A yellow vest has put Mohamed Ramadan in jail. The lawyer from Alexandria had posed on Facebook in a safety vest and solidarized with the protesters in France. The prosecution in the Egyptian port city has therefore this week imposed a 15-day pre-trial detention on Ramadan.

The investigators accuse him, according to his defender Mahienour el-Massry "the support of a terrorist group" because he had planned protests in Egypt on the model of the French "yellow west" movement.

In order to prevent other Egyptians from following Ramadan's example, the authorities have virtually banned the sale of yellow vests in the country. Wholesalers and shopkeepers were ordered to sell only safety vests to customers who submit a police clearance. If Egyptians want to buy yellow vests without explicit permission, sellers must report that.

The regulation will apply until the end of next month: On January 25, the beginning of the uprising against Husni Mubarak for the eighth time. Apparently, the regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi fears that around the anniversary, thousands of Egyptians in yellow west could go out on the streets against the government.

REUTERS

Yellow vest in shop window in Cairo

But there are currently no signs at all. Sisi has jailed or put under house arrest tens of thousands of Islamist and secular opposition activists since his military coup in 2013, and demonstrations against the government are banned. Any Egyptian who openly raises his voice against the head of state knows that he can spend years in prison for it.

Muslim Brothers in Yellow Vests?

Nevertheless, the regime in Cairo is nervous. The co-mediated media are therefore trying to portray the "yellow west" protests in France as a riot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan Islamists from the poor suburbs are behind the riots. "The way in which these protests take place undoubtedly shows that the Muslim Brotherhood is behind it," writes the daily al-Masry al-Yaum.

The coverage in the Egyptian media focuses on the looting and destruction in Paris. Out of many articles there is open malicious glee: "Europeans are always talking about demonstrators' human rights and do not care about national security and now they can drink their own poison," writes "al-Masry al-Yaum".

AFP

Protester in France

Egypt's media equates the protests with the Arab Spring of 2011. Reporting is therefore also the attempt to reinterpret the uprising of that time, in an excess of violence and vandalism, which was stopped only by the intervention of the army under Sisi in the summer of 2013.

Clumsy false reports

The Arab service of the Russian propaganda station RT, Egyptian media and supporters of the dictator do not shy away from clumsy false reports. So they spread a nearly two-minute video showing a woman in camouflage and a yellow vest.

"A French policewoman cries and asks the demonstrators to kill her instead of destroying Paris, as the Arabs did with their nations," they report on the video. In fact, the clip shows a demonstrator pleading with policemen not to attack the protesters. There is no talk of the Arab states.

HAIDER AL-ASSADEE / EPA-EFE / REX

Protesters in yellow west in Basra

In fact, until now there is only one Arab country where demonstrators in yellow west have shown. At the beginning of December, yellow-vests moved in front of the governor's palace in Stast Basra, southern Iraq. There, people have been demonstrating for months against the deteriorating living conditions and the indifference of the government. With the acquisition of the "yellow west" symbolism, they now hope to get more international attention.