Mohamed Abdullah - Cairo

After years of pursuing and freezing her work and keeping her money, thousands of villages and millions of poor people in Egypt lack the societal and relief role that civil and charitable societies used to play, and the need for them has become greater in light of what the poor people in Egypt suffer due to the economic effects of the spread of the Corona virus.

The Egyptian government launched a fundraising campaign for those affected by the Corona crisis, but called for all campaign funds to be directed to the "Long Live Egypt" fund supervised by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and was launched in 2014 to raise 100 billion pounds, but it has not achieved its goal yet.

Yesterday, the Egyptian Ministry of Health announced that the total number of infections that were registered in Egypt with the new Corona virus is 865 cases, including 201 cases that were cured and discharged from the isolation hospital, and 58 deaths.


Fight civil action

While people miss the contributions of the NGOs, the memory returns to them days after the July 3, 2013 coup led by the current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi when he was Minister of Defense, as one of the first actions of the coup was to dissolve hundreds of NGOs and freeze their assets based on the ruling of the Court of Things Urgent issued in September 2013, dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood and the reservation of its funds.

Since then, the authorities have expanded the decision to dissolve and freeze to include other associations due to their association with the Brotherhood to which the late President Mohamed Morsi belonged, and they numbered 1055 associations, and the decision denied millions of ordinary people the benefit of the services of those health, educational and charitable societies as well.

The activities of these societies focused on caring for the poor and providing health, educational, and charitable services, such as monthly financial subsidies, preparing brides for marriage, distributing clothing and winter blankets to the needy, feeding food, and providing relief to the poor, whether in normal or difficult circumstances.

Among the most famous of those societies working in the medical field, the Islamic Medical Association included more than 38 hospitals and clinics, 10 specialized centers for dialysis and 12 pharmacies, treating more than 3 million patients, and performed more than 75 thousand surgeries annually, and its branches are concentrated in poor popular areas , Where the poor constitute the majority of the beneficiaries of their services.


Suspicion of charitable work

Since the military coup, charitable work - even individual and voluntary - has become a security suspicion, which has led to its retreat and its confinement to the state and its affiliated societies or that are going according to its policy, and it has been unable to fill the void left by more than 1300 charities with its branches, hundreds of companies and schools, as well About the thousands of people whose money was confiscated and seized by the government, in addition to stopping charitable activities in small mosques for fear of security prosecutions.

These associations have been playing an integral role for the government for decades, due to the limited and limited government capabilities, by encouraging charitable work, especially in Upper Egypt and the poor areas of Cairo and rural governorates, which provided a great umbrella for millions of poor people the state was unable to reach (32 million people according to Official data for 2018).

Now, after the Corona pandemic crisis, the imposition of a partial curfew, the closure of cafes and restaurants, the disruption of tourism, the suspension or reduction of the number of workers in the private sector, and the informal economy, which constitutes 40% of the Egyptian economy, has been damaged, the need for the role of these associations has become greater, but it no longer exists As it was before 2013.


Nationalization of civil work

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood blames the founder of the Humanitarian Relief Committee of the Egyptian Medical Syndicate Ashraf Abdel Ghaffar, "The Egyptian authorities are responsible for eliminating many civil societies, intimidating and pursuing their workers, and not allowing any role or charitable effort provided by others even if they fail to do it."

Abdel Ghaffar asserted, in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, that the system "uses charitable work for purely political goals and is not charitable, and it is not acceptable for anyone else to block the places of disability caused by economic and natural crises, because it is a totalitarian dictatorial regime that seeks to collect all things in its grip."

In turn, the head of the Egyptian Department at Hurriyat Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Islam El-Ghamry, said that "civil society represented a significant social backdrop in support of the poor and needy, but since the advent of the July 3 regime, its first goal was to dry up the charitable civil work under the pretext of fighting the Brotherhood, which deprived Millions of poor people from the windows and doors of goodness. "

Al-Ghamri explained to Al-Jazeera Net that the system "is not able to fill the void left by the civil societies, nor is it to let civil society institutions play their role, and the Corona pandemic has become revealing and scandalous to the regime's deficit, which prompts the need to return again to play the role that others cannot fill."


Long live Egypt as an alternative

In his turn, the writer and journalist and researcher on religious affairs, Mohamed Abdel Shakour, commented, "The state has tried to nationalize the civil work by creating what is known as the Viva Egypt Fund, which does not know any aspect of spending the money that reaches it, despite the almost obligatory contributions from businessmen, which led to people's reluctance. From donating to state-supervised entities. "

Abdel Shakour added to Al-Jazeera Net that most of the civil societies - at the heart of which are the Islamic trend societies - no longer have a role after their reservation and management by the state, because of the loss of funding sources and the decline in their role from charitable to functional, which made millions of affected people lose their impact after being affected by the effects of Corona pandemic, and are in urgent need of health, financial and social assistance.