CAIRO: People smiled and waved flags. Drank tea and meandered around the square, making time to denounce the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) on Friday over emergency laws, elections laws and the lack of transparency from the military rulers. The jovial nature was reminiscent of the July sit-in last summer, where activists and others joined forces to call for the prosecution of Hosni Mubarak, his cronies and a faster pace of reform. Friday's protest may be exactly what Egypt needed. Over the past few weeks, the SCAF has become more forceful in their crackdowns on dissenting voices, in essence making “unpatriotic”, or anti-SCAF, sentiment, illegal. Activists, bloggers, journalists and the future of Egypt has been under siege. Egyptians have shown once again that they are no longer afraid to make change possible and took to the Cairo's Tahrir Square en masse to show the military that this is not their country. It is Egypt, and it is for Egyptians. Walking through the crowds of approximately 10,000 – the numbers were growing throughout the afternoon – there was a determination that had not been seen in a long while among the faces of those present. They appeared ardent in the cause. The demonstration, dubbed the “Friday to Reclaim the Revolution” was exactly that, a protest that aimed to push Egypt back on the revolutionary path. While it wasn't the hundreds of thousands that many may have hoped, it was a marked change from the few hundred that had protested on Cairo's streets in the past few weeks. It showed that Egyptians were still ready, and willing, to have their voices heard. Bassem, a 24-year-old university student told Bikyamasr.com that Friday's protest, “is the big moment for Egypt.” “If the people understand what is going on and they come out in large numbers, then this revolution that began in January will continue and we will have the new Egypt we want,” he added. That was the feeling throughout Friday. Egyptians were once again looking forward, laying out their frustrations in an orderly manner not seen since early July. The activist community appeared to have learned from the hiccups of the recent past. The military was the brunt of anger. Later on Friday, protesters began chanting in support of al-Jazeera, which had its Mubasher network stormed by security forces for the second time in one month last week. They chanted that the news network has the right to broadcast from anywhere in Egypt. Press freedom and openness had been a stumbling block in August and September, with many activists becoming increasingly frustrated with the introverted take on who had a right to say what and when. Still, some activists were angry that jailed blogger Mickael Nabil Sanad, who entered his 37th day of a hunger strike, was not a focal point of Friday's demonstrations. One activist, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity he said other activists have toward dissent, argued that “Mickael is representative of everything that the Egyptian revolution is about. We fought and died for the right to be free and now that he has been jailed, none of these so-called activists are speaking out because of his views over Israeli normalization.” This, he said, “must be changed so we all Egyptians can have open debates. Freedom is about debate and being allowed to let others say things, even if you don't like it.” This was just about the only criticism on Friday, a day that in many ways succeeded where it had failed previously. Activists banded together in their anti-military calls, but instead of receiving the scorn of passersby, a few nods showed that Egyptians were no longer willing to turn a blind eye to the SCAF's mistakes. One 52-year-old plumber told Bikyamasr.com that he didn't like protests, but this day was different for him. He had watched the video of military police officers torturing two detained men, electrocuting them and beating them over and over. For Gamal, it was too much. “We lived in a country with Mubarak where this was what they did,” he began. “The military is not supposed to be thugs and do this to its own people.” For many Egyptians who joined the Friday demonstrations, the military rule in the country had run its course. They are fed up with the emergency laws – which allow police widespread arrests, detentions without trial and crackdowns on strikes and other political action – and the military rulers who recently re-activated them. “I want my Egypt to be a better place. The military does not deserve what they have right now and it is time to show them. I hope people continue this until we have a real government and a real Egypt,” one person said in Tahrir. And that summed up Egypt's return to a revolution in the making. It may be 8 months since President Hosni Mubarak was chanted out of power, but Egyptians won't let it be another 8 months before they take control of their country. BM
