DON'T they have the right to rebel? This is the question that comes to my mind whenever I hear a person refer to the poor young people who lead the ongoing protest against the ruling regime and its tool of suppression represented in the security agency. For some months now we have been accustomed to hearing some persons refer to the demonstrators today as not of the real revolutionaries because of their impoverished appearance! It is true that January 25 Revolution was launched mostly by educated young Egyptians and even of the middle and upper middle class. This was demonstrated by their utilisation of the modern technology and electronic communications systems to plan and follow developments of the revolution. However, we should remember how millions of citizens, who belong to different age categories and social classes, joined the revolution shortly after its outbreak in squares in all governorates' and not just Tahrir. Even those who did not join the protests were part of the vigilante groups that were organised in every suburb and street of the country. They protected public and private possessions against the thugs who spread after the disappearance of the police from the scene after the ‘Angry Friday' of January 28, 2011. Herein, poor youths started joining the revolutionary drive with the hope of bringing in a new regime to offer them better living condition and a more dignified life. Most of those young people took part in the presidential elections and voted for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, if not in the first stage, in the runoff. So, it was very depressing for them to see the new ruler show no attention to their conditions, delay launching real economic reform projects to create jobs for them, being busily ensuring domination of his group over the rule of the state. With the expected deteriorating economic conditions, these young people suffered most because of their inability to find jobs or earn their living by any dignified legal means. Therefore, it is quite natural to see them dominate the scene in Tahrir and other places of protest in numbers surpassing those of the original revolutionaries, some of whom resorted to political work to enforce goals of the revolution after an elected president reached rule. Even when employing legal mean of demonstration to express opposition, the educated youth still resorted to peaceful means so as to preserve the pacific image of their revolution. However, the poor young unemployed, whom the different political parties failed to contain within their lines, found in these demonstrations a chance to express their anger against the authorities that had failed to address public aspirations to leading a better life. Those youths could not also follow in the steps of the educated revolutionaries and meet the violent approach being adopted by the ruling movement and their supporters against the peaceful demonstrators, by mere condemnation, and notifications to the authorities concerned or the human rights societies. Instead, they merely expressed their anger in a violent way. Instead of drawing the different powers in the ruling authorities and the opposition to their conditions and causes, they have been accused of thuggery and even terrorism. The security agency started launching a systematic arrest and detention of those youths, who were tortured at some camps of the central security police and held for many days without their families being informed of their arrest. Some members of civil societies concerned with human rights started uncovering innumerable violations being practised by the security agency against those young people and adolescents, which started with jailing them for many days before referral to the Public Prosecution, violating the law that compels the police to present the arrested suspects to the investigation authorities within 24 hours and to have their families notified of their arrest within 12 hours. This notification offers them the chance to get a lawyer during the investigation. However, in many cases, including the two martyrs Mohamed el-Guindi and Ahmed Omar, it was proved that they were kept at central security camps for many days where they were subjected to terrible torture. It ended with them being hospitalised in a terrible condition to die within days of being found by their respective families in Al-Helal Hospital that registered them as victims of a car accident! Reports of the human rights activists also reveal many instances of the arrest and detention of many children and teenagers, one of whom was 14 years old and suffering from bone cancer. This teenaged cancer patient was detained for some 15 days in violation of the law on underage suspects and deprived from getting the requisite chemotherapy. The question is what would one expect the reaction to be of families and friends of those young detainees cruelly tortured to death by the security authorities? Can anyone convince such youths to refrain from violence or show respect to the state institutions' buildings including the Presidential Palace, while demonstrating against this tyranny of their friends and relative, who continue falling in the long line of martyrs of the revolution? Could the Al-Azhar pact that rejects violence address those angry young people and convince them to give up violence for the sake of societal peace! Can the opposition powers convince those angry people to resort to peaceful means of demonstration while they themselves have failed to fulfil goals of the revolution in a peaceful and political way? Definitely all calls to give up violence and resort to peaceful demonstrations would fall on deaf ears, because of the youths' state of depression and despair they feel over obtaining any success by this peaceful approach in the face of a dictatorship as adopted by the new ruler. If we are really serious about ending violence on the streets we should first end brutality and injustice being practised by the security agency against the Egyptian youth regardless of their societal position. What is more important is to have the new ruler adopt new policy giving the public new hope in living in a real democratic and prosperous country and not just following in the steps of the former president that the people managed to topple just two years ago.
