Ten Years after the Coup: Uncontested Military Rule in Egypt?

On 3 July 2013, Egypt’s military, led by then Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, putsched its way back to power, bringing an abrupt and bloody end to the intense but brief democratic transition following Egypt’s 2011 revolution. The democratically elected President Mohamed Mursi, who had ruled the country in an disastrous and anti-revolutionary manner, was ousted and arrested, and an army-controlled puppet government put in place.

The newly formed old regime had cleverly taken advantage of the mass protests against Mursi that preceded the military coup, presented itself as the saviour of the country and restored the old status quo at breath-taking speed. After the military and police apparatus used extreme violence against Mursi’s Islamist forces in the summer of 2013 and committed one massacre after another in Cairo’s streets, the al-Sisi regime banned demonstrations in Egypt within a very short time and has cracked down on any form of dissent in and outside the country with an iron fest ever since.

Egypt’s left-wing, liberal, and Islamist opposition is now demoralized, imprisoned, or in exile. While tens of thousands of people are in Egyptian prisons for political reasons, freedom of expression, press, assembly, and association have been systematically repressed since 2013 with previously unseen intensity. Meanwhile, Egypt has willingly offered its cooperation to the European Union in cracking down on irregular migration to Europe since 2016, also for very distinct own political goals, arresting and deporting thousands of refugees and profiting from billions of dollars in arms deliveries from Western governments as well as police equipment aid and training from Germany, Italy, and France.

During the panel discussion, we will take stock of the latest developments in Egypt and venture an outlook.

WITH:

• Sanaa Seif, Egyptian-British filmmaker, activist, and sister of the blogger and revolutionary Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has been imprisoned in Egypt almost continuously since 2013. Seif, her family, and Egyptian activists tried to push the Sisi regime to release Abdel Fattah with massive public campaigns around the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022 — so far in vain. Seif has been imprisoned by the Sisi regime three times, most recently between 2020 and 2021.
• Hossam Hamalawy, Egyptian journalist and activist. Currently based in Berlin, he was involved in the workers’ movement in Egypt and was one of the organizers of the 2011 revolution. He recently finished his PhD thesis on the role of Egypt’s security authorities after the 2013 coup.
• Muhammad al-Kashef, human rights lawyer and political advisor with a focus on migration policy and border control. He is a member of Migreurop and Watch-The-Med and co-founder of the Refugee Solidarity Movement in Egypt and also involved in various grassroots movements.

Chair: Sofian Philip Naceur, former freelance Egypt correspondent and journalist and since 2021 staff member of the North Africa Office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Tunis, Tunisia.

The event will be held in English and is organized in cooperation with medico international.