Violence may have seemed to be everywhere in 2010, but the year also saw the development of some significant voices for peace, writes Abeya El-Bakry Demonstrations against the killing of Khaled Said on the hands of the police An overview of events in 2010 screams violence in all its forms. From sectarian violence and sexual harassment to police brutality during the parliamentary elections, there seems to have been violence everywhere. "While it is probably true that there has been an increase in violence in 2010, media representations of violence have amplified the phenomenon and drawn attention to it," said Samiha Nasr, a professor of psychology and criminological research at the Egyptian Centre for Social and Criminological Research. The centre's report, Research and Studies on Violence in Egyptian Society, defines various types of violence. There is domestic violence, political violence, represented during the last elections in November, and violence in sport. There are also institutional forms of violence, manifested in the death of Khaled Said earlier in the year. Said's killing in Alexandria in June was an expression of institutional violence, Nasr said. Did the perpetrators have a warrant for his arrest? And did they use extreme levels of force, leading to his death? In this case at least, it seems that persons invested with state authority crossed significant boundaries, violence having been used to signal institutional power. As far as the treatment of women is concerned, 2010 saw a consensus against the appointment of female judges in Egyptian courts. There were several protests by women against the treatment meted out to them, with incidents in which female students wearing the niqab, or full face veil, were attacked at university. One recent survey of people's attitudes to violence against women showed that some 80 per cent of Egyptian men believe that a man is justified in beating his wife. According to the report, some of these attitudes towards violence are the result of failures in the education system, which does not sufficiently promote personal development and learning. Students study in order to pass exams rather than to acquire knowledge and gain a deeper sense of the nature of the world around them. This could explain why they have so little conception of their social and communal role. Yet, there were also reasons for optimism in 2010. According to Nihad Abul-Qomsan, head of the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR), among the positive events taking place in 2010 were the filling of the women's quota in parliament, with the election of 67 women in the November parliamentary elections. Moreover, 2010 saw a national campaign against human trafficking, and the inclusion of underage marriage and child labour within the definition of human trafficking. Despite the brutality of Said's death in June, the very fact that he died at the hands of the police has motivated concerned citizens to act. A group has been formed on Facebook to publicise the issue of police brutality and to expose limits to political freedom. In fact, the case would never have come to light without such efforts, since the mainstream media at first refused to report what had happened. It was only after persistent efforts by concerned citizens that the event began to receive coverage in the mainstream press. Following the case of Esraa Abdel-Fattah in 2007, who was detained following activity on Facebook in support of that year's April strikes, various groups have acted to expose violent incidents through social networking sites and thus to inform the wider public. One group now has some 350,000 members, and it has organised peaceful marches in Cairo in order to publicise the case of Khaled Said. The security forces allowed the group to march, though other marches were organised at the same time in an attempt to draw attention away from the Said case. The campaign against police brutality continues both on the ground and in cyberspace. Such activities were also used in 2010 to draw attention to the use of violence in November's parliamentary elections, with the public becoming more aware of allegations of rigging as a result. Another activity that has had some considerable success in 2010 is the Keep Egypt Clean Project, which also started on Facebook and now has some 81,000 members. The group provides a discussion board and tries to improve the cleanliness of Egypt's towns and cities through communal action. A community cleaning project recently undertaken in Mustafa Al-Nahhas Street in Nasr City has managed to keep the road clean and free from garbage. Perhaps one of the more serious issues that have been causing tension in Cairo civil society has been the lack of venues for discussion and interaction. This lack is currently being addressed by Facebook, such that people are able to discuss their views even without a physical venue in which to do so. People using the site's discussion board are able to act together to find ways to deal with their concerns. Social networking sites such as Facebook are also able to involve Egyptians living abroad, inviting them to become active in their home country. A further development on the legislative front has been the development of an anti-harassment law in February 2010. Even though this has not yet made it onto the statute books, the process is now well underway. Are the voices of violence being replaced by calls for harmonious action, with people coming together to find ways of being proactive? It may be that at long last Egyptians are beginning to come together to assert their citizenship through simple measures without reliance on government assistance. Happy New Year? We certainly hope so.
