As published on ThinkingFaith.org 14, June, 2011.
Six months ago, the international community was shocked by
the news coverage of the beginning of what has come to be known as the Arab
Spring. The Arab world has seen a chain of protests against national
governments and their regimes, which have been organised largely by activists
associated with youth movements. So far, two presidents (Hosni Mubarak in Egypt
and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia) have been forced to resign, whilst we
are still waiting to see what effect they may have in many other countries like
Yemen, Libya, Morocco and Syria.
How has this happened? How and why has a seemingly passive
generation of young people now found the strength to rise up against repressive
regimes? What role has been played by the internet in general and social
networks in particular in these revolutions? By looking individually at the
Tunisian and the Egyptian revolutions, exploring their similarities,
differences and effects on one another, we can begin to answer such questions.
Tunisia
The Tunisian revolution was in every respect a big surprise.
It began in the poor and marginal southern city of Sidi Bouzid as a series of
small protests over the now infamous ‘Bouazizi’ incident of December 2010, in
which 26-year-old trader Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a municipal
building after complaining of mistreatment by the police. The Sidi Bouzid
protests were inflamed by the violent response of the police and protests
spread to other cities, where they gained strength and momentum over the
following month. Such unprecedented reaction led eventually to President Ben
Ali’s resignation, after the army refused to intervene in the social and
political struggle or fire on protesters.
The revolution shocked the whole world. The western world
was astonished to see a popular uprising in Tunisia, one of its allies in the
Arab world, thought for a long time to be well governed. There was a great deal
of confusion in European diplomatic circles over the real causes and
consequences of what was happening in Tunisia. The French Minister for Foreign
and European Affairs, Michèle Alliot-Marie resigned in February 2011 after
facing criticism for her stance on and reaction to the unfolding events.
During the month of protests in nearly all of the major
Tunisian cities, the activists used the internet, especially Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube, to their advantage. These sites were used not just to rally people
to the cause, but also to communicate directly and exchange ideas. Social
networking turned out to be a very effective tool in dispensing information and
advice that some protesters learned the hard way, on the battlefield – like how
to confront the security forces’ tactics as they attempted to disperse the
demonstrations, or how to use vinegar and cola to avoid the effects of tear gas
bombs.
Both protesters and the government discovered quickly how
instrumental the internet is. It wasn’t only a medium used by some young
‘techies’, it was also the only way for the protesters to make their voices
heard worldwide, as the national media were controlled and censored by the
Tunisian government. So when the government decided to block access to
Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites, it turned out to have
an escalating effect rather than a calming one. Demonstrators were outraged by
this censorship, the protest movement became bigger and the Tunisian president
had to apologise for the censorship decision and promise to reopen all censored
websites again. But it was too late for him!
Egypt
Was the Egyptian revolution as much of a surprise as the
events in Tunisia? Well, the answer is yes and no at the same time. No, because
Egypt has witnessed for many years protests of one form or another around the
country. Yes, because no one in Egypt, not even the most enthusiastic
revolutionist, would ever have thought that their movement would lead to the
stepping down of President Mubarak.
The protests in Egypt began as early as 2005, before the
fifth re-election of Mubarak, when a Christian Egyptian called George Ishak
formed with some of his colleagues a movement called Kefaya (‘Enough’) to
protest against the constitutional articles that placed no limit on the number
of terms of office the president could serve. This movement organised some
small rallies and drew some Egyptians’ attention to their political rights. Then,
in spring 2008, came a strike and protest in the city of Al Mahalla, which
provoked an aggressive response from the Egyptian government.
But at the time of this strike, a new, effective tool was
being employed by the Egyptian activists: the internet. While the official
media presented a one-sided story – the government’s – the world witnessed the
emergence of new breed of reporters: the bloggers. Many bloggers knew that the
portrayal in the official media of what was happening at Al Mahalla was unfair
so they travelled to the city where they stayed during the period of
demonstrations and sit-ins and blogged live from the ‘battlefield’. Their work,
whether written, photographed or videotaped, was vital in introducing the
workers’ cause not only to the rest of the world, but even to the Egyptian
public. With their blog posts, they helped the workers to negotiate some of the
final terms of their agreement with the government. But this valuable
contribution wasn’t in the end risk-free, as one or two of those bloggers were
later imprisoned under false accusations.
The events at Al Mahalla did not end in the workers’ favour,
but they did focus a spotlight on two young activists: a young man called Ahmed
Maher, a 27-year-old then civil engineer and a former activist in the Kefaya
movement, and a young woman called Israa Abdul Fattah. Motivated by what they
considered to be the unfairness of their government toward the working class,
they launched with some of their friends the ‘April 6th Youth Movement’.
