The Battle of Egyptian Football Fans Against Dullness |
by Dalia Abd El-Hameed | published December 3, 2014 Middle East Research and Information Project
▻http://www.merip.org/battle-egyptian-football-fans-against-dullness
Ultras, or organized groups of football fans, represented an influential faction of the Egyptian revolutionary multitude in 2011. The ultras’ long experience of street fights with police at stadiums aided the revolutionaries in achieving many victories over riot cops in the early days of the January 25 uprising and subsequently. And the ultras’ combat prowess was not their only contribution to the uprising. More important was the carnivalesque character of their resistance, which transformed the protest scene into something more colorful, vital, choreographed and performative.
In the years since the January 25 uprising, the state has taken punitive measures against all of the main participants. Journalists find themselves persecuted, detained and even killed; human rights defenders are defamed and threatened, their activities restricted; political activists are detained without charge or, when indicted, subjected to harsh penalties in trials described as travesties of justice. All of this is happening amidst a sweeping crackdown on gender and religious non-conformists.
