(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
What we have seen in recent days in Egypt, as in Tunisia, is the proof of the people's revolution.
I myself have been out and experiencing the crowds. The police have asked people to stop, but the people cannot stop. The first requirement is to remove Hosni Mubarak. The second requirement is to have the government removed.
Rumors surfaced for a while that Israel was supplying police with weapons. But this was just a rumor staged by the authorities. They use fear deliberately to stop the revolution. On Monday I visited a hospital, where I met a young student who was shot in the eye with rubber bullets. He is one of many youngsters who are shot similarly. Can you imagine shooting people in the eye deliberately?
Both Arab regimes and especially the US and Israeli governments now fear the tendencies of revolution – what started in Tunisia, when dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali fled on 14 January. Just as they fear other popular upheavals – as created by the people of Egypt since they took to the streets on January 25 in protest against Hosni Mubarak's autocratic rule for the past 30 years.
These governments, which cooperate internally and externally, have long experience in organizing coups against the will of the people. They understand the language of conspiracy and coups, both in theory and in practice. Still, they become frightened and horrified when faced with a revolution that is being led by the people themselves, as has been happening in Tunisia this first month of 2011.
Tunisia's revolution will succeed, despite all the maneuvering and intrigue of both Arab countries and other nations. This popular revolution will succeed because it engages both women, men, young people and children – schoolchildren from primary school to university level – because it is a revolution that the Tunisian people themselves are behind. The cries for freedom, dignity and justice are getting louder and louder.
Three beautiful words
The cries for human rights and equality regardless of gender, religion, social status, political standpoint, skin color, language and everything else, these high, noble cries, give voice to a dream of political, economic and sociocultural justice and ethics. It rises above the narrow definition of all kinds of ethnic and religious affiliation and patriarchal inherited nationality. This is what separates a people revolution from military movements and discriminatory resistance groups that arise from religious or ethnic groups, or from political movements led by male party members and groups, dominated by the economic, national or cultural power elite.
The voices of millions of Tunisian people have uttered three words, shaking our minds and hearts: "Freedom, justice and dignity." Three beautiful words, uttered by many millions of voices, women and men, children and young people, and students of both gender, which has inspired us in Egypt in recent days.
The only way the revolutions can be guaranteed to succeed is by the support of the whole people, women, men and young people. So that the people's revolution does not die in the same way we have seen other revolutions fade away – with the help of a few from the patriarchal cultural elite. See how ministers and elites shout: "Down with the Ben Ali regime", to infiltrate and take control of the transitional government, to prevent the revolution. But the Tunisian people followed, men, women and young people alike, took to the streets again, exposing the conspiracy, and removing the opportunistic peaks of the transitional government.
Nevertheless, there are still forces that maneuver and conspire both inside and out to kill the Tunisian people's revolution.
The question now is: Where are the hard-working Tunisian women in this interim government? Most of the faces we see are men – so how did the women participate in the revolution? I recently read that a female Tunisian director became Minister of Culture in the new government. This is good news so far, but should it be enough to be a woman and a filmmaker to be opposed to both internal and external patriarchal class-based oppression? Is it enough to appoint a female minister to ensure the people's revolution?
Imprisoned by Sadat
Is there any guarantee that the government ministers are for the revolution? Don't the revolutionary women's ministers become part of the new ruling system, just like the male ones? Do women ministers and MPs in our country (and in America and Europe, including Scandinavia) not adopt ethnic and religious patriarchal class interests in the name of democracy?
What if we increase the number of women in the government and call it "quota"? Will increasing the number itself be a breakthrough, or change women's thinking in relation to patriarchal, class-based discrimination? If we look at the history of revolution leaders, both in our country and the rest of the world, what do we see? Don't the Socialist Ministers become capitalists as soon as they take on the position?
Are not the positions, both men and women believe, changed by the position they get? Did not Tunisian President Ben Ali set aside former President Habib Bourguiba (1957-1987) in the name of the "rising people's revolution"?
Since Ben Ali took power in Tunisia in 1987, the dictatorship has grown in the name of democracy. Just like under Anwar Sadat (1970-1981) in Egypt, when trade relations with the United States and Israel were opened. People have been arrested and denied the right to think freely, both inside and outside their home country. These are the games of the colonialist, patriarchal classes – disguised as democracy and neoliberalism. For example, I was imprisoned in Sadat during the massacre of the Egyptian opposition in 1981. And during the entire Ben Ali regime, I have not been able to enter Tunisia.
I am invited by Tunisian men and women who have read my books and stories. Thousands came to hear my lectures. Once in the 80 century, traffic problems in Tunisia even arose because of congestion in the queues until the lecture, so the organizers had to ask to change their time and place. People ended up having to travel by train to the University of Kairouan.
Kicked the TV boss
One day, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat attended a meeting with Arab leaders in Tunis. One of them was Nasser's Minister of Information, Muhammed Faiq. He told me after my lecture, about modern Tunisia, that Arafat had said I was just as unpopular in Tunisia as Umm Kulthum (famous Egyptian singer, who restored diplomatic ties between Tunisia and Egypt in the 1970 century because of its popularity, overs) (note).
I replied, "The popularity of a writer cannot be compared to the popularity of a football player, dancer or regular singer, so what's wrong with Umm Kulthum?"
Even Bourguiba issued an entry ban to Tunisia before falling in 1987. I had said in a TV interview that the Tunisian women's movement has worked for centuries for women's liberation, not for the abuse of power by individuals. President Bourguiba happened to hear the interview on TV, and he then dismissed the chief of the TV station, while claiming to be Tunisian women's liberator. Moroccan newspapers chose to write about the incident in which Bourguiba dismissed the TV editor. They revealed his democracy as false.
Who can now guarantee that the Tunisian revolution will continue, in order to achieve freedom, dignity and justice for both Tunisia's women and men? For how many times have women not participated in popular uprisings? As in the Algerian revolution, the Palestinian, Egyptian, Lebanese, the Sudanese…
If the revolution is implemented in practice, both in Tunisia and Egypt, the big question arises: Will women's rights now finally be protected?
