Chad Diaspora Stomps on French Flag at Embassy Protest

Eric Agnero joined Toward Freedom‘s board on May 14. He is a journalist and political analyst from the Ivory Coast, specializing in U.S.-Africa affairs. At CNN, he covered the 2010-11 Ivorian post-electoral crisis as a West Africa correspondent. He also has reported for Voice of America in Washington, D.C. Having experience in corporate and state-run media outlets has helped Eric understand the gap they leave behind for ordinary people. Aside from his journalistic experience, Eric has worked as communications director at the African Union. Having first moved to Vermont in 2012, he recently returned after several years working for organizations in Africa. Eric now is involved in community media projects with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, Media Factory, CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, and Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement.

Here’s what he had to tell Toward Freedom about the role of the media and what’s next to cover in Africa.

What got you interested in joining Toward Freedom’s board of directors?

I started by writing about Africa for TF. Then I realized that my stories could miss authenticity as I am far away from the continent, and could no longer navigate accurately the facts and nuances. I thought it would make more sense for me to be in a position where I can foster a better ownership of the generation of stories about the continent by the journalists on the ground.

You started off working in U.S. corporate and state-run media in the 1990s. How did those experiences develop your understanding of how the media influences public opinion?

Working on that side of the media spectrum has given me the advantage of measuring the impact, as the media in question have a well-defined purpose for which they will constantly re-adjust, especially regarding the subsequent inclination or realignment of the target audience.

What are most media outlets missing when it comes to covering Africa?

When it comes to Africa, most media—especially from the Western world—cannot depart themselves from the Judeo-Christian/Caucasian supremacy philosophy. Africa is always treated by the Western world as the poor infant that needs food, clothes and education. And most Western journalists orient their story with that idea of a plagued continent, where there will always be a dictator who maintains their people in poverty. This might be right, but they fail to report that the former colonial powers and the United States groom most dictators. But, most importantly, that the state of the African continent is in large part the result of Western malign influence and the continuing dwelling of the spirit of the 1884-85 Berlin Conference.

What story should Toward Freedom cover that corporate media has ignored?

The corporate media doesn’t cover the stories of those who are fighting to unroot the colonial and imperialist powers from the continent. The stories of successes in alternative economic, political, and social endeavors that are re-writing history and projecting the so-called “dark continent” of Africa into a bright future. Toward Freedom should therefore hear the stories of journalists from Africa who are part of this movement.

Editor’s Note: The following was originally published in Black Agenda Report.

On March 24, 2023, Randall Robinson died at the age of 81. In his many obituaries, he will be remembered as a “human rights advocate, author, and law professor,” as well as “founder of TransAfrica,” and author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. Robinson became a household name after the organization he founded in 1977, TransAfrica, spearheaded public protests against South African apartheid in front of the South African embassies in the early 1980s, helping to give voice to the international anti-apartheid movement.

Once one of the largest African American human rights and social justice organizations, TransAfrica was founded on a vision where Africans and people of African descent are equal participants in the global world order. It took as a point of departure the belief that the freedom of African Americans is bound up with the “emancipation of all African people.” As such, TransAfrica’s mission was to serve as a “major research, education and organizing institution for the African-American community, offering constructive analysis concerning U.S. policy as it affects Africa and the African diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America.”

For some of us, what we remember most about Robinson is his enduring support of Haiti and Haitian people. He supported Haiti’s reassertion of sovereignty and democracy with the 1990 election of Jean Bertrand Aristide. After Aristide’s first overthrow—after only seven months in office—by a U.S.-backed coup d’etat, Robinson waged a 27-day hunger strike to both force the reinstatement of Aristide and to protest racist U.S. policies against Haitian migrants.

Perhaps the most enduring memories of Robinson’s steadfast support for Haiti and Haitian people come with the phone call to Democracy Now, in the early hours of March 1, 2004, after U.S. marines and the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Luis Moreno, went to Aristide’s house and forced him and family members onto an unmarked plane that then flew them out of the country. Robinson said:

“[Aristide] called me on a cell phone that was slipped to him by someone… The [U.S.] soldiers came into the house… They were taken at gunpoint to the airport and put on a plane. His own security detachment was taken as well and put in a separate compartment of the plane… The president was kept with his wife with the soldiers with the shades of the plane down… The president asked me to tell the world that it is a coup, that they have been kidnapped.”

