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Dealing with Dissent: the state post-uprising

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What made her go there? Samira Ibrahim and Egypt's virginity test trial. Cairo, Egypt - Samira Ibrahim, then a relatively unknown 24-year-old woman from Upper Egypt, didn't know she would be facing one of the hardest experiences she would ever face when she decided to participate in the sit-in in Tahrir Square on March 9, 2011. After the military police evacuated the square, violently dispersing protesters, Samira, along with a number of other women who had been at the demonstration, were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched and said they were forced into receiving a "virginity test", while being humiliated, video-taped and exposed by the military's soldiers and officers. Having struggled to put this case in front of courts, a court order was issued in December to stop this practice from being performed upon any other Egyptian woman.

However, a military court has recently exonerated Ahmed Adel, the military doctor who had allegedly performed this forced "virginity test" upon Samira. "What made her go there? " Roots of patriarchy Victim blaming. Photos of Women's March Against Military Rule. [A day after soldiers brutally attacked and stripped a woman protestor in Tahrir Square in Cairo, thousands of women and men marched on 20 December from Tahrir Square to the Journalists' Syndicate and back to condemn the violence. Sarah Carr reports in Al Masry Al Youm that, "There was pervasive anger against the army, with frequent chants for the SCAF to leave power... 'Tantawi is the supreme commander of harassment and violation of honor,' one placard read. ... 'They know that we participated as much as men in the revolution.

But we’re not scared,' Hadia Mohamed said. Thirty-six-year-old Nariman Youssef agreed. 'The main thing is to show that we’re not afraid. They can kill us, hit us, beat us on our heads but we’re getting stronger.'"] Photos by Sarah Carr. [The woman pointing her finger was telling men that women would get their rights.]

[Far left sign: "Liars. [It was Egypt that was stripped.] Walls Go Up. There are now not one, but four walls in downtown Cairo. Huge cubes of round-edged cement are clumsily stacked on top of each other, as if by a child. Hours after its construction, the Qasr al-Aini wall was almost completely covered in graffiti on the protesters’ side. Tens of silhouetted army soldiers stood sentry behind the cubes, visible through the gaps between them. Two young boys stood next to the wall and made obscene gestures at soldiers on the building behind the wall. Above them a young man clambered on top of the cubes and stretched out his arms to the side, fingers in a victory sign.

Around the corner the battle raged, with perhaps ten meters separating the two sides. The army has been trying to find a successful formula to control public space for ten months and has tried everything from threats of the law to attempts to co-opt political players to physical brutality and incitement of the general public against protesters. Egypt: Return to Tahrir - People & Power. By reporter Elizabeth Jones Last weekend, in response to the fresh outbreak of deadly violence in Cairo, Egypt's newly-appointed prime minister, Kamal el-Ganzouri, announced that those involved in the clashes were "not the youth of the revolution".

These protests, he suggested, were in fact a "counter-revolution". The prime minister's words must have come as a shock to Mossaab Shahrour, a 20-year-old student and kitchen fitter from the 6th of October City - a satellite city outside Cairo. Today Mossaab is walking with the help of a crutch. His close friend, 22-year-old Ahmed Mansoor, a recent graduate in media studies, was killed in the same attack when he was shot in the head.

I first met Mossaab in the secret headquarters of the April 6 Youth Movement last January. He was one of the activists whose job it was to round up supporters from mosques, fire them up with chants and lead them to Tahrir Square. "Of course it was worth it for freedom," he insists. Regime still using Mubarak-era tactics to crush dissent, say lawyers | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt.