(AFP Photo)
The 6 April Youth Movement (Democratic Front) said the decree referring those accused of crimes against the state’s “vital” facilities to military prosecution is a new attempt to strangle freedom.
In a Tuesday statement, the movement said the law is a continuation of military control of the state and an expansion of the powers of the military judiciary.
The law is unrelated to the Friday attacks in Sinai that left 30 people dead, nor with any other incident, the movement’s statement said. The law is a new mechanism of military control over the state, and to try its opponents without any restriction, and not to control terrorism, according to 6 April.
The current regime imagines it has the ability to confront terrorism through security procedures, the issuance of laws that prohibit demonstrations, narrowing freedoms, and using media to distort those who oppose it. This will lead to more distress toward the system and its resistance by all possible means, which will increase chaos and create a better environment for terrorism.
The movement said that social justice, freedoms, and national independence are the only path to fight terrorism and develop the country.
“After this law, and following the suppression of journalists, banning political discussions in universities, the suppression of students, and issuance of the Protest Law, freedom of expression in Egypt is about to become a thing of the past,” the movement said.
President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi issued the decree on Monday.
Among the facilities “protected…against terrorist attacks” by the new law are “stations, power networks and towers, gas and oil fields, rail lines, road networks, bridges”.
The law “[pertains] to the protection of vital and public facilities” according to a Monday presidential statement, which added that the armed forces and police will coordinate to protect these facilities.
Describing the regime as a dictatorship, the statement said that it monopolises nationalism and removes it from those seen as unworthy.