Robinson remained a friend of Haiti. He flew with U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters to the Central African Republic, where Aristide had been dumped by U.S. special forces, to intervene on his behalf. Readers can learn much more about this ordeal in Robinson’s 2008 book, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. Robinson also wrote a number of other important books, including Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America; The Reckoning – What Blacks Owe to Each Other; Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land; and two novels: The Emancipation of Wakefield Clay and Makeda.

In 2001, Robinson permanently left the United States to move to St. Kitts, the Caribbean island from which hailed wife, Hazel Ross-Robinson. He had become disillusioned with the retrograde, unjust, and incorrigible U.S. political system:

“America is a huge fraud, clad in narcissistic conceit and satisfied with itself, feeling unneeded of any self-examination nor responsibility to right past wrongs, of which it notices none.”

To mark Robinson’s passing and to remember his legacy, we reprint below a 1983 interview from Claude Lewis’s short-lived journal, The National Leader. The interview foregrounds Robinson’s deep understanding of global Black politics and the sharpness of his anti-imperialist analysis–especially concerning the role of the U.S. as the world’s hegemon. Robinson’s analysis, alongside his courage, his integrity, and his love of Black people, will be missed.

Randall Robinson: Third World Advocate

TransAfrica is a Washington-based lobby organization that often takes strong, progressive positions on African and Caribbean questions. Randall Robinson, a Harvard trained lawyer and farmer Congressional Hill staffer, is executive director of the six-year-old organization which now has 10,000 members. During an interview with Managing Editor Joe Davidson he castigated President Reagan for “the vileness of this administration’s policy toward the Black world” and the close relationship between the United States and South Africa, “the most vicious government this world has seen since Nazi Germany.”

Joe Davidson. How would you assess the level of involvement of the Black community in foreign affairs? Many people have complained over the years, or at least we have been stereotyped over the years as having interest only in domestic issues. What’s your experience?

Randall Robinson: I think it has changed fundamentally in the last 30 years. The post-civil rights movement, foreign affairs activity of the Black community has shown a dramatic increase of interest, and I think that is in large part because we’ve made some gains and we can think about some other things so that we don’t have to dwell so much on domestic concerns, but we can still monitor and express ourselves on domestic concerns and at the same time be involved in foreign policy concerns. I think it was a myth and untrue to suggest in the first place that we were not interested in foreign affairs. One looks back through the record; you can go back as far as Martin Delany, and Frederick Douglass, and Garvey, and James Weldon Johnson, and the NAACP, through the ’30s and before, to show a strong interest in foreign affairs. People like Alpheus Hunton in the ’30s and ’40s, and W.E.B. DuBois, of course, were instrumental in their foreign affairs involvement. I think there’s a more general popular involvement now on the part of the Black community and certainly on the part of Black institutions. I can’t think of a single Black national organization that at its annual convention does not take a position on a variety of issues, particularly those concerning U.S. policy toward Africa and the Caribbean.

JD: A number of people have expressed, informally, some dismay that there was not more of an outpouring of protest—on the street protest—against the Grenada invasion. Do you think that the level of protest against that was up to what you would expect or up to what you would want?

RR: I think it was up to what we would expect. There are a variety of reasons for that. It was a very complex situation and I think protest in the United States may have exceeded protest in the Caribbean itself. One has to remember that polls in Grenada – well not in Grenada but in Trinidad and In Jamaica and other places – showed that by and large Caribbean people supported the invasion. The question is “Why and why were there not more protests in the United States?” First of all, I think that one cannot diminish or underestimate the impact that the killing of Maurice Bishop had on the levels of protest that we saw expressed in the wake of the invasion. The killing of Maurice Bishop, and Jacqueline Creft, and Unison Whiteman and the others were at first met by extreme reactions of anger, including my own. Maurice, Unison and others involved were both personal friends, political colleagues, and people who were very decent, idealistic human beings who dedicated their lives to the betterment of the lot of their people in Grenada. And they were summarily executed by people who took it upon themselves to wrest power away from those in whom it was duly vested. So, the Reagan administration saw an opportunity—with the successors to Bishop stripped of support—to invade; and they took that opportunity. There were many in Trinidad and Jamaica who were interested in seeing Maurice avenged without thinking about the implications of the act of the avenger. In addition to which many were confused by the invitation on the part of the Eastern Caribbean States to have the United states join with them in the invasion. So, all of these things served to muddle public reaction in the United States. Particularly given the fact that most Americans don’t know very much about anything west of Los Angeles or east of Washington, D.C. And ignorance, coupled with affection for Maurice, the barbarity of the action of his and his cabinet ministers’ elimination all taken together made for a dampened reaction to the invasion in the United States.

