Interviews with Mahmoud Afifi

The April 6th Youth Movement used to create an event on Facebook every year on January 25th, it is National Police Day [an Egyptian holiday that commemorates the death of 50 police officers who were killed by British soldiers]. We’d say in this event, “Thugs are going to celebrate and we will celebrate with them.” By “thugs” we meant policemen. We used to demonstrate in front of the office of the Attorney General or the Union of Journalists or the Ministry of the Interior condemning torture and crimes committed by the Egyptian police on their National Day. We used to demonstrate and go back home. This was the case every year, in 2009, 2010 and also in 2011, we created the event on January 4th saying, “Thugs are going to celebrate and we will celebrate with them.”

We didn’t think that it was going to be a revolution; we thought it would be a normal demonstration just like every year.

But with the flare of events in Tunisia, the flight of [former Tunisian President Zine el Abidine] Ben Ali, and the success of Tunisians in overthrowing the regime of Ben Ali, we started to have some hope and believe that we would have a revolution as well. We must change the current situation and we shall overthrow the regime. The situation in Egypt is way more complicated than in Tunisia. We have different youth and political movements that are interested in political action at this stage, so we had to move and overthrow the regime.

There was a coordination between the movement and a page called “We are all Khaled Saeed” [a young Egyptian who was beaten to death by Egyptian security forces in 2010] on Facebook to make a common activity so that we go down the streets and change the current situation.

We all started to talk with people about joining us at that day and we searched for activities calling for a revolution on Facebook and communicated with them. We believed that there will be a revolution on January 25th and we will overthrow the regime.

Some of us were optimistic while others were pessimistic. Some said that it won’t be a revolution, because revolutions shouldn’t be announced. They believed that it will be just like every year. Those people were concerned with people who will go down to the streets for a demonstration for the first time. They were afraid of the disappointment in case the revolution was abandoned, or the repression practiced by the regime.

This was their concern. The optimists said that it will be a revolution and we will change the country, we won’t return except after the revolution.

The general feeling of optimism was because there was a very large number of activists and ordinary people who are using Facebook for the first time and talking about politics for the first time saying that they will go down to the streets and make a change. We received messages and photos from Egyptians abroad holding a banner reading “I will join on January 25th to make a change.”

We started working in the streets and started to go down and distribute millions of papers calling to join us on January 25th.

The reaction varied from one person to another. Personally, I was optimistic, but not to the extent that we will overthrow the regime! I believed that we will make a big incident that we will shake Egypt, and that there will be very large numbers of activists and ordinary people asking for change, and that political and economic reforms will take place.

Mahmoud Afifi is an Egyptian democracy activist with the April 6th Youth Movement, a group formed in 2008 to support striking workers; afterwards, it transformed into a nationwide opposition network against Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Today, Afifi serves as the Director of the April 6th Youth Movement’s Information Office. He is a lawyer by profession and graduated from Banha University in 2006.

Afifi joined the April 6th Youth Movement in 2009 and founded the group’s chapter in Egypt’s Qalyubia governorate. There he rallied youth to take part in various awareness campaigns and street protests against the government. As part of this strategy, he engaged the poorest segments of the population and strengthened their voice in the political arena. Following his success in Qalyubia, Afifi worked to organize April 6th Youth Movement campaigns at the national level. As the government cracked down on these demonstrations, Afifi was arrested several times and even abandoned in the desert.

Prior to the Egyptian Revolution that unseated President Hosni Mubarak, Afifi coordinated with other organizations encouraging citizens to participate in a January 25, 2011 demonstration in Cairo. On that day, Afifi marched to Tahrir Square with thousands of others demanding Mubarak’s resignation and a free Egypt. The protests intensified and expanded nationwide. Almost three weeks later, on February 11, 2011, Hosni Mubarak stepped down from power ending his 30 year reign.