Paper on Country Egypt

Egypt Paper

Prof. Toadvine

Core 7

9/18/14

Brittany Miller

        The country that I decided to choose is Egypt. I began looking up random news articles and found some about protests against the schooling system there. I was intrigued. I thought this would make for a very well paper concerning I am writing this paper for a class that I am in, in a university I am in. However, as I began my research I began to find more protests about many different things in Egypt and one in particular caught my eye. It was an article by Mohamad Elmasry. He had written about the anti-coup protests and what all he had found that the Egypt news had been hiding. I then began to deepen my search and was able to find many articles about it. So therefore, in this paper I will discuss and inform about the cause of these protests and what is now being done about them.

        The creation of this Anti-Coup Alliance was because of the forceful expunging of the former president Mohamed Morsi back in July 2013 (Changpertitum, 2014). Mohamed Morsi was allegedly imprisoned on multiple charges and was forced to leave office. It is stated by Changpertitum (2014), “Ever since Morsi’s ouster in July 2013, the alliance has regularly organized protests in objection.” Therefore, for over a year the protests have continued and have begun to involve the media in concern about their government and especially the military force in Egypt. This has caused multiple problems but after the whole year it does not look like the protests will be stopping or backing down any time soon. There were many current issues that have apparently not been covered by the media throughout these months until an article exposing many gruesome details was published.

        An article was published back in July by Mohamad Elmasry that has shown how poorly the protests have been handled by law enforcement. In this article Elmasry also states about the falsely written articles written about the Anti-Coup Alliance. Elmasry points out two points that the Egypt military and media has been posting out for a year that are completely false. The first point that is pointed out is, ““The nation” - represented quantitatively by absurd anti-Morsi protest estimates offered up last year - rose up against the Muslim Brotherhood and supported Morsi’s forced removal.” There is no area for truth behind this when there are current articles about the remaining protests a year later about this topic. A most recent one that proves this widely used statement wrong is an article by Jihad Abaza titled “Anti-Coup Alliance calls for ‘new revolutionary wave’” which was just released on August 14th 2014. The second point is “only a tiny minority of Egyptians has opposed the events of July 3 of last year.” Elmasry points out the flaw in this point by saying there are more than 2 million people in Egypt, spread out, that still opposes this act and is acting upon it. What has also been kept out of the media is the use of physical contact from military forces on the protesters.

        According to Elmasry (2014),

“By using lethal force on unarmed protesters, on the one hand, and physically preventing access to large protest sites, on the other hand, the Egyptian police and military have successfully thwarted the kind of large protests that make for media spectacles. Last August, the Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of protesters at Rabaa, Nahda, and Ramses squares. Later, the government used military tanks to prevent access to major squares, including Tahrir Square. The government has also arrested more than 40,000 people, most for nonviolent political crimes. These measures have forced the protest movement to fragment into many smaller marches.”

This paragraph taken directly from the article could not have captured the wrong doing on Egypt’s side any better. These facts that have become hidden away from the media and the rest of the world are now being brought to light. As mentioned before, it does seem that the Anti-Coup Alliance is even going to try to have another revolution concerning what has happened over a year ago in July 2013. This new wave is being put forth to bring to light the unfairness that has been going on since these protests have begun. Abaza (2014) states, “in commemoration of what Human Rights Watch called “the worst incidence of mass protester killings in Egypt’s modern history.”” There have not been an exact number of killings that have been done by the Egyptian forces but the estimated sits somewhere near one thousand. On top of that there were many, many arrested done to protesters. This seems to be a huge concern in the Egyptian government and seems to have taken any attention away from separate crimes done in Egypt.