JD: What should be done now with Grenada? The invasion is fait accompli, it’s history, Maurice Bishop is dead; he can’t be brought back. What do you think should be done now?

RR: Well I think first, Maurice can’t be brought back, but as (former Jamaican Prime Minister) Michael Manley told me in a long discussion we had two weeks ago, “This may have produced a hundred Maurice Bishops.” Maurice Bishop did not live in vain; he left a sterling record of accomplishment and commitment to be emulated in time to come. And one has to believe that in Grenada itself, a few years from now, that Maurice Bishop having been martyred will arise as a memory and life model to be cherished by young Grenadians. I think that the first thing to do is to get the United States out and to get a self-determination of that nation’s sovereignty restored and democratic institutions restored. I don’t mean democratic institutions certainly in the way that Reagan and his people mean them, but institutions in which Grenadians themselves broadly participate in ways they see fit, meeting their own needs. So that means getting the U.S. out. That means to have the government that follows on not bullied into this policy or that policy by the mammoth to the north. The reason the U.S. invaded is what causes us concern in the first place. We know the invasion had nothing to do with the safety of American lives, but had everything to do with the Grenadian leadership not doing what they were told to do; for developing friendships as self-determination prerogatives allow nations to develop, with Cuba and with the Soviet Union but also with Europe and with the Western Bloc. Grenada was truly non-aligned. One must fight to preserve for future Grenadian government the same prerogatives of self-determination and sovereignty. It is up to them and them alone to determine what kind of political and economic system that they want to have and what kinds of relationships they want to develop with countries in the region and outside of the region, Eastern or Western Bloc countries. And failing that, what we have is a de facto restoration of colonialism in Grenada. We in the United States who are concerned about these things must make certain that the United States is not allowed to de facto re-colonize that country.

JD: You hosted Maurice Bishop in this country in May. There was a big dinner for him, your annual dinner at which he spoke. During that visit, he also met with members of the Reagan administration. It had been suggested by some that he was attempting to move closer to the United States. Is that true?

RR: He was attempting to develop a rapprochement with the United States in the same fashion that Cuba and any number of other nations in the hemisphere have attempted to do. “Move closer,” suggests that he wanted an alliance with the United States different from their friendships with other countries. They wanted normalized relations, they wanted trade, they wanted a diminution of the hostility that existed between the two countries. His trip here was an olive branch and he was rebuffed. He came and asked for a meeting with President Reagan (and was) refused, asked for a meeting with Secretary (of State George) Shultz and was refused, and was offered a meeting with the American ambassador to the OAS, Mittendorf – of course that was a rather gratuitous and harsh slap in the face to have a head of state meet with the American ambassador to the OAS – and in the last analysis he was given a meeting with William Clark, the National Security Council advisor and was rebuffed in that meeting. So that the Maurice Bishop that the Reagan administration now describes as “the martyred of the New Jewel Movement” was put in a position of weakness by the same administration that refused to normalize relations with him. Maurice did not want a lopsided foreign policy that saw him locked into relationships with eastern countries without relationships of the same sort with western nations. Certainly the Europeans responded in a sensible fashion, because the airport there and their development program have been assisted by the British and the other European economic community countries. Only the United States, the big bully of the hemisphere, treated Grenada in this fashion.

JD: Let’s move across the ocean to southern Africa. The Commonwealth nations, including two members of the contact group—the western contact group, Canada and Britain—recently said that the United States is at fault for there being no settlement to the Namibian question. This is something that you have said for a long time. “The issue of the Cubans in Angola is a phoney issue,” you’ve said and others. But now because the Commonwealth and because members of the contact group are coming out and saying that too, do you think it will change Reagan administration policy on Namibia?

