Inevitable Comparisons | "The people want to bring down the regime"
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"The people want to bring down the regime"
Reports from the Egyptian uprising
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Inevitable Comparisons
Posted on August 11, 2011 by admin| Leave a comment
In Tunisia, it was Mohamed Bouazizi. He was humiliated and robbed by a police officer and one hour later he set the Arab world on fire.
In Egypt, it was Khalid Said. He was beaten to an unrecognizable pulp by policemen in broad daylight and in death became Everyman, a symbol of the universality of the country’s struggle.
In London, it is Mark Duggan. And it’s Stephen Lawrence and Jean Charles de Menezes and Binyam Mohamed and Ian Tomlinson and many others.
In a year that has seen civil protest movements spring up around the world it seems Egypt is the template that people return to. In Cairo we spent this week watching the BBC, watching the streets of London burn.
It is clear that there are both deep similarities and striking differences between the two.
At heart, of course, is a deep expression of social unrest, of alienation, of hopelessness. It is the failure of the State to provide for its citizens. It is the relentless redistribution of wealth and opportunity from the poor to the rich.
And there is a difference is in focus. In Egypt, people knew it was a revolution from day one and focused their energies mostly on police stations – the hated centres of torture – and the various offices of the National Democratic Party. There was a level of looting, but the strong social, communal fabric that exists in Egypt held the country and neighbourhoods together. Independent shops, houses, cars were left untouched. On June 28th—in the middle of a major battle between protestors and police—twice a Molotov cocktail set a car on fire, and twice the protestors found buckets and water to put them out.
In Egypt, it has always been the police that escalate the violence. The Revolution aspired to non-violence, but the police turned it into urban war. And they lost. But in London the protestors are setting the tempo. And the world’s attention is on the UK police. Can they find the right response? They are making some familiar moves: they’re blaming outside influences, a tactic much beloved by (Egyptian ex-Vice-President) Omar Suleiman and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). They’ve cancelled football matches – a move that feels much like turning off the internet; it sends a strong signal that they are nervous. They’re pointing the finger at Twitter and Blackberry.
Will they bring out the water cannons and the tear gas and rubber bullets (baton rounds)? It’s a familiar tactic now in Egypt, but would be a significant escalation in England. But civilians in England who are being polled and encouraging the government to escalate, must take note of the risks these weapons carry. Countless people suffered serious head injuries and lost eyes from tear gas canisters being fired at their heads in Egypt. Some were fatal. And a rubber bullet isn’t so harmless if it hits you in the face. Or a child’s ribcage.
A protestor rendered unconscious from tear gas exposure. Photo by Sarah Carr
In Egypt, the government and its security forces had no legitimacy when the Revolution began – so they could only respond with violence.
In England there is still a broad belief that the police ultimately behave in the interests of the people. But people at the less privileged end of the social spectrum are suffering many of the same injustices as Egyptians: the 333 deaths in police custody since 1998, without a single conviction[1]; the indefinite detention of migrants; the almost unlimited power of control orders; the excessive stop-and-search powers; the state-sponsored use of torture in rendition centres. There are deep and systemic similarities.
Rubber bullets and tear gas. Photo by Sarah Carr
In Egypt, it was Khalid Said’s murder that brought police brutality firmly into the consciousness of the middle classes. Mark Duggan, and all the others who have been killed in England, remain on the margins of ‘society’. Rather than wait for a middle-class white man to be killed, our government now has a chance to prove it can act in a way that takes everybody into consideration.
Yesterday David Cameron highlighted a lack of ‘responsibility’ as the major cause of the riots. But didn’t acknowledge that he also has a responsibility towards those rioting. He now needs to show that his government can turn the negatives of the looting into the positives that come with a more shared future. The communal cleaning-up should point them in the right direction. Those who have come out to the streets to clean and watch over their neighborhoods in London are finding a way to oppose the most violent aspects of the riots without just calling on police to crush the matter. Their motives, too, may be mixed, but they have nonetheless found a civil way to engage with the contemporary situation more nuanced and flexible than indiscriminate calls for violence against the protestors and looters.
But if there comes another night where the police cannot contain the violence then there will be significant calls to deploy the Army. In a poll conducted recently 77% of people support military deployment. But there can be no greater signal that a civilian system has failed than the implementation of martial law. And there is no stronger signal to the protestors that their needs will not be taken into consideration, that the system will remain untouched, than lining the streets with tanks.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Cairo, Egypt, London, London Riots, Riots, tahrir, Tottenham, UK. Bookmark the permalink.
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