Even the most peaceful of dissenters may now be jailed
By M.R. | CAIRO
ON THE face of it there seemed nothing unusual in the decision of a Cairo court of appeal on April 7th to uphold the prison terms a lower court had passed previously on three prominent activists. Since the revolution of January 2011 that toppled Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian judges have frequently imposed harsh and controversial punishments against political dissidents, reflecting the mood both of a public impatient for order to be reimposed and a state keen to restore its authority.
But this ruling carried a special significance. It represented, in a sense, a final judgment against the revolution itself. The three men sentenced were neither dangerous vandals nor members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been harshly persecuted since the army ousted it from government last July. The activists were among the best-known youthful faces of the 2011 uprising.
Two of them, Ahmad Maher (pictured) and Muhammad Adel, were co-founders of April 6th, a non-Islamist group whose popularity on social media and for training people in crowd tactics played a big part in galvanising opposition that led to the fall of Mr Mubarak in early 2011. The third, Ahmad Douma, has been a tireless campaigner for political freedoms since Mr Mubarak’s era. All three had initially backed the army’s move against the Brotherhood, believing that the Islamists had hijacked Egypt’s revolution.
They now face three years in jail, as well as hefty fines. Their crime was to have joined a small, peaceful protest held last November in opposition to a just-introduced law banning any gathering of ten or more people without prior police permission. Their sentence by a lower court was widely expected to be overturned on appeal. Few doubt that they have now been made an example to dissuade others from repeating the mass demonstrations that led to Mr Mubarak’s fall and which, ironically, also legitimised the army takeover last July. Theoretically, they can still appeal to Egypt’s highest court, but its deliberations tend to take years rather than months.
The quashing of their appeal a few days ago was met with angry protests from a range of secular parties and human-rights groups. The April 6th group plans to hold “illegal” demonstrations in protest. But sympathy for the youthful activists among Egypt’s people, exhausted by three years of unrest, has worn thin. State-owned or -sanctioned media refer to the group as “Six Iblees,” a term for Satan, and tend to lump them with the Muslim Brothers as saboteurs and public enemies.
Meanwhile the state is building tougher defences for itself. A draft anti-terrorism law threatens to impose sentences of death and life imprisonment for a sweeping array of infractions. It would punish any “insult” to a public official with two years in jail. Judging by how the anti-protest law, excused by government apologists as necessary to restore public order, has been used in practice to ban peaceful dissent, activists are understandably concerned about the implications of the terrorism bill. On April 4th, police in Alexandria attacked and roughly dispersed an arts festival on the grounds that it was unlicensed. Its organisers say they had tried for weeks to secure police permission, but never even got a response.