RR: No, I don’t think anything will change Reagan administration policy. The only way to change Reagan administration policy is to get a new tenant at the White House, and we’ve got to dedicate ourselves to making sure that’s done next year. First of all, one has to make clear that the Reagan administration never had the independence of Namibia at the top of its agenda. That was simply a sort of smoke screen behind which the Reagan administration was cultivating a closer relationship with the Republic of South Africa. South Africa in Reagan eyes, of course, is the guardian of Western interests in that part of the world. And so the United States is much more concerned about the containment of what it calls “the spread of communism” in southern Africa than it was about the interests and freedom of the people of Namibia. They’ve been subordinated. And if there were, two months ago, any chance of persuading the people of Angola that they could do without Cuban assistance I think the invasion of Grenada completely dashed any faith they might have in U.S. good faith. The Angolans have asked for a long time should they send the Cubans home. The Cubans, who together with their own forces, are all that stand between them and a South African toppling of their government. They’ve asked who would help them with their security concerns, who would protect them from South African troops; and the United States has now answered by demonstrating that it has no more concern for the sovereignty of a small developing nation than do the South Africans. So how is the Angolan government in Luanda to put any faith in any assurances that come out of Washington after this nation has violated the OAS charter, the United Nations charter, international law, and its own domestic law in invading Grenada in the way that it did?

JD: Chester Crocker, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, sees constructive evolutionary change in southern Africa. At the same time, the policy of constructive engagement has brought about an increase in cross-border raids, an increase in forced relocations and a general crackdown on the opponents of apartheid including recently a number of whites who have been supportive of the aims of the African National Congress. The relationship between the Reagan administration and South Africa appears to be firming up apartheid. Is there anything that can be done other than getting the Reagan administration out to change that?

RR: Mr. Crocker is not stupid. He sees South Africa with the same eyes that you do. South Africans are very pleased with the responses of this administration to its activities and clearly the administration in Pretoria has moved to the right both in its relations with its neighbors as well as in its domestic policy since the Reagan administration has been in power.

Again, let’s restate the basic premise here that the United States has no intention under the Reagan leadership of changing the configuration of power in southern Africa. It does not want to dramatically reshape the sort of power structure of South Africa. It likes it perfectly fine, likes white supremacy perfectly all right. Because it is that white leadership that is so virulently anti-Communist and so much in tune with Reagan geopolitical visions of how the world ought to be ordered.

I think one can do some things to temper this kind of right wing zealousness on the part of the Reagan administration before a turn in government, but that requires at the same time an enormous effort on the part of Americans to demonstrate their displeasure with this kind of alliance that these people have formed with the South Africans. At the same time there are a good many things, Joe, that we are doing with the Congress that the Reagan administration would be hard put to turn back. One, there’s the bill offered by Rep. William Gray of Philadelphia to prohibit any new American investment in South Africa. That is a part of the Export Administration Act. Now, that passed in the House. There is no counterpart language in the Senate Export Administration Bill. But we go to conference in January, on the bill; and to keep the language in we have to persuade the Senate conferees, particularly a Republican or two, that this language is important to us. Now once we get this passed, it would be very difficult for the Reagan administration or President Reagan to veto the Export Administration Act.

One of the key people that we have to sway on this, on the conference committee is going to be Senator (John) Heinz of Pennsylvania. So we have to concentrate our lobbying on Senator Heinz and the others who are going to be on that conference committee to let them know how important this legislation is to the Black leadership and sensitive white leadership in this country. In addition, there’s the Solarz Bill that does one thing I’m not particularly interested in and opposed, but two things I very much support. It would codify, make mandatory the Sullivan Principles. Now, Rev. Leon Sullivan and I have worked very closely together on a number of things. We just happen to disagree on the strength and importance and usefulness of the Sullivan Principles. But he supports the Gray Bill and has been shoulder-to-shoulder with us on prohibition of new investment. In addition to which the Solarz Bill would prohibit the sale of Krugerrands, South African gold pieces, in the United States and would further prohibit American bank loans to the South African government. So those are two important elements of that legislation. This is also a part of the Export Administration Act and in conference we have to retain this.

