Crushing Dissent in Egypt

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A well-known blogger and activist jailed for a peaceful protest, a young man imprisoned and tortured for wearing the wrong T- shirt, a young woman abducted by masked police, and now among more than a thousand people who have been forcibly disappeared – these are just some of the alarming stories from the new Egypt.

Orla Guerin has spent the last four years reporting from Cairo where she has witnessed a systematic assault on freedoms and human rights. The country's ruler, former army chief, President Abdel Fatah al Sisi is standing for re-election (next month) in a climate of fear and intimidation. Seven years after the euphoria in Tahrir Square, Orla asks what happened to the hope born during the revolution, and reports on the abuses which campaigners say are at the heart of the Sisi regime.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading this podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:04.5	I'm Orligiren and I've been based in Egypt since 2013.
0:09.2	During my time here there's been a brutal crackdown on human rights. As I finish my four year
0:15.4	posting I wanted to tell the story of the jailed, the tortured and the
0:20.8	disappeared and to find out what happened to the revolution of 2011 and the hope it brought.
0:30.0	Hello? Hi, it's Orla.
0:32.0	Hello, it's Orla.
0:36.0	Leila. How are you nice to see you.
0:39.0	Jokran.
0:40.0	Hello and welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service.
0:44.0	I'm Orla Giron and I've been invited to lunch with a family in Cairo.
0:49.0	I'm in the kitchen of Dr. Leila Suwaif. She's a mathematics professor in her 60s with a shock of gray hair and she's bustling around chopping salad and frying thin slices of spiced beef.
1:09.0	Her daughter Mune is warming bread in the oven. She's 31 with dangling silver earrings.
1:16.2	At the dining table there's lots of lively chatter, but there's also an empty space.
1:28.0	Lila's son, Allah Abdel Fata, one of Egypt's best-known activists, is behind bars.
1:36.5	His absence is keenly felt.
1:39.4	The first thing that we always say is that we're better off than others, that there are people
1:45.2	whose sons and daughters have been killed or have vanished or have been given life
1:50.4	sentences. Given that, I mean obviously we deal with it in a very day-to-day way, but it makes me incredibly
1:58.8	incredibly angry. Yes, we are sad, we are sorry, we are unhappy, but I think that the anger is really paramount.
2:07.0	That's Al-A's aunt, Adaf Suaife.
2:10.0	She's animated and articulate with shoulder length, dark hair and black-rimmed glasses.
	...

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