Interviews with Mahmoud Salem

February 3rd was right after the camera incident, the next day. I had left Tahrir about an hour before the camera incident. And I was stuck in my neighborhood Areleopolis, which was cut off from the rest of the city by the curfew, which was at 3:00 p.m. So I sat there for a good I don´t know, 16 hours, watching TV, watching people that I know were getting shot at and killed and beaten and screaming on TV, and feeling completely helpless. And so, the next day– and, at the same time, it was the same day in which the internet had gotten back to Egypt.

So, when we opened up Facebook, whatever, we were surprised to find lots of Mubarak pictures. You know, people putting Mubarak as their profile picture on Facebook. You know, which was all of our friends who, somehow, we were not contacting during the revolution. Like people that, you know, we just couldn´t reach. And, apparently, they were anti the revolution. And they believed what our state TV was telling them. So I wrote a post that got really famous that day. I called it, “Egypt right now.” Where I basically refuted every stupid claim that, you know, the state media has published, and my own friends, even.

And I told them that, “I´m going to go and get some medical supplies and head towards Tahrir and try to help the 1,000 people who are injured from the camera incident. A male friend of mine and three female friends decided to come along. They had told us to come through Talaat Harb Square. And I came with the car, just thinking I´m going to get the supplies and get in so I can leave here. All right, with the– there are some people there– immediately showed they were not our people. They immediately tried to attack the car. We had to remove the car. So I escaped with the car.

I went opposite actually, and toward Harb Street. And I took a wrong right on Adly Street, trying to escape. And there were five police officers. The girls immediately were like, “Police. Police. Stop the car. You know, they will protect us.” And I must have had a serious lapse of logic at the time. But, in reality, I was running from people who were trying to kill me, and I was in lots of traffic, and there was no escape. They had barricaded the entire area, secured it completely. So we stopped to get out. I told the police officers like, you know, “You need to help us. There are people who are attacking us. We have girls in the car.” “So what are you guys doing here?” “Oh, we´re trying to help the people who are– TV said, ´Get medical supplies and come help.´” You know but, anyway, any– “If it´s possible, just get the girls to leave.” You know, I mean, we were just trying to get those girls home.

So they asked for IDs. And they asked for the car key. And they announced that our IDs are fake, “They´re not really Egyptians. Those are fake IDs.” And they basically had ten plain-clothed police officers there just to rile people up. You know? And they were just attacking us and beating us inside the car and waiting outside the car. And basically, you ended up with people shaking the car, trying to like, you know, grab you inside the car, people jumping on top of the car– plain-clothes people and police people trying to flip the car or move the car. You know, people bringing in gasoline. They´re throwing it on the car, and they´re like, “We´re going to burn you guys alive.” There were people that were bringing out rope. They´re like, “No, we´ll just lynch them.”

Like it was a fantastic 45 minutes of just getting beaten, getting thrown at– just having rocks thrown at you. And they had taken all our phones. And they were using them to terrorize people who were calling. Which was interesting, because– and a friend of mine– the news of me getting arrested that day broke out as follows: My friend in the States, he called my phone, and the guy who held the phone was like, “Yeah, we have them. We´re come after you too. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” So he went online and he said that I got arrested. Which was interesting, because I was still getting beaten up in the street. Technically.

So I was taken in for about four to five hours and then let go because, apparently, there was way too much pressure from both internationally and nationally and family-wise to get me out. And when I went back home, I called CNN, and I called everybody. And I announced my name and my face and everything. It was the first time I revealed my identity. And I only did it because I realized that I had to hold the police officers accountable for what they´ve done. I can´t hold them accountable if I´m anonymous. Doesn´t really work that way. So I´ve done this. And I remember, the first day, I was so angry, you know, that this has happened to me, so angry. And then, the next day, I was paralyzed by fear. Literally. “Those are not only the police who are attacking me; those are regular Egyptians, as well.” You know– you just– they know now. You just announced– you suddenly, you´ve announced your identity. And now, you´re, you know, challenging the whole thing in the wind, whatever.

And it took me like a day to calm down from the fear and be pleased by something very much different. It was a feeling of self-confidence. It was like, “Listen. You got shot at; you got beaten; you got arrested. You´ve– what else are they going to do? Arrest? You got arrested. They´re going to torture you? Is that like beating you up? Because they´ve done that. They´re going to kill you? Eh, it´s not going to matter if they kill you.” And it´s– you know, and that´s how you continue after that. You know, you continue fighting this fight because you realize that, if they´ve already done everything that they could to strike fear in you, then what else is there to do? There´s no point. And so, they probably have made a mistake of letting you live.

Mahmoud Salem is a blogger, activist, writer and a business development consultant. His blog is the most prominent English-language Egyptian blog, entitled: “Rantings of a Sandmonkey” it won the best Middle East and Africa blog awards in 2006 and 2007, and Best English Blog in the Deutsche Welle Best of Blogs award in 2011 and has over 6 million unique views and his Twitter account has over 87,000 followers. His human rights activism areas have been in freedom of speech, human rights, religious rights, and women’s’ rights.

In 2005, he started the first anti-terrorism demonstration in Cairo, and participated in monitoring the Egyptian parliamentary and presidential elections.

In 2006, he was the principal organizer of the first Egyptian anti-sexual harassment demonstration and marsh after the Eid sexual harassment incidents. Incensed by Police torturing Egyptian people on videos and sparing them, he and friends collected the videos, posted them online and pushed for a public persecution of the police officers who committed those acts, leading to the unprecedented convictions of two police officers.

In 2007, he was a stage speaker at the Atlas Foundation’s 25th anniversary conference, head of the new media panel in the Qatar Foundation democracy conference and started the Tafkir project, an Arabic language blogging website to facilitate and promote ideas and online dialogue.

In 2008, he was an organizer and a team leader of 8 Egyptian bloggers for the “Egypt blogs America” project, which monitored the US elections and created a documentary film about it.

In 2009, he was picked for the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow conference and the US Islamic Forum conference, and started the IRIS social campaign company.

In 2011, he was one of the leading voices of the January 25 revolution that brought down Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, ran for Egyptian Parliament, started the Tweetback initiative which developed two impoverished communities in Egypt with a population over 700,000 and raised millions of pounds for social entrepreneurship projects. He also initiated the “Egyptian Bill of Rights Project,” which was later on sponsored by Mohamed El Baradei.

He co-authored two books – “Tweets from Tahrir” and “18 Days” and founded “7etan,” the first Graffiti School in Egypt. His writings have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Guardian and various online websites.

With a history dating back to the 10th millennium B.C., Egypt has long played a central role in the Middle East. Egypt is the largest Arab nation and has an influential voice in Arabic and Middle Eastern culture. Egypt has a diverse economy, but has struggled to create sustained economic growth and opportunities for its population of 84 million people.

The country has little experience with representative democracy. From 1956 to 1970, President Gamal Abdel Nasser ruled Egypt with a strong hand, nationalizing the Suez Canal and taking the country into conflict with the new state of Israel. Upon his death, Anwar al-Sadat became president. Together with other Arab nations, Sadat launched the October War against Israel in 1973. In 1979, Sadat signed a groundbreaking peace treaty with Israel.

From Sadat’s assassination in 1981 until the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Egypt was governed by President Hosni Mubarak. For all of Mubarak’s time in office, and for much of the time since his resignation, Egypt has been under “Emergency Law,” which allows the government to suspend constitutional rights, including limiting political activity and restricting free speech. Emergency Law also allows the government to use summary arrests against political opponents.

For four successive terms, Mubarak was reelected in referenda without an opponent. In 2005, under domestic and international pressure, Mubarak proposed a constitutional amendment to allow Egypt’s first multicandidate presidential elections. Because the amendment would have imposed severe restrictions on the eligibility of opposition candidates, opposition groups boycotted the vote. Mubarak claimed to have won the September 2005 presidential election with an official 88 percent of the vote, amid widespread allegations of fraud and vote rigging. The main opposition leader, Ayman Nour, was subsequently prosecuted by the government for forging signatures on petitions and was sentenced to five years in prison, provoking protests from the United States and other democratic countries.

Following the example of the Tunisian Revolution, large protests swept Egypt in early 2011. The military, led by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), withdrew its support of Mubarak. On February 11, 2011, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi then assumed power in Egypt. SCAF dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution.

In November 2011, Egypt held parliamentary elections that were reportedly fair and democratic. In June 2012, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was elected President, in part because liberal and secular forces failed to coalesce around a single candidate. Morsi’s popularity declined as he declared his orders immune from challenge, removed judicial review processes, and was accused of taking steps towards the implementation of Islamist policies. Conflict arose between those supporting Islamist policies and those seeking a more liberal and secular government. Protests occurred throughout his presidency until Morsi was ousted by the military in July 2013. Muslim Brotherhood leaders were arrested and their camps and offices raided. Until new elections are held, a SCAF-installed provisional government led by acting President Adly Mansour is in control.

In its most recent report, the independent watchdog group Freedom House classifies Egypt as “partly free.” On its scale where 1 is the most free and 7is the least free, Egypt earned scores of 5 in both the civil liberties and political rights categories.