We can’t have two of the elements chipped away with just the Sullivan Principles left standing. Again, Senator Heinz and others will be important in this context. Lastly, of course there is the IMF (International Monetary Fund) bill that we are going to see as a part of it anti-apartheid language. Not the language that we wanted which would mean no support possible for any American vote for an IMF loan to South Africa. But we do have language now that calls for a demonstration from the administration that South Africans have taken action to significantly reduce apartheid before getting such a loan and calling upon the South Africans to go into the private capital market before going to the IMF in the first place, and then requiring the Treasury—the Secretary of the Treasury—21 days in advance of any intent to vote for a loan for South Africa to come to the Congress and to demonstrate that these conditions have been met. Now, President Reagan will have to sign the IMF bill.

So what I’m suggesting, Joe, is that there are some things that we’ve been able to do through the Congress as parts of bills that the administration wants that net some real progress for us. But in terms of expecting anything more from this administration, of an anti-apartheid fashion; no, we’d be dreaming to expect that. These people very much favor what’s going on in South Africa.

“Randall Robinson: Third World Advocate,” The National Leader: The Weekly Newspaper Linking the Black Community Nationwide 2 no. 32 (December 15, 1983)

The global climate meeting called COP27 (the 27th Conference of Parties) will be held November 6-18 in the remote Egyptian desert resort of Sharm el Sheikh. Given the repressive nature of the Egyptian government, this gathering will likely be different from others, where there have been large, raucous protests led by civil society groups.

So, as tens of thousands of delegates—from world leaders to climate activists and journalists—descend on Sharm el Sheikh from all over the world, U.S.-based activist Medea Benjamin asked Egyptian journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous to give his thoughts about the state of Egypt today, including the situation of political prisoners, and how he expects the Egyptian government will act with the eyes of the world upon it.

For those who don’t know or have forgotten, can you give us a quick overview of the nature of the present government in Egypt today? 

The 2011 revolution against Hosni Mubarak, an uprising that was part of what has been called the Arab Spring, was very inspiring and had reverberations around the world, from the Occupy Movement in the United States to the Indignados in Spain. But that revolution was crushed in a very brutal way in 2013 by the military, led by General Abdel Fattah al Sisi–who later became president.

Right now, Egypt is ruled by a very tight and closed clique of military and intelligence officers, a circle that is completely opaque. Its decision-making process does not allow for any political participation and it does not brook any kind of dissent or opposition. It seems that the government’s answer to any problems with its citizens is to put them in prison.

There are literally tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt right now. We don’t know the exact number because there are no official statistics and this forces lawyers and the very harassed human rights groups to try to painstakingly tabulate the thousands of people who are trapped behind bars.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen Egypt build several new prisons. Just last year Sisi oversaw the opening of the Wadi al-Natrun prison complex. It’s not called a prison complex, it’s called a “rehabilitation center.” This is one of seven or eight new prisons that Sisi himself has dubbed “American-style prisons.”

These prison complexes include within them the courts and judicial buildings, so it makes a conveyor belt from the courthouse to the prison more efficient.

What is the status of this massive group of political prisoners? 

The majority of political prisoners in Egypt are held in what is called “pre-trial detention.” Under Egypt’s penal code, you can be held in prison for two years without ever being convicted of a crime. Nearly everyone held in pre-trial detention faces two identical charges: one is spreading false information and the other is belonging to a terrorist organization or an outlawed organization.

The prison conditions are very dire. If you get sick, you are in big trouble. There have been a lot of deaths from medical negligence, with prisoners dying in custody. Torture and other forms of abuse by security forces is widespread.

We’ve also seen the number of death sentences and executions skyrocket. Under the former President Mubarak, in his final decade in office, there was a de facto moratorium on executions. There were death sentences handed down but people were not being put to death. Now Egypt ranks third in the world in the number of executions.

What about other freedoms, such as freedom of assembly and freedom of the press? 

Basically, the regime sees its citizens as a nuisance or a threat. All forms of protest or public assembly are banned.

Alleged violations carry very stiff prison sentences. We’ve seen mass arrests sweeps happen whenever there’s any kind of public demonstration and we’ve also seen an unprecedented crackdown on civil society, with human rights organizations and economic justice organizations being forced to scale back their operations or basically operate underground.The people who work for them are subject to intimidation and harassment and travel bans and arrests.

