(AFP PHOTO/AHMED TARANH)
By Jake Lippincott
The Freedom for the Brave initiative on Saturday called on the interim government to release incarcerated revolutionaries and pledged that though the revolution “might stumble” it will continue until its demands are met.
The initiative was formed after January 2014 when the interim government expanded its crackdown against Islamist activists and began conducting mass arrests against secular activists as well. The statement explicitly calls for the release of prominent secular activists Alaa Abdel Fattah, Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma, Hassan Mustafa, Nazli Hussein, Mahienour Al-Masry and Buhairi Ishta, as well as the “many unknown revolutionaries” who are “paying the price for demanding bread, freedom and social justice.”
The statement accuses the interim government of wanting to “punish” the revolutionaries for “opposing dictatorship and trying to achieve the goals of the revolution” and wants to “send the strong message that the revolution is over, and that the revolutionaries belong in prison, not in the street.” According to the statement, the interim government demands unquestioned obedience and is using detentions and torture to stifle any dissent.
The statement ends on a defiant tone saying that the first thing the released revolutionaries will do after their release is to go out in the street and “chant against the regime and its repression.”
The statement ends by saying the revolution “will continue until its demands are met. Many revolutionaries are imprisoned, but they will come out strengthened and hardened.”
