Egypt

An Egyptian court has sentenced 529 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to death. The judge in the central city of Minya took only two court sessions to issue the death sentences, and lawyers for the defence had no opportunity to argue their case. In the summer of 2013, hundreds of thousands of Brotherhood supporters took the streets in protest at the army’s coup against the government of Mohamed Morsi. The military brutally suppressed these demonstrations and declared the Islamist organisation illegal. In Cairo, over 900 protesters were killed as the state dispersed a pro-Morsi sit in. It...

Egypt’s new prime minister Ibrahim Mehlab used his first speech in the role to plead for an end to strikes and protests. The former Housing Minister, ex-chief of giant building company Arab Contractors, called on Egyptians to “stop all kinds of sit-ins, protests and strikes” and to focus on “building the nation”. Mehlab was appointed prime minister by acting-president Adly Mansour after the previous cabinet resigned in its entirety. The ministers stepped down amid increasing public anger over shortages of fuel and electricity, as well as a major strike wave in a number of different sectors...

On 24 February, the Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi announced the resignation of the entire cabinet with immediate effect. The announcement followed a wave of strikes in the industrial cities, blackouts, acute shortages in cooking gas and growing public dissatisfaction with the government. Despite the government’s unpopularity, many were surprised at the announcements, including, it seems, some of the cabinet ministers. The surprise resignation may serve two purposes. First it is an attempt to appease popular unrest. The regime, backed heavily by the military, is in a crucial phase...

The 14-15 January referendum on a new Egyptian constitution returned a 98% majority. However, only 38% of eligible voters took part. The new constitution will replace the one introduced in 2012 under the Muslim Brotherhood presidency of Mohammed Morsi (voted through on a turnout of 33%). Despite the low turn out, the result is a major boost to the military-backed regime which has governed Egypt since it deposed Morsi in July 2013. Off the back of the victory, General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the man who oversaw the coup, has announced his candidacy for the upcoming presidential elections. Senior...

On 14 January, polling stations opened in Egypt as part of a referendum on a proposed new constitution. The constitution being voted on was drawn up by the council that has technically ruled the country since the military deposed Mohamed Morsi in July 2014. Some groups of socialists call for a “no” vote and agitate against military rule. Those that have done so have faced repression. The Revolutionary Socialist group, linked to the British SWP, has seen two leading members, Mahienour el-Masry and Hassan Moustafa, sentenced to two years hard labour for defying anti-protest laws. A protest will...

Video footage has surfaced of a meeting held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 18 October being interrupted by protesters, allegedly from the Muslim Brotherhood. The SOAS Palestine Society had invited Mohammed Nabawy of the Egyptian Tamarrod (“Rebel”) movement to speak at the meeting in the Khalili lecture theatre at the University of London college. However, the talk was forcibly disrupted by around 30 protesters, believed to be from the Muslim Brotherhood, who chanted “fall, fall the rule of the military” while the speaker was ushered from the building by SOAS security...

Resolution passed by AWL conference 26-27 October 2013 on Syria, Egypt, and Israel-Palestine. Almost three years after the beginning of the 'Arab Spring', much of the scene is dominated by the rise of reactionary Islamist movements. The threat we identified as early as spring 2011, of the democratic upheavals being co-opted by Islamism, has to a large extent been realised. Nonetheless, the forces or potential forces of the Third Camp, the camp of workers and oppressed people opposed to both the Islamists and the old order, are still alive – particularly in Egypt and Tunisia, which have large...

Hannah Elsisi of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists and the ISN writes: “This notion of ‘but Morsi is better than Shafiq and then we can deal with him later’, which some of the left put forward in last year’s elections, is in my opinion the mistake many of us made that paved the way for today’s ‘let the army get rid of them, then we will deal with the army’. “This transitional thinking is what keeps compromising the revolution and causes the revolutionary movement to stutter. “We need to be confident and coherent and rid ourselves of the amnesia, divisive and disingenuous polarisations, and...

Hundreds of people have been killed in a wave of repression and violence which has followed the military coup in Egypt. Bloodshed began in the same week as the army took power, with 51 people dying in clashes surrounding protests organised by the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing. The Brotherhood says as many as 2,000 have been killed this week, mainly on 14 August, during army manoeuvres to break up Brotherhood protest camps in Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda in Cairo. State figures claim 638 civilian deaths. Nearly 4,000 people have been injured. The state claims...

Five weeks after the 3 July coup, Egypt looks near another tipping point. On 3 July the army, following huge protests against Egypt’s Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, ousted the Islamist government and installed a new administration of its choice. The Brotherhood has chosen not to steer towards civil war as Algeria’s Islamists did when that country’s army cancelled elections in 1992 to stop the Islamists winning. But it is keeping up mass street protests. Dozens of Brotherhood protesters were killed soon after the coup, but the Islamists remain undaunted. The army threatens to clear the...