We’ve also seen a massive crackdown on press freedom, a nearly complete takeover of the media landscape. Under Mubarak’s government, there was at least some opposition press, including some opposition newspapers and TV stations. But now the government very tightly controls the press through censorship and also through acquisition. The General Intelligence Services, which is the intelligence apparatus of the military, has become the largest media owner of the country. They own newspapers and TV channels. Independent media, such as the one I work for called Mada Masr, operate on the margins in a very, very hostile environment.

Egypt is the third largest jailer of journalists in the world and imprisons more journalists on charges of spreading false news than any other country in the world.

Can you talk about the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who is probably Egypt’s most famous political prisoner?

Alaa has been behind bars for much of the last decade. He is in prison ostensibly for the crime of “spreading false news,” but he is really in prison for these ideas, for being an icon and a symbol of the 2011 revolution. For the regime, imprisoning him was a way to set an example for everyone else. That’s why there has been so much campaigning to get him out.

He has been in prison under very, very difficult conditions. For two years he wasn’t allowed out of his cell and didn’t even have a mattress to sleep on. He was completely deprived of everything, including books or reading materials of any kind. For the first time, he started expressing suicidal thoughts.

But on April 2 he decided to go on a hunger strike as an act of resistance against his imprisonment. He has been on a hunger strike for seven months now. He started with just water and salt, which is a kind of hunger strike that Egyptians learned from Palestinians. Then in May, he decided to go on a Gandhi-style strike and ingest 100 calories a day–which is a spoonful of honey in some tea. An average adult needs 2,000 calories a day, so it’s very meager.

But he just sent a letter to his family saying that he was going back to a full hunger strike and on November 6, on the eve of the COP meeting, he’s going to stop drinking water. This is extremely serious because the body cannot last without water for more than a few days.

So he is calling on all of us on the outside to organize, because either he will die in prison or he will be released. What he is doing is incredibly brave. He is using his body, the only thing he has agency over, to organize and to push us on the outside to do more.

How do these repressed civil society leaders view the fact that Egypt is playing host to COP27? 

It was very disheartening for a lot of people in Egypt who work for human rights and justice and democracy when Egypt was granted the right to host the conference. But Egyptian civil society has not called on the international community to boycott the COP meeting; they have called for the plight of political prisoners and the lack of human rights to be linked to the climate discussions and not ignored.

They want a spotlight to be placed on the thousands of political prisoners like Alaa, like Abdel Moneim Aboul Foitouh, a former presidential candidate, like Mohamed Oxygen, a blogger, like Marwa Arafa, who is an activist from Alexandria.

Unfortunately, hosting this meeting has given the government a great opportunity to remake its image. It has allowed the government to try to position itself as the voice for the Global South and the negotiator trying to unlock billions of dollars a year in climate financing from the Global North.

Of course the issue of climate reparations to the Global South is very important. It needs to be discussed and taken seriously. But how can you give climate reparations to a country like Egypt when you know the money will mostly be spent on bolstering this repressive, polluting state? As Naomi Klein said in her great article Greenwashing a Police State, the summit is going beyond greenwashing a polluting state to greenwashing a police state.

So what do you think we can expect to see in Sharm el Sheikh? Will the usual protests that happen at every COP, both inside and outside the official halls, be allowed? 

I think what we are going to see in Sharm el Sheikh is a carefully managed theater. We all know the problems with the UN Climate Summits. There are a lot of negotiations and climate diplomacy, but rarely do they amount to anything concrete and binding. But they do serve as an important place for networking and convergence for different groups in the climate justice movement, an opportunity for them to come together to organize. It has also been a time for these groups to show their opposition to the inaction by those in power, with creative, vigorous protests both inside and outside the conference.

This will not be the case this year. Sharm el Sheikh is a resort in Sinai that literally has a wall around it. It can and will be very tightly controlled. From what we understand, there is a special space that has been designated for protests that has been built out near a highway, far away from the conference center and any signs of life. So how effective will it be to hold protests there?

This is why people like Greta Thunberg are not going. Many activists have problems with the structure of the COP itself but it is even worse in Egypt where the ability to use it as a convergence space for dissent will be effectively shut down.

