The killing of Awais al-Rawi, son of the town of Awamiya in Luxor, southern Egypt, by a police officer during a raid on his home was a powerful and loud tributary of the September 20 protests that have continued since that date to demand the departure of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, which has focused in the villages of Egypt and the outskirts of Cairo.

The river is gaining momentum day after day due to the circumstances of the incident, which activists and social media pioneers consider an embodiment of the "tyranny, power and injustice" of the Egyptian police on the one hand, and the courage, valor and dignity of the simple Egyptian citizen on the other hand.

This comes amid expectations that the tributary that emanated from the river of popular protests will turn into an alternative or parallel center to the storm of demonstrations, which continued, especially in many villages of the country, in protest against the miserable conditions that Egyptians live in at all levels.

Security forces shot Aweys Al-Rawi after an altercation between her and his father during a raid on their home, on Al-Awamiya Island in Luxor, to search for one of his relatives, claiming his participation in anti-Sisi demonstrations last Friday.

According to activists, the police officer assaulted the father and slapped him in the face, so Awais did not give the order and returned the slap to the officer who removed his weapon and shot him to kill him.

In continuation of the policy of abuse against journalists who tried to cover the protests and their tributaries across the country, the security forces arrested Basma Mustafa, who works for the independent news website Al-Mina, because of her coverage of the killing of Awais Al-Rawi, and the State Security Prosecution decided to imprison her for 15 days pending investigation on the charge of "joining To a terrorist group and spreading false news. "

Yesterday morning, at 11:15 AM, Basma Mustafa made a phone call in which she said that a police officer had stopped her in the city of Luxor, looked at her ID card, and then allowed her to continue her walk, but he kept following her.

That was her last call, and then she disappeared. # Press_Not_crime https://t.co/4axEz9Donl

- The platform (@Almanassa_AR) October 4, 2020

He broke the collar of silence

In clear confusion, the Ministry of Interior and the Public Prosecution were silent about the incident, and the authority’s media ignored it completely, in an attempt to cool the incident that has been burning for days, amid questions whether what calms matters is the policy of ignoring and official blackout of state agencies, or redressing the dead, holding those responsible, and raising Law.

But the incident prompted many Egyptian opposition figures inside to speak after a long silence, and their reluctance to comment on the protests against Sisi, and commenting on the killing of the narrator was a way out or a real outlet for them to express their views.

Former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi described the narrator as a "martyr of dignity," and in a post on his Facebook page, he accused the authority of being "an authority afflicted with atrophy of the political mind and the swelling of the security muscles provoking the volcano of muffled anger to explode."

Lawyer Samir Sabry, a supporter of the authority and known for submitting complaints against opponents, did not wait, as he initiated a complaint to the Public Prosecutor against Sabahi, accusing him of inciting sedition and exploiting any political event to insult the state.

Narrator bomb

For its part, political activist Sawsan Gharib considered that the killing of the narrator constitutes a real dilemma for the Egyptian regime, and is tantamount to pouring oil on the fire, especially since the authority insisted on denying the existence of any popular movement.

Sawsan added in a statement to Al-Jazeera Net, "Now, after the repeated killing of a citizen by the bullets of a police officer, and with Sisi's famous saying," There is no officer who will be punished, "the system has two options, the first is to prosecute the officer, even if it is a sham, and it is not in the interest of the regime that refuses to sacrifice its security arms. ".

As for the second option, according to Sawsan, it is silence about the incident and ignoring it, and the continuation of the movement and popular anger, especially since the incident took place in Upper Egypt where customary trials are taking place, and retribution is part of their culture, noting that trying to cool the incident by ignoring it in the media makes it unlikely that the authorities punish the killer.

Fury awaits the spark

Apart from the power options, the former Egyptian politician and parliamentarian Imad al-Din Muhammad expected that the incident would further ignite the accumulated popular anger, saying that the accident occurred in a climate of congestion due to the deterioration of living conditions and the demolition of citizens' homes, and then the government’s demand of real estate owners to reconcile with the state in return for sums. They exceeded their capabilities, and also after the contractor Muhammad Ali's call to continue the demonstrations.

Regarding the reason for the official silence about the incident, the former parliamentarian emphasized that the regime knows that the gasoline slick in Egypt is expanding little by little, and is only waiting for the spark, so the regime did not want to make the killing of the narrator the spark that ignites the fire of the revolution, so he remained completely silent about this accident. It is published or commented on by the Egyptian media.

In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, the Egyptian politician pointed out that the killing of the narrator is not the first, but what is new is the emergence of pages on the social networking site named "Sons of Awamiya" and "We are all Awais al-Rawi", and the latter published a statement vowing revenge, which makes the Sisi regime fearful Wider confrontations with the police, and Aweys Al-Rawi becomes an icon of the new movement, similar to "Khaled Saeed," who was the icon of the January 25, 2011 revolution.