A group of Egyptian students and community members gathered in front of the Ralph Brown Draughon library yesterday to express their feelings about the political state of their country.
The demonstration was both a commemoration for the one-year anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution and a protest against the way Egyptian military has handled the country since.
"You know, today it has been a year exactly since our revolution, so we have achieved some things like making a parliament and doing some stuff," said Mariam Azzam, Auburn community member, "but at the same time we have a long way to go."
The Egyptian military, which came into power after Egyptian president Mubarak was deposed, promised to relinquish after six months, Azzam said. One year later, the military is still in control.
"So the military have been doing--they were in charge since last year, since Mubarak left--so they have been doing many weird stuff, like killing people and putting civilians, normal civilians, in military jail, which is very weird, you know," Azzam said.
Azzam said the military has attacked the reputation of prominent revolutionary activists, failed to punish anyone who committed murder during the revolution and attempted to cause animosity between Muslims and Christians in Egypt.
"So we are doing that to support our injured fellows, we are doing that to say that we will accept no lying," Azzam said.
The group, which remained outside the library between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., showed its opposition to the Egyptian military rule by displaying flags, signs and pictures of Egyptian citizens who had been injured during or after the revolution.
"Also we came here to say that revolution is still on," Azzam said. "We are completing it. We just removed the head of corruption, but you know the corruption was everywhere, like a spider. Really, really everywhere. We are living here, we are very torn because we want to go to our country and be there, but we just want to say that we love our country and we will remain persistent and resilient until all our goals are achieved."
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