The activists of that movement took note of the important
role that bloggers played during the strikes and realised how powerful a tool
the internet could be. They launched, through Facebook, an invitation for a
country-wide general strike on 6 April. Again, a demonstration in Al Mahalla
was violently dispersed by Egyptian authorities. Since then, 6 April has become
the date of an annual strike, part of its aim being to increase the political
involvement of the Egyptian youth. (Inspired by the Egyptian example, a similar
movement and strike was organised in Tunisia. The organisers contacted their
Egyptian counterparts in the April 6th Movement via Facebook and they shared
their experiences.)
Maher and his colleagues soon came across a group called
Otpor, a Serbian youth movement which drew on the ideas of an American
political thinker, Gene Sharp and had helped to bring down Slobodan Milosevic.
‘The hallmark of Sharp’s work is well-tailored to Mubarak’s Egypt: He argues
that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that
might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability[1].
Some of the April 6th Movement’s members even went to Serbia to meet and learn
from members of Otpor.
In summer 2010, Egyptians were shocked by the death of an
activist named Khaled Said, which was reported as being as a result of police
brutality in response to Said’s online activities: a few days before his death,
he published on YouTube a video that shows a high-ranking police officer selling
drugs inside a police station. A young Egyptian technician, Google’s Middle
East marketing manager, Wael Ghonim[2],
launched a Facebook page in response to Said’s death called, ‘We are all Khaled
Said’; it garnered the support of thousands of young Egyptians who called for
justice in Khaled’s case and challenged what they considered to be the police
manipulation of the investigation into his death. Ghonim, along with other
activists, used this page to promote his ideas about democracy. He populated the
Facebook page with reports of police violence all over the country, and used it
to organise ‘silent sit-ins’ in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities. The
demonstrators dressed in black clothes as a sign of mourning and promised to
repeat such a gathering as many times as it took until justice was served in
Khaled’s case. Each sit-in was peaceful, even with the heavy police presence.
After the resignation of President Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14
January 2011, the April 6th Youth Movement in Egypt saw an opportunity to turn
its little-noticed annual protest on National Police Day — the 25 January
holiday that commemorates a police revolt that was suppressed by the British —
into a much bigger event. Ghonim used the Facebook page to mobilise support.
The page advertised that if at least 50,000 people committed themselves to
turning out that day, the protest would go ahead. More than 100,000 signed up.
Activists from many different groups and parties who were now working with the
April 6th Movement also covered the streets of Cairo with posters to advertise
the protest[3].
The demonstrations of 25 January were enormous: thousands
gathered at Tahrir Square in central Cairo. The organisers used their Facebook
pages and groups to rally the people for daily demonstrations and declared the
following Friday 28 January, to be the ‘Friday of Rage’ against the regime. The
protestors relied on advice from their contacts in Tunisia, Serbia and the
‘Academy of Change’ in Qatar (another group, established by an Egyptian
engineer, who follow the ideas of Gene Sharp). They received advice via
Facebook and email on how to fight tear gas bombs, how to disturb police
armoured vehicles, etc., so they came well prepared for the big demonstrations
of that Friday.
The events in both Tunisia and Egypt showed the internet to
be a very effective weapon, one that posed a challenge to both governments. In
these cases, free access to the internet allowed for the leaking of footage
showing the violent and inexcusable acts of the authorities against
demonstrators, exposing these authorities to global public opinion and to
criticism from human rights organisations. However, censorship or a complete
blackout of internet access provoked a turning point in the events; Ghonim
claimed that the decision to block all internet and mobile phone access in
Egypt on the night of Thursday 27 January was the Egyptian regime’s biggest mistake.
This forced thousands of pro-democracy activists who, until that point, had
been following the events on their computer screens and mobile phones, to go to
Tahrir Square to see what was happening. They had inadvertently escalated the
protests.
In the words of Walid Rachid, of the April 6th Youth
Movement that helped organise the 25 January protests, ‘Tunis is the force that
pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world’[4].
[1] David
D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger, ‘A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab
History’, The New York Times, 13 February 2011.
[2] ‘Wael
Ghonim, like many others, was introduced to the informal network of young
organisers by the movement that came together around Mohamed ElBaradei, the
Nobel Prize-winning diplomat who returned to Egypt a year ago to try to
jump-start its moribund political opposition. Mr. Ghonim had little experience
in politics but an intense dislike for the abusive Egyptian police, the
mainstay of the government’s power. He offered his business savvy to the cause.
“I worked in marketing, and I knew that if you build a brand you can get people
to trust the brand,” he said.’ (Kirkpatrick and Sanger, ‘A Tunisian-Egyptian
Link That Shook Arab History’).
[3] Kirkpatrick
and Sanger, ‘A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History’.
[4] Ibid.
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