Your Crimes Will Not Pass… Tiran and Sanafir Belong to the People

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime is built on a series of crimes against the majority of the Egyptian people, beginning with his bloody coup in July 2013, followed by the massacres of that dark summer. Then came successive waves of arrests—not only of the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters but of anyone who opposed his military rule. Enforced disappearances, torture, and systematic killings became the norm against anyone who dared to speak, write, or act in defiance of the dictatorship.

On the other side, this bloody regime has done nothing but repeat the same policies of Hosni Mubarak, Gamal Mubarak, and their gang, who are once again dominating the scene day after day. Privatization, subsidy cuts, austerity in public services, and massive, illusory projects plunge generation after generation of Egyptians into endless debt. Due to the utter failure of this exceptional regime—even in implementing the capitalist policies of plundering—the tourism sector has collapsed, foreign investments have disappeared, and the only remaining option has been begging, just like its predecessors: from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on one side and its Gulf masters—sheikhs and princes—on the other.

This begging has reached new heights with the visit of the Saudi king—the financier of counter-revolutions across the Arab world and an enemy of peoples and freedoms—to Cairo. In exchange for a handful of dollars and political support from the king for Sisi’s failing, crumbling regime, we witnessed the disgraceful scenes of Sisi’s elite in his parliament and at Cairo University, cheering and offering displays of obedience to that tyrant from the Middle Ages.

Sisi sealed this humiliating subservience to the oil monarch by handing over the Egyptian islands of Tiran and Sanafir. His defense of this move, in a speech before a select group of his men and women—including intellectuals, parliamentarians, and others—was nothing but further insult and contempt toward the Egyptian people, their rights, and their awareness.

At this point, Sisi reaches an unprecedented level of betrayal and crime against the Egyptian people. His regime is built on selling off the nation’s wealth and land to finance its survival, corruption, and dictatorship. But to go so far as to surrender entire islands just to satisfy his Saudi sponsor is an attack on the rights and sovereignty of the whole Egyptian people—an unforgivable crime. Sisi tramples on the people’s rights with his military boots, just as he has done since the coup. The time has come to end his crimes, and the first step is to reject the handover of Tiran and Sanafir.
Down with Sisi… Down with military rule

Down with the Saudi king… Power and wealth belong to the people.