But more importantly, the members of Egyptian civil society, including the allies and environmental groups that are critical of the government, will not be allowed to attend. In a departure from UN rules, those groups that manage to participate will have been vetted and approved by the government and will have to be very careful about how they operate. Other Egyptians who should be there are unfortunately in prison or are subject to various forms of repression and harassment.

Should foreigners also worry about the Egyptian government surveilling them? 

The entire conference will be very highly surveilled. The government created this app that you can download to use as a guide for the conference. But to do that, you have to put in your full name, phone number, email address, passport number and nationality, and you have to enable location tracking. Amnesty International technology specialists have reviewed the app and flagged all these concerns about surveillance and how the app can use the camera and microphone and location data and bluetooth.

What environmental issues related to Egypt will the government allow to be discussed, and what will be off limits? 

Environmental issues that will be allowed are issues such as trash collection, recycling, renewable energy and climate finance, which is a big issue for Egypt and for the Global South.

Environmental issues that implicate the government and military will not be tolerated. Take the issue of coal–something the environmental community is very critical of. That will be off limits because coal imports, much of it coming from the United States, have risen over the past several years, driven by the strong demand from the cement sector. Egypt’s largest importer of coal is also the largest cement producer, and that’s the El-Arish Cement Company that was built in 2016 by none other than the Egyptian military.

We’ve seen massive amounts of cement poured into Egypt’s natural environment over the past several years. The government has built nearly 1,000 bridges and tunnels, destroying acres and acres of green space and cutting down thousands of trees. They have gone on a crazy construction spree, building a slew of new neighborhoods and cities, including a new administrative capital in the desert just outside of Cairo. But no criticism of these projects has been or will be tolerated.

Then there is dirty energy production. Egypt, Africa’s second largest gas producer, is scaling up its oil and gas production and exports, which will mean further profits for the military and intelligence sectors involved in this. These projects that are harmful to the environment but profitable for the military will be off the agenda.

The Egyptian military is entrenched in every part of the Egyptian state. Military owned enterprises produce everything from fertilizers to baby food to cement. They operate hotels; they are the largest owner of land in Egypt. So any kind of industrial pollution or environmental harm from areas such as construction, tourism, development and agribusiness will not be tolerated at COP.

We have heard that the crackdown on Egyptians in anticipation of this global gathering has already begun. Is that true? 

Yes, we’ve already seen an intensified crackdown and a massive arrest sweep in the run-up to the climate summit. There are arbitrary stop and searches, and random security checkpoints. They open your Facebook and WhatsApp, and they look through it. If they find content that they find problematic, they arrest you.

Hundreds of people have been arrested, by some counts 500 to 600. They have been arrested from their homes, off the streets, from their workplaces.

And these searches and arrests are not restricted just to Egyptians. The other day there was an Indian climate activist, Ajit Rajagopal, was arrested shortly after setting off on an eight-day walk from Cairo to Sharm el Sheikh as part of a global campaign to raise awareness about the climate crisis.

He was detained in Cairo, questioned for hours and held overnight. He called an Egyptian lawyer friend, who came to the police station to help him. They detained the lawyer as well, and held him overnight.

There have been calls for protests on November 11, or 11/11. Do you think people in Egypt will come out on the streets? 

It is unclear where these protest calls started but I think it was started by people outside Egypt. I would be surprised if people come out on the streets given the level of repression we’ve been seeing these days but you never know.

The security apparatus was very surprised in September 2019 when a former military contractor turned whistleblower exposed videos showing army corruption. These videos went viral. The whistleblower called for protests but he was outside Egypt in self-imposed exile in Spain.

There were some protests, not very big but significant. And what was the government response? Massive arrests, the most massive sweep since Sisi came to power with over 4,000 people detained. They arrested all kinds of people–everyone who had been arrested before and a lot of other people. With that kind of repression, it’s hard to say if mobilizing people to go to the streets is the right thing to do.

The government is also particularly paranoid because the economic situation is so bad. The Egyptian currency has lost 30 percent of its value since the beginning of the year, precipitated by a variety of factors, including the war in Ukraine, since Egypt was getting so much of its wheat from Ukraine. Inflation is out of control. People are getting poorer and poorer. So that, combined with these calls for protests, have prompted the preemptive crackdown.

So I don’t know if people will defy the government and go out into the streets. But I gave up trying to predict anything in Egypt a long time ago. You just never know what is going to happen.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.