Egypt’s ‘Honorable Citizens’
Imagine a man is going home one evening and suddenly, as he’s going up the stairs to his apartment, he sees a criminal trying to rape a woman. The girl calls for help and tries to escape but she can’t and the attacker rips her clothes off. The man’s reaction to the crime taking place before his eyes would be one of the following:
1. The man rushes to save the woman from being raped, even at the risk of his own life. In this case he would be a brave man, chivalrous and honourable.
2. The man refrains from helping the woman but rushes up to his apartment and calls the police. In this case he would be an ordinary man who is not exceptionally brave but at least feels a responsibility to try to prevent the crime.
3. The man goes up to his apartment, resumes his life, completely forgets about the crime, and leaves the woman to her fate. This man would be a coward with no conscience.
4. The man not only refuses to try to save the woman but also insults her while she is being raped before his eyes and accuses her of being a slut who likes being raped. In this case the man would give an ugly example of human behavior and in my opinion would need psychiatric help.
Unfortunately some Egyptians have recently adopted this fourth shameful way of thinking. Policemen and soldiers have committed heinous crimes against demonstrators at the Maspero building, in Mohamed Mahmoud Street, and at the Cabinet building. All kinds of crimes have been committed against Egyptian citizens in broad daylight: they have been blinded by shotguns and killed by live ammunition, and girls have been stripped by soldiers and dragged along the ground. All these crimes, which have been recorded on videotape, have raised a storm of anger toward the military council, both in Egypt and around the world, but some Egyptians continue to play down the crimes—and some even blame the victims. The military council loves those people who refuse to speak the truth and justify the most heinous crimes, and in its statements it calls them “honorable citizens.”
To the military council, honorable citizens are those who agree with everything the council does, support its plan to undo the revolution and turn a blind eye to all the heinous crimes for which the council is solely responsible, politically and legally.
How is it that can we watch with our own eyes an Egyptian woman being stripped and dragged brutally along the ground by army troops, and then “honorable citizens” blame her because she was wearing a gown with press-studs rather than buttons? How can we watch our mothers and sisters being dragged along the ground under the boots of soldiers, and then one of these “honorable citizens” comes out and asks us to forget these crimes and look to the future?
These “honorable citizens” are a strange phenomenon in Egyptian society. I have tried to understand them and I have found that they fall into five categories: