’ Syndicate, the March 9 Movement of university professors, and the Education Sector Administrators’ Movement), not to mention the youth movement that had emerged online for the first time. Members of the latter group came to call themselves the April 6 Youth Movement. It was a loose coalition of many small groups.

      Many Egyptians who feared protests and potential arrests found it easier to accept striking. All they had to do was skip work rather than face security forces. Yet many people were disappointed by the strike’s minimal results. There was no discernible impact on Cairo’s streets or in other big cities. Personally, I noticed some limited street activity on that day. I did not join the strike, as I was not politically active at the time, although I was happy that some Egyptians were finally speaking up for their rights. In the Mahalla, on the other hand, two worker activists were killed, and the city briefly turned into a war zone between workers and security forces. A large outdoor poster of Mubarak was pulled down and kicked by protesters. A video of this historical moment was posted on YouTube, but of course such images could never be seen in mainstream media.

      Minimal or not, April 6 sent out a clear signal to everyone that the Internet could be a new force in Egyptian politics. The security force’s reaction was to develop a new division dedicated to policing the Internet. Similarly, the NDP established an “Electronic Committee” rumored to have legions of well-paid young men and women whose mission was to influence online opinion in favor of the party through contributions to websites, blogs, news sites, and social networks. Arrest orders were issued for April 6 activists, and they became fugitives. The young activist Israa Abdel Fattah was arrested on the day of the strike because she founded the largest Facebook group promoting the strike online. She was released a little over two weeks later.

      I resented the regime more than ever but still wondered what I could do about it. I was not optimistic about the impact of the activists’ efforts, and I was also busy with work, where I spent all my time. Nevertheless, I was inspired by the courage of those heroes who stood up to the regime at the height of its strength. They risked their lives for the dream of change. The Egyptian revolution will remain indebted to everyone who tossed a stone into the still waters at a time when doing so risked beating and arrest, or worse.

      One of the April 6 Youth Movement’s prominent young figures, Ahmed Maher, was chased by the police a few weeks after the strike. He tried to escape by car, but he was caught, beaten badly, and dragged to a State Security branch, where he was brutally tortured. Security forces were in disbelief: how had opposition youth groups emerged without any political affiliations, Islamist or other? They fell back on their usual strategy: set an example with group leaders, so that other dissidents would think twice before joining their movements.

      Ahmed Maher was released days after his abduction. He headed straight to a human rights activist, who took pictures of his tortured body. Like other audacious young men, Ahmed refused to back down. He went to the media, seeking the protection of public opinion. He was right: regimes of terror cannot stand exposure.

      And increasingly, technology made public exposure inevitable. Egypt has seen a significant shift in media patterns over the past decade, thanks to the rise of privately owned printed newspapers and magazines and the spread of satellite television. The private media are not as tightly controlled as the official state-owned media, but they have faced their share of manipulation. Many famous anchors and talk-show hosts have been forced out of their jobs. Still, the new private outlets have produced more even-handed stories, even though their owners tend to have strong connections to the regime.

      The Al Jazeera satellite TV channel, established in 1996, also played a significant role. The channel’s talk shows offered heavy criticism of many Arab leaders. Within a few short years, Al Jazeera became the most viewed channel in Egypt and the entire Arab region. The network set an example that has been followed by many channels throughout the Middle East.

      In parallel, the number of Internet users in Egypt increased rapidly, from a mere 1.5 million in 2004 to more than 13.6 million by 2008. Discussion forums, chat rooms, and blogs flourished, providing an outlet for many users to express opinions freely for the first time. State Security occasionally arrested and harassed bloggers for discussing sensitive issues and for sharing news that the regime didn’t like. Yet the number of politically focused bloggers only increased.

      In the early part of the decade, I was only passively opposed to the regime, like many of my countrymen. I regularly read the opinions of the most daring opposition columnists, such as Ibrahim Eissa and Fahmy Howaidy. I closely followed the Muslim Brotherhood’s website to remain up-to-date with their news. At most, from time to time I initiated political satire of my own, anonymously circulating jokes on the Internet.

      One of my jokes, in 2003, was an image satirically depicting President Mubarak’s Hotmail in-box. The unread e-mail included a message from President George Bush with the subject line “Mubarak, how can I be president for life?” Another e-mail, from his son Gamal, asked if he could inherit the presidency as Bashar al-Assad had; another was a Swiss bank statement declaring the president’s balance to be $35 million. The trash icon in this design carried the title “The People’s Demands.” This image spread like wildfire, but I carefully kept from claiming credit.

      I expressed my opinion of the regime only to friends and family, and they always warned that I was asking for trouble. When the debates got heated and I was eventually asked, “So what’s the alternative?” I could only say, “Any alternative would be better than this regime.” Most people did not find this answer convincing.

      The absence of alternatives was a key part of the oppressor’s master plan. Any popular figure who surfaced, presenting the remote possibility of an alternative to Mubarak’s iron rule, was swiftly denounced, defamed, or eliminated. It had happened to the former minister of defense, Mohamed Abu Ghazala, former prime minister Kamal al-Ganzoury, and the former minister of foreign affairs, Amr Moussa. A lot of Egyptians thought that these men had been forced to resign from their posts and retreat from public life because of their popularity on the street. I couldn’t agree more; Mubarak was so paranoid that anyone he perceived СКАЧАТЬ