On January 25, 2011, Egyptians took to the streets demanding a change in their autocratic, unresponsive and increasingly corrupt government.
After eighteen days of protests, a brutal crackdown on demonstrators and a shutdown of the Internet, President Mubarak stepped down.
Mubarak had built a regime on violence, arbitrary detention of activists, and repression. He and his supporters staged brazenly rigged parliamentary elections in November 2010 and have brutally repressed its citizens.
Mubarak and his regime relied on U.S. assistance to deny the Egyptian people basic rights and freedoms. This cannot continue during the transition to elections. U.S. leadership must stand with the Egyptian people, and not just the next despot.
Listen to Esraa Abdel Fattah, an Egyptian human rights activist and co-founder of the April 6th youth movement, discuss recent developments in Egypt with Human Right’s First’s Neil Hicks, international policy advisor for Human Rights First, on the Brian Lehrer Show.
