Kifaya

"We Were Fighting For Years...They Deprive Us of Our Struggle"

Ever since the people of Tunisia ran their corrupt leader out of the country, several other countries in the area have taken to the streets to protest their own oppressive governments. In Egypt they had thousands of people in the street clashing with riot police. This picture shows protesters stopping to make daily prayers.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called on parliament last month to change the constitution to allow opposition candidates to run for president. Under the current system, Egyptians vote for president every six years, choosing "yes" or "no" for a candidate approved by parliament. Mubarak has ruled since 1981 and will seek a fifth six-year term in September. If Parliament approves the political reform, Mubarak will face opposition for the first time.

The surprise move came amid unprecedented protests in the streets of Cairo. A coalition of political groups composed of Islamists, Nasserists and secularists, have joined forces to stage the public demonstrations opposing the renewal of Mubarak’s presidential term. The coalition is named the Egyptian Movement for Change, more commonly known as the "Kifaya"–or "enough"–movement. Egypt has been under Emergency Law for over 20 years and public demonstrations are banned.

Egyptians ave been living now under Mubarak since 1981, since the assassination of Sadat. So this is a process that the Egyptian people, men and women, were angry, were fed up, and they wanted a change. And that’s why the word "kifaya" means "enough." Enough is enough. And, in fact, the founder—the demonstration was organized.


Women are half the society. They are affected by war. They are affected by unemployment. You know, most of the young women in Egypt are unemployed, graduating from universities. So women are half the society. All laws in Egypt, including the emergency law, the martial law, the law of parties, the law of N.G.O.s, should be changed so that the people in Egypt could organize from now. Because, you know, organization was closed down illegally by the government. The law of organization inhibits people and puts limitations on people to organize. So how is it possible to have free elections if the people cannot organize themselves?


Nobody is going to liberate anybody. We have to liberate ourselves. Women are going to liberate themselves. The working class are going to liberate themselves. You know. So nobody replaces anybody, because some women will say, we’ll wait—especially in our region—we’ll wait for men to liberate us. No, we have to liberate ourselves. Our countries have to liberate ourselves. Democracy, freedom comes from the inside, from the people themselves who are suffering. Women are suffering from double oppression, triple oppression, so they have to start and to have to fight for their freedom and for independence, at all levels, not only the sexual, not only the cultural, the political and the economic, and at the global and local level.