On 2 May, Cairo is set to witness a nationwide workers’ protest to demand an increase of the national minimum wage. Activists, gearing up for the event, say they have learned lessons on how to protect themselves against potential police crackdowns and report their actions instantaneously.
The lessons come via experience gleaned during the country’s recent spate of strikes and demonstrations, both political and economic. While the security response to these strikes have varied, activists’ mechanisms for both self-defense and reporting have crystallized.
These mechanisms have been shaped primarily by lawyers and Internet activists.
“Rights organizations have acquired strategies to protect protesters,” says Khaled Ali, head of the Egyptian Center for Social and Economic Rights and one of the main organizers of the 2 May protest. “For example, we’ve drawn geographic and legal maps so that, when protesters are arrested, we can easily collect their information and identify what police station they’re being held in.”
In terms of legal assistance, he says that, ahead of strikes, lawyers prepare legal narratives–based on well-established civil and political rights–to contest arrests. “We know that State Security acts are not driven by the law, but our approach remains based on rights,” he explains.
Ali adds that some volunteer lawyers have organized to help the families of detainees, meet up with them regularly, and make sure they are cared for.
Earlier this year, the Front for the Defense of Egypt’s Protesters convened to provide legal and informational assistance to activists involved in demonstrations. The front is made up of a number of lawyers and human rights activists from 31 civil society organizations. A hot-line is also made available to receive requests for urgent legal assistance.
The front was particularly active during the recent 6 April political protest, when dozens were arrested and assaulted by police. Its website, hosted as a blog, became an active platform for the documentation of events, along with numbers of detainees and their current status.
These organizational aspects of strikes and protests include an important digital dimension, the function of which is to disseminate instantaneous news about demonstrations and labor actions through a variety of platforms.
Malek, a local web developer, is active on the digital front with regards to demonstrations. “The Internet has become a safe tool for breaking the security apparatus’ monopoly on information,” he says. “It used to take us a long time to learn about someone’s arrest.”
Besides speedily disseminating news about arrests online, the buzz created by this online coverage exerts a degree of pressure on police and security agencies and ultimately changes the way they deal with demonstrators. “It’s not that much pressure. But the online media buzz over arrests makes security think twice before beating up protestors inside police stations,” says Malek. “They know it will be widely disseminated and condemned.”
Malek adds that, in the recent past and in the early days of digital activism in Egypt, the few citizen journalists who provided live feeds on demonstrations were not considered particularly credible. “Now that everyone is tweeting, streaming videos and taking photographs, though, it’s difficult to question the credibility of news provided by online activists.”
Alongside other digital activists, Malek has worked on training fellow activists and workers on the use of online tools in advance of the 2 May strike. Workers have been trained to set up Twitter accounts, as Twitter has become a dynamic platform for digital activists and citizen journalists in Egypt–especially during strikes and demonstrations. Some workers have already established their presence on the micro-blogging platform and have been tweeting about the ongoing 2 May preparations.
Workers have also been trained to stream live videos and photos online for the upcoming protest.
Internet activists have even set up a website specifically devoted to the 2 May demonstration, which has both an advocacy and a dissemination function. News about the preparations and training ahead of the demonstration are being posted. Videos showing public figures and rights activists expressing their solidarity with the strike have been made.
The website quickly became a site for awareness about the issue of the national minimum wage, for which the legal battle has already been won by the workers–but has yet to be implemented by the powers that be. The site extends the call to protest beyond labor circles, dubbing it a wide-ranging “national struggle.”
Legal and digital strategies aside, the security response to the upcoming protest is difficult to predict. “There is nothing to expect, especially if the numbers of protesters increase exponentially,” says Ali. “All we can do is expand our knowledge base and use it to our advantage.”
