This cursed time

This cursed time has its men and its women. These are the people who often form alliances with the government, the authorities or international organisations in order to protect their economic and monetary interests. Their goal is to protect their fortunes and they do so by controlling the media and numerous political parties in order to be able to justify their deviation from democracy since July 2013. They have employed numerous outlets to justify their violation of basic human rights and to pave the way for their heroic and dedicated army.

These people are writers, media personalities and politicians that employ their pens, their tongues and faces to destroy the January 25 revolution’s reputation. They are like birds of darkness that ignore the importance of the revolution’s democratic values and social equality to promote a false sense of equality under the coup, which only seeks to revive the security state and pave the way for the army.

These individuals seek to promote hatred, deception and collective punishment as well as to uproot any sense of humanity in the courts and the authorities. In an effort to dispose of any opposition to the coup, these individuals seek to establish a basis for the political arrests and collective punishment, that goes as far as the death penalty, to anyone who does not affiliate with the military coup.

Fighting for human rights has now become a crime or an act of deception and betrayal that is allegedly sponsored by international powers. Yet, by criminalising human rights and any individuals who fight for human rights, these individuals seek to interrupt the on-going struggle to bring Egypt back to its democratic path. Moreover, the main goal is to prevent the public from participating in the political process and to establish a fascist government that knows nothing other than oppression and glorifying the heroic military.

The goal is to make people believe that human rights violations and terrorism are among the catastrophic solutions taken on by the state to ensure security for the people. Human rights and legitimacy cannot be achieved at the expense of the state and its security.

These individuals are the ones who are defending and promoting the state and its institutions’ control of virtually every aspect of life. They are the ones who defend and attempt to justify the numerous human rights violations that are occurring on a daily basis. Moreover, they seek to foster the belief that nominating the former minister of defence to run as president is the only way to save the country from collapse and civil war. This solution is supposedly necessitated by the ‘War on Terror’.

This approach to state building is being framed as a slow and calculated transition into a democratic way of life, one that is led by imposing the state’s authority on the people. They promote the idea that authority is what cancels out the state’s control over various institutions and that this is the mistake of dictators in Syria and Libya (who seek to re-nominate their dictators to the presidency after all the crimes that were committed against humanity). In fact, these political motives in Syria are what encourage people to distance themselves from authority and the government and instead define themselves based on their affiliations with sects, societal groups or political organisations.

The evidence that certain political groups are guilty of using chemical weapons against the Syrian people is now much larger and stronger than the amounts of evidence against the Assad regime itself. The military establishment is tied to democracy, democratic legitimacy, societal equality and popular participation in order to protect as opposed to criminalise, punish or control any opposition. In the event that the military operates outside the domain of its original responsibilities, these actions are framed as normal occurrences and the price that must be paid for the defence and the protection of the people and the country.

The men and sometimes women of this cursed political period are the ones that must take on the responsibility of the government’s deviation from the democratic process. They must take the responsibility for the violations of human rights and freedoms and the implementation of fascist policies and collective punishments. They are the ones who must take the responsibility for participating with authoritarian organisations.

Translated from Shorouk newspaper, 1 May 2014