Opinion: Egypt - The dictatorship mentality

With the help of the social networks and internet, the revolution made it very clear to the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) that the old days of brainwashing the people are gone. The beauty of Facebook and Twitter is that people from all over the world are suddenly connected to each other and they can all share news and views. The guided media and government censorship lost its control over the hearts and minds of my Egypt, but the SCAF didn’t want to let up on its power to manipulate and brainwash the people of my Egypt.

The Egyptian government produced a series of ads warning the Egyptian people from talking or interacting with foreigners. They claimed that they are all potential spies and that by not talking to them we will be saving our Egypt from these bad, nasty spies. The first time I saw this lousy ad I realized without a doubt that SCAF is ready to do whatever it takes to silence and control the people. To put this in perspective, consider what it would cost Egypt to encourage unfriendliness and suspicion of foreigners. As a country that relies on tourism as one of its essential resources—a resource that gives 4 million direct jobs and 10 million indirect jobs—damaging the tourism market would cost a total of 14 million jobs feeding probably close to 14 million families. After the revolution already had affected tourism pretty badly, our beloved SCAF took the action to help repair the tourism industry by spreading paranoia against tourists and foreigners. This move was outrageous and offensive to everyone. They can't make us live in the dark ages anymore by trying to isolate us from the rest of the world and from the obvious truth of their oppression.

On May 31st, the government announced the expiration and suspension of the emergency law, a law that controlled us for 31 years. I couldn’t believe that we would finally be treated fairly by the law. Then, two weeks later, the justice department gave full authority to the military police and intelligence to detain civilians and try them to military tribunals, making the emergency law we hated look like an angel compared to this new military initiative.