Posted: June 21, 2011 | Author: indaily | Filed under: Views | Leave a comment »
MYRIAM ROBIN
The Egyptian Revolution will reach a watershed in October when the first presidential election is held since Hosni Mubarak was deposed last February. Egyptian-born Indaily intern Myriam Robin, whose parents now live in Adelaide after arriving five years ago, still has family in Cairo. She recounts the tension of the popular uprising and the uncertainty ahead:
SOMETIME in January, my mother got a call from her sister in Egypt. It was morning there, and my cousins could be heard coming in. My aunt explained they had been out all night guarding their street from thugs.
It was a shock hearing that my cousins, both politely ambitious and hardworking engineering students, had in effect joined a local militia.
All through Egypt, the same surprised reaction could be heard. For the first time in their long history, the people of Egypt were throwing off the shackles of tyranny. The story of the Egyptian Revolution isn’t over yet, but the fact that ever it started defied all my expectations.
The army coup 50 years ago which ended the monarchy and bought President Nasser to power was undertaken behind closed doors, hardly affecting the masses in the short term. This was different. The people, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, politicians and businessmen, men and women, were marching on Tahrir Square in Cairo.
They were not calling for an Islamic state, as I feared they would. They did not want to destroy Israel or America. They wanted, simply, an end to their oppression and a future for themselves and their children.
I cried, as I’m sure many Egyptians did, when I heard of men linking arms to save the Egyptian Museum from looters. Islamists have little love for the Pharaohs and their idolatrous era, so this protective act, more than any other, demonstrated the liberal and cautious character of the revolt.
The revolution affected me deeply, my pride lined with fear. My family is Christian. It was primarily corruption and a lack of opportunity that drove them away from their homeland, although the pressure of being a tolerated minority played a part.
There is always fear among the Christian community in Egypt, especially among the Copts, who normally live in poorer and more extremist neighbourhoods than the Catholics and Protestants.
The revolution was not targeting Christians or Jews, and this was a considerable source of relief. But the fear remains, and it plagues not only Christians. Many Muslims, for a variety of reasons, dread their loss of freedom, at best, should Egypt tip down a more fundamentalist path.
The heady days of January have faded. On the night Mubarak stepped down, Lara Logan, an American journalist covering the protests for 60 minutes, was sexually assaulted by a group of 200 men in Tahrir Square. She survived, and has since blamed her assault on Mubarak loyalists. This made the violence somehow less frightening, since the brutality of his regime was an established fact.
But that was not to be the end of it. On May 8, violence between Christians and Muslims erupted in Imbaba, a poor neighbourhood in downtown Cairo, leaving 15 dead. Again, some have muttered that this is the work of those loyal to the deposed regime. By now, it is starting to feel like wishful thinking.
On May 13, thousands gathered again in Tahrir Square to protest the blockade of Gaza, 371km away. The caretaker government succumbed to their demands, opening the Rafah crossing into Palestine.
At the same time, however, many of the detained female protesters were given virginity tests; those who “failed” were charged with prostitution. These tests, decried by many internationally, received little coverage in the Egyptian media. One journalist who did speak of them was arrested and questioned by the army. No one protested. This, apparently, was an injustice society could live with.
Egypt teeters on the edge. While the revolution makes me proud, I also know the next few months could see everything come undone. Mubarak was not the only problem Egypt had; now that he is gone, others may flourish.
One could make the argument that oppression breads revolution. What it does not breed is good governance. The world’s attention has moved on, yet these next few months are crucial.
Myriam Robin, 21, has degrees in economics and international studies at Adelaide University, where she was also the editor on On Dit last year. She is currently doing journalism at the RMIT in Melbourne.
