Cairo’s Tahrir Square: Five months later

CAIRO – The clashes in Tahrir Square are big news here and by all accounts mark a significant turning point in post-revolution Egypt.

In this video shot by PBS FRONTLINE cameraman Tim Grucza you get a sense of the frustration of the protesters and the chaos that ensued on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

It’s been quieter here today, but protest tents have sprouted up again. Civilians are directing traffic around the square and not permitting police anywhere near Tahrir, which is Arabic for "Liberation." And the country is bracing for calls for large demonstrations tomorrow, after the Friday prayers.

I have to say it’s good to be back out on the streets of Cairo, even it is a bit sad to see the place descending back into chaos and clashes in which people are getting hurt. The story is still riveting and there is still a great deal of hope here that Egypt is on its way to a better future. 

During the revolution, I worked with Grucza and the FRONTLINE team and we are back here together doing a follow-up segment. We’ve been returning to find out where the people we profiled stand today compared to those heady days of the “January 25 Revolution.”

And we are asking whether you can even call the 18 days in January and February that toppled Hosni Mubarak a revolution. 

A revolution, by definition, overturns a political system. So far, what we are seeing in Egypt is that a president was forced to step down and the military was swept into power in, what some more cynical observers refer to as, a military coup by stealth.

The protesters who put everything on the line to stay in the streets to end the tyranny of Mubarak insist on calling it a revolution, and it will be up to them to prove that this chapter in the country’s history is indeed a revolution.

What cynics and protesters seem to agree on is that there is a volatile mix of pent-up rage over the frustrating fact that the same institutions are in place in Egypt and that the government arrogance and brutality, particularly of the police, are creeping back into daily life.

By the end of the day, it seems that this is what the Tuesday-into-Wednesday protests were all about. That, and the frustration that there has been no justice for the families of the 800 people who were killed in the clashes. Relatively few police have been arrested or even investigated for the deaths. There is also mounting frustration with not just justice denied, but also justice delayed.

This is also true of the delayed sentencing hearing of the police convicted in the case of Khalid Said, the teenager who was tortured and killed in June of 2010 in Alexandria for being critical of the police in his blog.

And here’s a footnote to the footage Grucza shot of that post-revolutionary spasm of violence:

The maroon ‘bandanas’ that Tim Grucza and our Egyptian colleague Mohannad Sandry and I are wearing to shield against the tear gas are actually hotel napkins that we lifted right off the table as we rushed to see what was unfolding in the square. I didn’t want you to think that we color-coordinated our riot gear. And we might look like we were bravely marching forward into the heat of battle, but believe me when ran like hell when the flash grenades and rubber bullets started going off. Oh, and here’s a free tip to would-be revolutionaries: douse whatever you are using to cover your nose and mouth with 7-Up. Yes, 7-Up as in the soda. Tahrir veterans insist it is a proven deterrent to tear gas. Not sure about the science of that, but it seems to work for us.