1000 Lashes by Raif Badawi

Author:Raif Badawi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771642101
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2015-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

6

TAHRIR SQUARE BROUGHT STUDENTS BACK TO HARD WORK

• • •

EGYPT IS GOING through labor nowadays. It’s not just a difficult delivery following a thirty-year fascist ruling that controlled the fate of the country and the dreams of its people, a ruling that killed the spirit of hope and advancement in the country, that killed the beauty of its song and dance.

What Egypt is going through right now is a challenge led by its students: the knowledge-seekers and the children of the bottom of the city. It’s a revolution in all of its aspects, a decisive breakthrough not only in the history and geography of Egypt but also in all the Arab states controlled by autocrat dictatorships.

The January 2513 revolutionaries started in Tahrir Square, which they turned into their own platform that knows no ceiling. They demanded the fall of the political tyranny ruling the country: a dictatorship led by a security-obsessed mentality.

That regime kept its distance from the tragic reality of its people. Egyptians were suffering daily to secure a loaf of bread (and not by bread alone does a man live), so they demanded a simple, dignified life, the same as all other people living in civilized nations.

Like a tourist, the Egyptian regime lived in Egypt for more than three decades with little knowledge of the situation of its people. The regime only cared to know the increasing number of its civilians. That regime had no worries. The reports placed every day on the president’s desk, delivered by the intelligence services, confirmed a simple reality: the people are in a deep coma and the security situation is sustained.

It never crossed the collective mind of the Egyptian regime that the people, exhausted by hunger, would turn January 25, 2011, into something completely different from any other ordinary day. It never occurred to the regime that this date would change the map of its thirty-year-long delusional stability under the ruling of Hosni Mubarak, the same way an overpowering stream can dredge up everything in its channel.

In a few days, and with minimum losses, the activists at Tahrir Square managed to stand in the face of the security forces. Those carrying nightsticks never imagined such a day of change would come, a day that would alter their history of oppression and abuse.

The people of Egypt’s neighboring countries were shocked when a few hundred young Egyptians shook the ground under the country’s rulers and snatched continuous victories.

January 25 has proven that change is not impossible. The revolutionaries of Tahrir Square uncovered the truth: the will of the people is unbreakable, especially when there is a big gap between the desires of the ruling regime and of the people. The January 25 Revolution in Egypt examined the depth of the crisis facing regimes that were built upon intelligence reports and cared nothing for their struggling people.

So far, it’s clear to us that Egypt is embracing its change. We have hope for a new dawn and a new Egypt. It will be born out of the womb of the suffering of its people and its students.

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