How low can you go? Egypt's democratic dissidents couldn't even watch the national football team play their Algerian rivals today
The Mubarak regime’s harassment of Egyptian dissident Ayman Nour hit a new low today when the authorities cut off the electricity to prevent him and his supporters from watching a critical soccer game.
“Even soccer we have no right to enjoy!!” one of his supporters told the Digest. “We have ZERO breathing room.”
Nour was hosting hundreds of people at a cultural center in Bab el Shereya to watch Egypt’s match with Algeria, a playoff for Africa’s final qualifying position for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Previous games provoked violence on the pitch and riots by fans so the game took place on neutral ground in Khartoum, Sudan, where 15,000 police are on hand to keep rival supporters apart.
The Egyptian security services have a special unit specifically designated to monitor and harass Nour, a former police officer told today’s conference on Middle East democracy at the National Endowment for Democracy.
“You can’t imagine the pressures he is subject to,” said Omar Soliman, a former Reagan-Fascell fellow at the NED.
No doubt the government will now argue that they were doing Nour and his supporters a favor. Egypt lost 1-0.
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