10 years after the Arab Spring, this Egyptian political activist has no regrets

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Shady el-Ghazaly Harb says the dream of the Arab Spring is still alive in the hearts and minds of Egyptians today. 

Monday marks the 10th anniversary of when Egyptians first gathered en masse in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand political change. It was part of a wave of uprisings across the Middle East known collectively as the Arab Spring.

After 18 days of occupying the Square, the protesters toppled the presidency of strongman leader Hosni Mubarak.

But after Mubarak, came military rule. And after that, a Muslim Brotherhood government toppled by a military coup. And finally, a new strongman — President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi — who jails dissidents and has altered the constitution to extend his own rule. 

Harb, a surgeon in Cairo, was one of those protesters in Tahrir Square in 2011, and he later paid the price alone in an Egyptian prison. Still, he has no regrets. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens host Carol Off. 

So many of the people we spoke with during those heady weeks in Tahrir Square, there was a fearlessness to them, a sense that they weren't going to be defeated, that they would be successful, that none of what has come to pass, including the regime of El-Sisi, was going to happen. And yet now you have .... an estimated 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt, so many of them activists, journalists, opposition politicians. Do you think that some of the protesters in the Square regret that they were involved 10 years ago?

I myself was one of them, the detainees, and ... I was released 10 months ago after almost two years'... pre-trial detention.

The last two anniversaries of the revolution, I spent in solitary confinement in prison. And I myself, on each anniversary, I never regretted for a moment this course that we had, or the revolution, or even after the revolution. 

A lot of the leadership of the revolution are still in prison, if not in exile, and I don't think that they have any regrets either. We all have this feeling that ... the regime that suppresses you that much, it just expresses its weakness rather than its strength.

That means that it's hollow from inside, and it can collapse at any time.

Maybe some people are kind of sorry. They feel this sad, nostalgic feeling of, well, we had a lot of dreams, but none of them [were] accomplished. Maybe some are depressed, kind of. But not regrets, no.

The crime you committed was the dubious crime of insulting President El-Sisi — the person who was elected after the defeat of Hosni Mubarak. And so I wonder .... how much did life actually improve for what you suffered, what you put into that revolution?

First of all, my crime was much worse. They were accusing me of being a part of a terrorist group. And I asked them on multiple occasions, "What's the name of the terrorist group? What kind of terrorist group?" And [they] had no answer. So they're accusing us of being terrorists right now because we participated in the revolution.

Now this atmosphere, we have never dreamt of. It's much worse than Mubarak's era. Much, much worse than any other era, even the generations before us.

So we just don't have anything to do but to sit and wait. We can't do anything more now. And we can't endanger anyone and just ask them to ... take to the streets again and then put themselves in jail. So we're betting on the internal collapse of this corruption.

But you have another generation coming up, right, of Egyptians who were children when you were in the streets and you were in Tahrir Square in 2011, who are now engaged. And so do you think that they're willing to sit by and just be patient?

No, as a matter of fact, what I can see now is that this generation is ... much more aggressive than ours. And they grew up seeing a revolution which has been crushed. And they have the same ideology. They have the same dreams that we had in 2011 because, I mean, yeah, they can put us in jail, but they can't put our dreams in jail. And this is something that flies and just fills the atmosphere.

So the younger generation, they are more difficult to control, much more difficult. And they are willing to overcome the obstacles that we had, and they can see the mistakes that we [made]. They kind of blame us a little bit as well.

What do they blame you for?

They blame us [for being] kind of naive. That's what I hear from someone, like, for example, my son, who was six at the time of the revolution, but now he's 16. That we trusted the Muslim Brotherhood at the time, and the military at another time. 

Is he right?

Well, partly right and partly not.

Maybe now the public opinion is more accepting to the fact that we should not trust these two major bodies, these two tycoons who took over the revolution, the Islamists on one side, or the military institution the other side.

But 10 years ago, that wasn't the case. The military was held in a very high regard in 2011. And to tell the people, "No, you should not trust them," that wasn't going to be accepted that much.

Do you worry about [your son]? Do you worry that he and his friends are willing and capable of going much further than you?

I'm worried about his generation. If things go out of hand, yeah, they might go much further than we did.

But they have nothing to lose, do they?

I wouldn't limit the conversation with my son, because we're in a specific class that might affect him ... [and] he has something to lose. But other millions who are his age have absolutely nothing to lose. And the economic status is not very encouraging for them.

And they are stubborn, as most of the youth are. So I can't see it leading to anywhere good. Because, I mean, they have a bad experience in their very recent memory and they don't want to repeat it. And even if we try to convince them or reason with them, it will be much more difficult because, I mean, we'll be the ones who lost the first round.

What do you hope that Egypt will look like and be like 10 years from now?

I hope that we would have started a true democratic transition and a secular state which respects each and every person, and within this state with the rule of law and institutions and independent institutions who cannot influence each other by any means. And then maybe we will see a political atmosphere that gives us some young political leaders who can lead Egypt to the future.

I hope that we'll see even traces of this dream 10 years from now. And I think that it's possible. 

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Jeanne Armstrong. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.