More than 15 dead on the 4th anniversary of Egypt’s revolution

CAIRO, Egypt — This morning the streets of downtown Cairo were eerily quiet.

Not the easy calm of Friday mornings, Egypt's weekend, when people are at home sleeping after a week’s work or eating a leisurely lunch with their families. But the quiet of waiting.

Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of Egypt's 2011 revolt that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Authorities had tightened security in Cairo and other cities after Islamists called for protests against the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former army chief who ousted his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The static of a police walkie-talkie broke the silence. People walked in streets normally clogged with cars. Police officers watched them through the slits in their black balaclavas.

As the afternoon wore on the sounds of gunfire and ambulance sirens could be heard downtown. Police officers ran down side streets, hands on their weapons.

More than 15 demonstrators have been reported dead.

Tensions surged ahead of the anniversary, with the killings of two female demonstrators.

On Friday in Egypt’s Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Sondos Reda Abu Bakr, a 17-year-old high school student, was killed during a demonstration in which she was participating, allegedly with Islamist protesters.

The following day Shaimaa al-Sabbagh, 32, was shot as she took part in a Socialist Popular Alliance party delegation putting flowers on Tahrir square to commemorate the thousands that have died in the last four years. She leaves behind a 5-year-old child.

“She was one of the purest young people,” said Medhat al-Zeid, vice president of Socialist Popular Alliance at a press conference at the party headquarters Sunday. “God grant her family patience, she was a rare personality.”

He said she was often on the front lines of demonstrations in Alexandria and Cairo and did much work in Egypt’s slums and with workers’ movements.

In 2009, the world was shocked when images flooded the internet of Neda Agha-Soltan, bleeding to death after being shot in the neck during a pro-democracy protest in Tehran.

These days in Egypt protesters are routinely killed in clashes with the police, particularly since a draconian law was introduced outlawing protests without a permit.

The fact that these two were women, and liberal in El-Sabbagh's case, meant that their deaths received a bit more attention.

“The protest law does not say if someone is protesting, you kill them,” said Khaled Dawoud, spokesman of the Dostour Party.

El-Sabbagh was not even demonstrating against the state.

“Our young people, those who went out yesterday, are politically aware. They stuck to slogans about bread, freedom and social justice. They were careful not to chant against the police or the Interior Ministry or the army,” said al-Zeid, “the message is that there’s a veto on anyone going out on the street.”

The prosecutor general has launched an investigation into the incident. But in a country in which thousands have died at the hands of the security forces, only a handful of whom have seen the inside of a jail cell, there is little public confidence that an investigation will lead anywhere and a culture of impunity persists.

“This is the criminal action of an institution that considers itself above all accountability,” said Hala Shukrallah, head of the Dostour Party.

In past incidents the police have actively worked to insulate themselves from legal repercussions.

In August a police general told the Associated Press that before the dispersal of the protests at Rabaa el-Adaweya and el-Nahdha that left over 800 dead, the troops were brought ammunition from multiple storehouses and ammunition release logs were suppressed to ensure that they could not be used as evidence in the event that police were prosecuted for their actions, a practice left over from the time of Mubarak.

“We explained to them [the troops] self-defense is legitimate and they will not be subjected to prosecution later on," the general told the AP.

Earlier in the week, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi received a standing ovation when he spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos.