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HOSNI MUBARAK’S DEATH AND DESPOTIC RULE, BRIEFLY EXPLAINED
The former dictator died Tuesday at age 91. Here’s a brief look back
at his legacy.
By Danna Takriti
danna.takriti@voxmedia.com
Feb 25, 2020, 5:05pm EST
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SHARE ALL SHARING OPTIONS FOR: HOSNI MUBARAK’S DEATH AND DESPOTIC
RULE, BRIEFLY EXPLAINED
A file photo dated on April 13, 2013 shows Former President of Egypt
Hosni Mubarak is seen during his trial in Cairo, Egypt. He died on
Tuesday at the age of 91. Mohammed Hossam/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s long-time former dictator, died Tuesday at
the age of 91.
To understand just what a huge role Mubarak played in Egypt, you need
to go back to January 25, 2011.
On that Tuesday, thousands of demonstrators packed the streets of
Cairo’s central Tahrir Square demanding Mubarak’s removal from
office, as they had done every day for over two weeks.
“All of us, one hand, asking for one thing: leave, leave, leave,”
the protesters sang
.
But after 18 long, painful days of protest, Mubarak stepped down. The
revolution had succeeded.
The protests were motivated by a variety of grievances including
arbitrary government arrests
,
widespread poverty, extreme economic inequality
,
the rising prices of goods
,
and rampant unemployment
among the middle and lower classes.
In the years before the protests began, Amnesty International reported
that
the government “continued to use state of emergency powers to detain
peaceful critics and opponents. … Torture and other ill-treatment
remained widespread in police cells, security police detention centers
and prisons, and in most cases were committed with impunity.”
To put it simply: The people were tired of the ruling government’s
abuse and corruption, and they demanded change.
Egyptian demonstrators protest in central Cairo to demand the ouster
of President Hosni Mubarak and calling for reforms on January 25,
2011. Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Like the rest of the revolutions in the region that came to be known
as the Arab Spring, the protests against Mubarak were met with immense
violence from the government’s security forces.
During the demonstrations, the Egyptian security forces killed at
least 840
protestors and injured numerous others according to an Amnesty report
. The
fatalities included deaths by snipers
at the hands of Egyptian police. All in just 18 days.
The brutality continued until Mubarak’s then-Vice President Omar
Suleiman announced
that the dictator had finally stepped down from office.
WHO WAS HOSNI MUBARAK, AND WHAT IS THE “STATE OF EMERGENCY LAW”
THAT HE IMPOSED?
Mubarak’s long journey to becoming Egypt’s longtime dictator
essentially began with the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat. Mubarak was Sadat’s vice president at the time, and
found himself unexpectedly thrust into the leadership role.
After he took office, Mubarak reimposed a “state of emergency law
”
in the country that granted the government the power to restrict
freedom of assembly, arrest anyone deemed suspicious and try them in
“special” state security courts, and monitor and confiscate
publications, among other things.
The law — which remained in place for the next 30 years (as did
Mubarak) — allowed for corruption and political repression to sweep
the nation. The 2010 death of Khaled Said, an activist whom many
deemed the “martyr of the state of emergency,” provides an
instructive look at how the law enabled brutality in Egypt.
According to a report
by Amnesty International, police dragged the 28-year-old Said out of
an Internet café in Alexandria and beat him in public until he died.
This prompted protesters to take to the streets, chanting
:
“We are all Khaled Said.”
The removal of the emergency law is one of the many things that the
protestors demanded
in
2011.
THE CORRUPTION AND ABUSES DIDN’T END AFTER MUBARAK STEPPED DOWN
In 2012, Mubarak received a life sentence
for his crimes, but that was later overturned
in an appeals court for lack of evidence. Later, in 2014, he was again
put on trial
and sentenced to three years in prison — not for all of the above
atrocities, but for embezzlement. He was released
in 2017.
Although the public succeeded in defeating Mubarak, they didn’t
succeed in defeating government corruption and abuse. The current
president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is seen as continuing
Mubarak’s legacy.
On June 30, 2012, Mohammed Morsi, took office as Egypt’s fifth
president after he beat his opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, in the country’s
first democratic elections. His time in office didn’t last long,
however. Just one year later, on July 3, 2013, he was removed in a
coup
led by al-Sisi, who then was the Egyptian army chief general.
Al-Sisi resigned from the military and ran in the 2014 elections. He
was sworn into office
on June 8, 2014.
According to a 2015 report
by Human Rights Watch, “since al-Sisi came to power, the authorities
have continued to aggressively enforce a de facto protest ban and
routinely dispersed anti-government demonstrations with force.”
“Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s regular police and
National Security officers routinely torture political detainees with
techniques including beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, and
sometimes rape,” reads another Human Rights Watch report
from 2017.
Despite this, al-Sisi ran for a second term in 2018
and won 97 percent of the vote, with “little to no opposition
”
in the elections.
But on September 20, 2019, demonstrators once again took to the
streets of Egypt
to protest a president they view as another corrupt figure.
And, unsurprisingly, the government responded with force.
Amnesty International reported
that “the Egyptian security forces have carried out sweeping arrests
of protesters, rounded up journalists, human rights lawyers,
activists, protesters and political figures in a bid to silence
critics and deter further protests from taking place.”
To this day, nine years after Mubarak stepped down, the politics of
Egypt remain corrupt, and the public remains unhappy with the person
at the top.
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