LONDON (AP) – The Egyptians who were on the streets on January 25, 2011 knew what they were doing. They knew they were being arrested and worse. But when their numbers swelled in central Tahrir Square in Cairo, they tasted success.
Police forces deteriorated and within days, former President Hosni Mubarak agreed to demands to resign.
But events did not turn out as most of the protesters had imagined. A decade later, it is estimated that thousands fled abroad to escape the even more oppressive government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. The significant loss of academics, artists, journalists and other intellectuals, coupled with a climate of fear, has hampered any political opposition.
Dr Mohamed Aboelgheit was among the prisoners in the southern city of Assiut in 2011 after joining calls for insurgency against police brutality and Mubarak. He spent part of the uprising in a cramped cell.
He was released amid the chaos and reveled in the atmosphere of political freedom in the Arab world’s most populous country – protesting, working as a journalist and joining a campaign for a moderate presidential candidate. But it does not hold.
Interim military rulers followed Mubarak. In 2012, Mohamed Morsi, a member of Egypt’s most powerful Islamic group, the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected the first civilian president in the country’s history. But his tenure was divisive. Amid massive protests, the army – led by then-Defense Minister el-Sissi – removed Morsi in 2013, dissolved parliament and eventually banned the Brotherhood as a ‘terrorist group’. A crime against dissent ensued, and el-Sissi won two election periods criticizing human rights groups as undemocratic.
“I began to experience more and more anxiety and threats,” Aboelgheit said. Friends were sent to jail, his writings critical of the government attracted attention, and ‘I did not want to wait until that happened to me,’ he added.
After el-Sissi came to power, Aboelgheit left for London, where he published investigative reports on other parts of the Arab world.
At his former home in Egypt, national security agents questioned him. When Aboelgheit’s wife last returned to visit family members, she was summoned for questioning about his activities. The message was clear.
No one knows exactly how many Egyptians, like Aboelgheit, fled political persecution.
Data from the World Bank show an increase in emigrants from Egypt since 2011. A total of 3 444 832 are left in 2017 – almost 60 000 more than in 2013, the year for which figures are available. But it is impossible to tell economic migrants from political exiles.
They moved to Berlin, Paris and London. Egyptians also settled in Turkey, Qatar, Sudan and even Asian countries such as Malaysia and South Korea.
Human Rights Watch estimated in 2019 that there were 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists ranks Egypt third, behind China and Turkey, which detained journalists.
El-Sissi maintains that Egypt has no political prisoners. The arrest of a journalist or a rights worker makes news almost every month. Many people have been arrested on charges of terrorism for violating a ban on protest or for spreading false news. Others remain indefinitely detained before trial.
El-Sissi maintains that Egypt is holding back Islamic extremism so that it does not fall into chaos like its neighbors.
“Sissi not only wants to uphold the rights of the opposition and prevent any critical voice from being uttered. Sissi not only not only believes in the opposition, but he also does not believe in politics,” said Khaled Fahmy, a Egyptian Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Cambridge
Fahmy believes this is the worst period in Egypt’s modern history for personal rights.
“It’s much more serious, it’s much deeper and much darker, that Sissi has in mind,” he said.
Those abroad who could challenge el-Sissi chose not to return.
Taqadum al-Khatib, an academic who also worked on the emerging political scene in 2011, examined the former Jewish community of Germany in Germany when he learned that returning to his homeland was no longer an option.
The Egyptian cultural attaché in Berlin summoned Al-Khatib for a meeting and an official asked him about his articles, posts on social media and research. He was asked to hand over his passport but refused. Shortly afterwards, he was fired from his job at an Egyptian university. He feels happy to be able to work on his doctorate in Germany, but misses the hustle and bustle of Cairo.
‘This is a very difficult situation. “I could not go back to my house,” al-Khatib said.
According to Fahmy, the exile of Egyptian expatriates is being revoked.
A government press official did not respond to a request for comment on the targeting and intimidation of Egyptians – abroad or at home – based on their work as journalists, activists or academics, or on political opinions. to express.
Journalist Asma Khatib, 29, remembers the deceptive days of 2011, when young people thought they could bring about change.
Khatib, a reporter for a pro-Muslim Brotherhood news agency, discussed Morsi’s brief presidency amid criticism that the group was using force against opponents and trying to monopolize power to make Egypt an Islamic state. After the expulsion of Morsi, his supporters held sit-ins for his reinstatement on a square in Cairo. A month later, the new military leaders forcibly evicted them, killing more than 600 people.
Khatib documented the violence. Soon colleagues are arrested, and she flees Egypt – first to Malaysia, then to Indonesia and Turkey.
She was tried in absentia in 2015 on a charge of espionage, convicted and sentenced to death. Now she and her husband Ahmed Saad, also a journalist, are seeking asylum in South Korea.
They expect that they will never return, but also realize that they are happy to be free. On the day the verdict was announced, the journalist remembers saying to herself, “You no longer have a country.”
“I know there are many others like me. “I do not differ from those who are in prison,” she said.
The exiles had plenty of time to reflect on where the Egyptian uprising had failed. The broad alliance of protesters – from Islamists to secular activists – broke down without a common enemy like Mubarak, and the most extreme voices became the loudest. The role of religion in society remained largely unanswered, and liberal secular initiatives never gained traction. No one stated how many people would accept former government figures, especially in a crisis.
Most Egyptians abroad were not yet politically active because they were afraid of family and friends back home. But some continued on the path that began on January 25, 2011.
Tamim Heikal, who was working in the corporate world when the protests broke out, doubted the government could ever reform. But he soon became a communications manager for an emerging political party. Later, he watched others being locked up, and he knew his turn had come when in 2017 he received an invitation from intelligence officers to ‘come drink coffee’.
He booked a ticket to Paris and is not back.
Now, at age 42, he wants to educate himself and others for a popular movement in Egypt. He ends up editing, translating and consulting for rights groups and tries to network between the diaspora.
“It’s like I’m infected with a virus after the revolution,” he said. “I do not know how to go back. I will not be able to relax until change occurs. ”
Others try to cope in foreign lands. Asma Khatib and her husband do not know what to say to their young children when they ask where they come from.
Abouelgheit, the doctor who became a journalist, is worried that his son will not speak Arabic after so much time in the UK.
He hopes to go home one day, but in the meantime he is considering returning to the medical profession.