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Egypt’s interim president, Adly Mansour, signed into law the controversial anti-protest law that human rights groups say will “severely curtail freedom of assembly, and could prohibit the kinds of mass demonstrations that forced presidents Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi from power.” The law now requires protesters to obtain seven separate permissions prior to taking to the streets. The law also bans overnight sit-ins such as the Tahrir Square protests of early 2011. The BBC reports that the law also “bans any unsanctioned gatherings – either in public or in private – of 10 or more people, and will give the police the final say on whether a protest can take place,” calling the law “just as restrictive as a similar protest bill debated and later discarded under Morsi.”
Gamal Eid, the director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information argued that the “new law compared unfavourably with repressive legislation drafted while Egypt was still a British protectorate,” continuing, “it’s weird that the colonialists would have a law that is more just than the supposedly post-revolutionary one.” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the law “would effectively give the police carte blanche to ban protest in Egypt” and, “could severely restrict the freedom of assembly of political parties and nongovernmental groups.” HRW added that the law is “an important indicator” of how much space the new government is going to allow for political debate in Egypt.
Activists plan to request permission to protest against the new law as a first step in testing the new restrictions. Mohamed Adel, a founding member of the April 6 Youth Movement, and Ali Esam, of the Constitution Party, have said that they will request a protest permit at a Cairo police station on Monday. Adel told Ahram Online, “We want to organise a protest against the protest law in Tahrir Square on the first day of December,” and, “if the request for a permit is rejected, it will be a clear message on how repressive this law is.”
