Egypt 2.0

Why was the Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt collapsed? Was the revolution just about food price inflation and unemployment? Did the western world agitate the people and subsidize for the revolution? Did Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia spark Egyptian’s furious Or Egypt’s Revolution Mean Oil Armageddon? And why the revolution matters that it caught a lot of attention from Western media? Tons of intensive questions prod us to think deeper. Sharing the speech Egypt revolution today, my classmates: Thinh Nguyen and Channing Pham. In western countries, the postulate of human rights, individual freedom, and democracy are foundations of civil liberties. However, the Arab Republic of Egypt, also known as Egypt – an official member of the United Nations Council on Human Rights, is still notorious as the largest civil liberties trespasser in modern history. Although the revolution 2.0 – revolution of social media was an effort to reclaim Egypt’s approach to ultimate civil liberties and require political reforms, it actually emerges a discordant society in which Egyptian citizen’s fundamental human rights are infringed. Egypt is a historic civilization with a youthful citizen. Approximately 70% of them are under 30 years old. Most of them are well-educated but unemployed, frustrated and angry. For decades, people in Egypt have lived under authoritarian regimes of Hosni Mubarak . They have seen the same face of ruler for so long – a modern pharaoh, a dictator, corrupted, tyrant. The regime kept on oppressing people. But why the Egyptians could suffer such a nasty regime like that? A mental block called the psychological barrier of fear; people were under captivity of negativity. Everyone was scared, no-one wanted to get in trouble. Actually there were some brave individuals who dared to criticise and carry out protests. But they got beaten up and arrested. We can see that a tyrant cannot suffer without army force. If you look at Egypt for the last 3 decades, everything had been corrupted, declined. When Weal Ghonim, an online activist was asked what had made he and the people were so frustrated and angry. He answered aggressively: ‘If you look at the scene, Egypt, for 30 years, had been in a downhill -- going into a downhill. Everything was going bad. Everything was going wrong. We only ranked high when it comes to poverty, corruption, lack of freedom of speech, lack of political activism. Those were the achievements of our great regime. Yet, nothing was happening. And it's not because people were happy or people were not frustrated. In fact, people were extremely frustrated’ Let’s look at an example. Egypt has had a huge income gap under Hosni Mubarak’s control. It could be defined as the root of the original revolution. 50% of the population live on two dollars per day or even less In 2009, when we are asked who is the richest man in the world? Bill Gates with $50 billion was the winner. But in 2011, the answer has changed completely. Hosni Mubarak with $70 billion dollars instead of Bill Gates. The truth was revealed after 3 decades hidden. But where did the money come from? Of course, Mubarak stole the money of his people. Under his 30-year-regime, he has accumulated massive fortunes from the country budget. According to an anonymous on Facebook: ‘30 years of Mubarak are 30 years of emergency law, systemic torture, thousands killed, widespread corruption, all elections rigged, poverty, humiliation, police state, clamp down on freedoms, clamp down on freedom of speech & injustice’ There is no doubt that human rights had been violated seriously in Egypt. Although the Egyptian laws allow freedom of speech , anyone who speak, write on the blog, report anything oppose to the Mubarak’s government end up being fined, torture or even kill by the polices. In addition, the police shut down the internet and the mobile phone messaging ability in the attempt to halt the communications of the protesters during the time of the protest. Moreover, the basic human right of free election had the same fate of the freedom of speech during the Mubarak’s reign of power due to the corruption and the manipulation in election. The only presidential candidate Ayman Nour in recent Egyptian history was even arrested and sentenced to 5 years before the 2005 election. As my partner Thinh mentioned, 50% of the population live on two dollars per day or even less, but why Mubarak’s fortune worth $70 billion ? How could a president of a stagnant country earn this much while his population lived in poverty and had no access to civil liberties? Truth be told, a tyrant, dictatorship is a human rights infringement within itself. People who tried to practise freedom of speech and demanding a political reform of a corrupted-30-year-regime resign all got beaten up. Arrested, beat and killed innocent people are absolutely human rights violations. Everything has it limit. On 25th January 2011, the revolution sparked and demanded Mubarak to resign. Their campaigned started not with guns and tanks, but with Facebook, twitter, YouTube and satellite TV broadcasts. The revolution 2.0, the revolution with social media and internet. To support my partner, I will analyse the government’s attitudes towards the protesters. One of the first reactions of the government is forcing internet service providers to turn off all international connections to the Internet. Why did they do that? Because the government understands that the current situation in Egypt is an increased use of social networking media such as Face book and Twitter to help organize, communicate and start civil-disobedience campaigns and street actions. Social media offers advantages in disseminating messages quickly and broadly. The Internet allows a revolutionary core to widely spread. This can be done by e-mail, but social media broaden the exposure and increase its speed, with networks of friends and associates sharing the information instantly. The result is every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office for their Internet connectivity was cut off from the rest of the world. And this was the first time a whole country has cut the connections to the internet. It never happened before. But blocking internet and Facebook was one of the critical mistakes of the government. One of the factors why the revolution sparked is that Mubarak censored Facebook. Why was so? This is because he told 80 million people that he was so scared of the public. He forced everybody who just waiting to watch the news on Facebook goes to the street and joined the demonstration. The next reaction of the Egyptian government is using violence to quell the protesters. Violence seems to be the final solution to the very serious problem. So even the demonstrators firstly are peaceful but they have faced with a violent response from police and security forces using armoured vehicles, water cannon, tear gas, mass arrests, rubber bullets, live rounds and beatings. The situation has becomes worse. In response to pressure, the Egypt’s president Mubarak announced he would not seek re-election in September. In other word, the president finally resigned. There is no doubt that the power and stability of dictatorship government cannot establish but destruction and chaos and uprisings. As I mentioned, a tyrant can’t live without army force. He wants to make his citizen live in fear. Unfortunately, the psychological barrier of fear had run efficiently for the last 30 years in Egypt. But here, the arrival of the Internet, social network, iPhone, satellite TV. It’s supporting everybody to communicate. Social networks like Facebook, YouTube were supporting Egyptians a lot. It fundamentally comforted people with an idea. Wow, I’m not a solo. Millions of people around me are angry and frustrated. There are millions of people around the world are sharing the same ambition, actually dream. They are dreaming about freedom for the Egyptians. They may have the best life on earth but still sharing the pain of people in Egypt. Millions of Egyptians are really angry and frustrated when they see a picture of a man who’s eating trash on Facebook while other people have stolen billions of dollars from country budget. Exactly this time last year, an online activist named Khalid Said was brutally tortured and abandoned to death on the street by the police after trying to expose the regime corruption. Some media see it as the reason started the revolution. After many witnesses, Said was sitting in cyber café and two polices officers came up and arrested him, while they were “escorting” him to their car, they smashed him into any hard objects and still beat him even he was dead. If you look at the picture, we couldn’t recognize the normal Said and the Said in the morgue. Google Executive Wael Ghonim who is angry and frustrated when watching the picture of Khalid Said. ‘His photo, after being killed by those police officers made all of us cry. Made all of us, you know, because he's coming from middle class. I personally connected to him. I thought, 'This could be my brother.' You know?’ I still remember the photo. I still remember every single detail of that photo. The photo was horrible. He was tortured, brutally tortured to death. Soon aftermath, a Facebook page called “We are all Khalid Said” was created by Wael Ghonim. Then thousands and millions of people have subscribed the page to speak up their minds, and sharing picture of infringement of human rights. But actually, there was no official agenda. What were the members going to do? No one knew. But then in a few days, hundred thousands of frustrated members who were demanding the government to get the people who killed Khalid Said to just bring the in front of the court. But the government didn’t listen; in fact they claimed that Khalid Said was a criminal, a traitor. But no one believed that, no one. Because of internet, the truth was revealed. There would be no more propaganda. People were in power then. It was so wonderful that scared people were no longer scare. It turned to power. Every member was an owner of the page; they began to share ideas, videos and pictures. One day, there was a man who shared a ridiculous idea: ‘Let's get people to go in the street, face the sea, their back to the street, dressed in black, standing up silently for one hour, doing nothing and then just leaving, going back home’. But the next night, there were thousands of people gathered in Their Square. A man who is considered as administrator of the page wrote on CNN’s Facebook: ‘We appeal to you not to switch off the cameras. If you switch off the cameras tonight, there will be genocide. You are protecting us by showing what is happening at Tahrir Square’. And at that night, CNN appeared at Tahrir Square and broadcasted the demonstration worldwide. The appearance of CNN made people feel confident and gave them more power to protest. These people had never met each other in person; their main connection was on Facebook. It brought them from the virtual world to the real world. Sharing the same dream for freedom. And that’s the power of internet, Facebook, social media. It made Hosni Mubarak to resign after just 18 days of revolution, just 18 days. Egyptians has proved to the world that ‘the power of the people is much stronger that the people in power’. Truth be told, social media and internet has played a critical role in the revolution. It helped Egyptian to criticise the government, to speak up their minds. Without Facebook, without YouTube, satellite TV broadcast. The revolution would never be sparked and this amazing story would never be told. In conclusion, the revolution 2.0 – the revolution of social media in Egypt is a liberating moment from liberal perspectives, an extraordinary effort to redeem the progress of approaching basic civil liberties in Egypt. It is obvious that freedom of speech is the basic postulate of human rights, the provenance of humanity, and the genesis of truth. To restrain freedom of speech and human rights, the Cairo’s regime is isolating itself from the rest of the world as well as its own people. Thanks a lot.