In this week’s pick of some our favourite discussions over 2020-2021, we revisit the ten-year anniversary of Egypt’s revolution on 25 January. The uprising in 2011 put in motion an end to the 29-year rule of Hosni Mubarak. But looking back to the start of those unprecedented protests, was it all in naught or did some good come out of it?
While the end of Mubarak opened the imagination to a new type of country, instead the world saw the first democratic elections elect an Islamist president who was later ousted in 2013 – due to popular demand – by a textbook military coup led by field Marshall Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
His power was firmly put in place following the uprising against the coup by members and supporters of the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, in what is known as the Rabaa Massacre on 14 August 2013.
READ MORE Egypt: 10 years on, is its revolution an unfulfilled dream of the Arab Spring?
But on that day in January 2011, what drove people to the streets 10 years? How did they envision their new country? What were their demands?
In this podcast, we’ll explore those questions from three Egyptians who all participated in the revolution in their own way.
READ MORE Egypt’s revolution: The day I finally heard the cries of anger
They include:
- Mohamed Abdelfattah, a journalist who was awarded the International Press Freedom award by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression for his work during the revolution.
- Nadia Idle a writer and activist from London and Cairo. She edited Tweets from Tahrir‘, a book that tells the story of the Egyptian uprising in tweets, published March 2011.
- *Amira (name changed for security reasons), a financial analyst living in Europe who participated later on in the protests and helped to establish the Social Democratic Party
(Discussion is moderated by Anne-Marie Bissada)
This podcast originally aired on 29 January 2021
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