The Egyptian radical left has made large strides. forward in the last few years -defying emergency laws to protest against war, repression and the oppression of the Palestinians, and creating the successful Cairo Conference against Globalization, Imperialism and Zionism, the third of which was in March this year. At the conference, two leading left activists - Aida Seif al-Dawla, feminist and member of the 20th March movement, and Kamal Khalil, spokesperson for the Revolutionary Socialists and director of Social Studies Centre,spoke about their experiences. What difficulties do activists in Egypt come up against when organising? Kamal: We live under a state of emergency that entitles the authorities to arrest anybody without justification. There are 20,000 detainees and widespread torture including the use of electricity and burning. We have an army of riot police of roughly one million in a national population of 70 million.
In Egypt if we had the right to march freely, our demonstrations would be of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. On 2nd April 2002, one million demonstrated across the whole of Egypt.
Demonstrations are not only surrounded by police; when they managed to break out of the siege, they faced water cannons, batons and rubber bullets. A number at the Palestinian-solidarity demonstrations lost their eyes -because of such bullets.
The freedom to form parties is not real; only those who have reached a compromise with the Mubarak regime are approved. Socialists build our organisations in a clandestine way; so we do not have to submit to any compromises with the regime.
Workers in the new industrial cities have no union. In the old industrial cities the unions are under the control of a federation affiliated to the government. We consider these trade unions to be workers' "police stations". There is no right for workers to independently organise.
I am a member of the engineers union but my union has been banned for 10 years. We are under really oppressive conditions. But we shall fight and we shall win! Does the same situation apply to the women's movement? Aida: Yes, there are no independent women's political organisations. The Egyptian women's union was dissolved by Nasser in 1956 - the same year that Nasser allowed women to stand as candidates for parliament. Since then, women have been banned from having an independent union.
There are women's organisations and most of them are trapped in the development discourse - doing income generating projects. They are not political organisations. If existing organisations adopt a political agenda, they could be closed down and the people involved arrested. Could you say something about the movement for change in Egypt? Kamal: The dictatorial regime is riddled with corruption, and is now at its weakest point. The central demand of the movement for change in Egypt is to reject a new 5th mandate for Mubarak, because he has presided over the country for 24 years. That is why the Kefeya (Enough) movement has been started.
We revolutionary socialists are also against the inheritance of the presidency by Mubarak's son Gamal. The movement for change demanding the lifting of the existing state of emergency in Egypt, the release of detainees, an end to torture and a new constitution for the COULILLY.
Revolutionary socialists link the democratic agenda with the social agenda. We struggle with peasants fighting eviction from their land and asbestos workers who have occupied their factory against the harmful effects of working with asbestos. To limit ourselves to democratic demands would be a dangerous mistake.
We are trying to unite all of
NO WAR the different leftist groups in Egypt and working towards building a socialist alliance in Egypt.
We are also coordinating our struggle with other movements struggling for change. There is a real opportunity to remove the regime in Egypt. As the saying goes, 'the fire is under the ashes. There is a good possibility of a popular intifada (uprising).
People's living conditions are very bad. In 1973 we used to protest and chant that "a kilogram of meat costs one [Egyptian] pound!". Today a kilo of lentils, the basic foodstuff of poor people, costs 7 pounds.
There is widespread misery and a terrible increase in prices and unemployment. All these conditions will definitely lead to mass uprisings. The regime has no solution to these problems. Aida: I work with the 20th March movement. This was established two months after the invasion of Iraq. The movement was inspired by the 50 thousand Egyptians that took to the streets in Tahrir Square. They not only raised slogans against the war in Iraq but spontaneously linked the war with the Mubarak dictatorship.
I also work against torture, which is widespread and not only directed against political
in the country. Around 2000 torture victims have come to us for help over the past 10 years and the majority of those are ordinary Egyptian citizens.
I am also a Feminist. I
struggle for women's rights and believe 1n Feminism as political vision. But I do not address women's rights only from a technical human/women'srights angle. If you want to organise and mobilise the most marginalised sectors of society -those that have nothing to lose - this means poor working-class women because they are also oppressed as women by working class men within the domestic sphere. Has the international anti-globalisation and anti-war movement had an impact in Egypt? Kamal: Yes, of course. We have joined every international activity against the war. The international movement has given us strength. When we were arrested, the anti-war movement everywhere expressed its solidarity with us.
I was arrested before the 20th March demonstration [against the invasion of Iraq in 2003] and the reason I was released was international solidarity. We are in one battle; we are all in it together.
The international anti-war movement has had a big impact in correcting a mistaken perception that the world is divided, the Islamists used to say, into Muslims and Christians.
We Socialists say that all of the millions of people marching against the war in the West are not Muslims and yet they are demonstrating because of an issue related to us.
The struggle by revolutionaries in Europe and the US against their imperial governments is complementary to our struggle against imperialism. We want to continue struggling together against imperialism but also against the oppressive regimes in our In Europe there is a debate about whether the left should work alongside the islamist movement or not. What has been the experience of the left in Eygpt? Kamal: We work with the Islamists but not on strategic issues because there we disagree with them on most of their agenda and ideas.
We coordinate with them on particular issues and positions, such as lifting the state of emergency and the release of detainees.
We oppose the torture of Islamists. Along with the Islamists, the Arab Nationalists and other groups, we have established a National Committee of Prisoners of Consciousness. Our position is that as revolutionary socialists we are sometimes with the Islamists. Aida, how do you feel as a women and feminist working alongside Islamists? Aida: My tolerance of working with Islamists is much smaller than Kamal's. As Kamal said, there are many movements for change in Egypt. But if you talk to an Islamist they will only tell you about the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab Nationalists will tell you about Kefeya. None of them will tell you that also [radical] socialists are organising for change.
I am 50 years old. I have a long record of struggle. I can stand up to the Muslim Brotherhood when necessary, but some of the young women who worked on this conference were verbally abused by the Brotherhood because they wear short sleeves or something like that. On this issue I do not compromise. • Interview by Luke Stobart, editor of the anti-war book Resistencias a la Guerra Global and activist in Catalunya, the Spanish State.
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