Hands Off the Students

Statement by the <a href=”https://revsoc.me/statements/34848/” target=”_blank”>Revolutionary Socialists

Everyone living in Egypt has witnessed the repression that students have endured over the past two years, as well as the broader assault on universities. For two years, students have been subjected to mass arrests—both from within university campuses and from their homes at the hands of dawn visitors. Meanwhile, universities have faced interference and legislation that have crushed their independence, alongside oppressive security measures, total restrictions, and the closure of all spaces for political and even non-political student activities.

Universities have become unsafe spaces, where students are killed by police bullets—such as Mohamed Reda, to name just one example—or beaten to the point of unconsciousness and death by university security personnel, as happened to Anas El-Mahdy. University administrations also rush to refer students to disciplinary councils, issuing arbitrary expulsion decisions for nothing more than exercising their right to express their opinions. Even student unions—the legitimate representatives of students—have abolished their elections. These police-state practices, which bring nothing but harm to Egypt’s youth and students, have become a daily reality before our very eyes.

However, today, these repressive practices have escalated to an even more hostile and criminal level. Arrests have turned into kidnappings from homes and streets, followed by the forcible disappearance of students into undisclosed locations where no one knows their whereabouts. These abductions completely disregard all legal procedures—no arrest warrants, no charges, no investigations—just kidnappings ordered by State Security. In recent days, we have seen this happen to Ahmed Khattab, Israa El-Taweel, Sohaib Mohamed, and others—people we refuse to see suffer the same fate as Islam Ateeto, the student who was later found dead in the desert, executed by police bullets.