Egypt's Sisi vows crackdown on anti-government protests
Egypt’s president warned Saturday that potential protests on the upcoming anniversary of the 2011 revolution will be faced with a heavy-handed crackdown.
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi issued the warning at a ceremony commemorating Police Day, which falls on January 25, the day the revolution started five years ago.
The 2011 revolution led to the overthrow of the country’s longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. In an election after Mubarak’s ouster, Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi was elected president, but he was later ousted in a military coup led by then military chief Sisi in July 2013.
The Egyptian government has been cracking down on any opposition since Morsi’s ouster and Sisi has been accused of leading the suppression of Morsi supporters, as hundreds of them have been killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces over the past few years while thousands more have been jailed.
The president, meanwhile, made no mention of the January 2011 revolution during his 30-minute address.
There are increasing complaints by rights activists that the Egyptian government has been employing Mubarak-era practices such as torture, random arrests and the use of excessive force.
The Saturday warning came amid the government’s ongoing clampdown on dissent ahead of the anniversary.
Up to 5,000 apartments, primarily in central Cairo, have been searched by government forces in the past 10 days, as authorities are seeking to prevent protests. The administrators of several Facebook pages suspected of links to the Muslim Brotherhood have also been detained.
Earlier in January, Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments Mokhtar Gomaa denounced “calls to sabotage and attack the state” in an apparent reference to anti-government protests planned for the fifth anniversary.
Calls for protests have been circulating on social media under the slogan “we will drop the tyranny.”
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