Olga Rodríguez is co-screenwriter of Francisco (León, Spain, 1975), freelance journalist, writer, and now in theaters En los margenes (Hegian). Eldiario.es, SER and CNN, among other means. An expert in the Arab world has been monitoring what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa for over 25 years.

In his post-film he said that a free and democratic Egypt would change the whole region. Why is Egypt so important in the Arab world?

It is the most populous country in the Arab world, 40 per cent of the population lives in Egypt. It establishes regional order and has the most populated army of the Arab countries in the region. The Suez canal passes through Egyptian lands, an important commercial maritime gateway linking the East with the West. In the region there is a change when in 1979 Egypt decides to sign peace with Israel through Camp David agreements. From that point on, a certain balance of power is created, and Israel manages to leave an enemy that concerned it. Then the Arab countries separated according to their position with Israel.

It is a country with a very young population, with great strength and enthusiasm. Although they are middle-low class, the inhabitants of large cities are very clothed. The new generations come with strength and have grown up within the ideas of solidarity with Palestine. Therefore, a free and democratic Egypt would certainly change a lot in the region.

What has influenced the Egyptian people to have ideas of solidarity with Palestine?

There have always been public positions, but in 2000 the youth demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian people began. At that time the Second Palestinian Intifada broke out. In a regime such as the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak [1981-2011], in which demonstrations of demonstration or protest of any kind were prohibited, repression was great, and many young people went out into the street and said: “I don’t care, I risk myself,” shaking Palestinian flags. They began to manifest themselves massively, with what this implies, because after each demonstration there were arrests, beatings... but they were still coming out on the street.

There came a time when Hosni Mubara began to ignore a little. This has been interpreted as follows: if they have dissatisfaction, they should be channelled through it, which is ultimately an external issue, and not internal issues. But in fact, this caused people to become more and more aware. I know many activists who have been key in the last twenty years, and they all tell me: “We started from Palestine, and when we learned about this, when we became interested in it, when we expressed our solidarity with the Palestinian people, we began to realize our own injustices.” They then began to delve into other issues that had more direct consequences on them – although the Palestinian question is one way or another across Arab territory, for example, because many Palestinian refugees live in neighbouring countries. That was the origin of everything.

The Egyptian revolutions lived from yourself. You said that you have never lived the same. Why?

Because it was a real collective pregnancy. It is clear that 2011 does not come out of nowhere. We observed that, from 2000 to 2011, various militancy groups had been organizing, on the one hand, middle class youth in the city and, on the other hand, classes of workers in industrial areas. We saw how those people got together and started coordinating. When Egyptian rebellions exploded, most media didn’t count well. For starters, they put their eyes on Tahrir Square, like nothing happens anywhere else. And those insurrections would not have lasted if there had been no strikes. There were massive closures of factories, shops, companies... The strength of the demonstrators and the people who camped in many places is unquestionable, but the strikes of the factory workers were key. Many people broke the fear for the first time. How young people lived from cities like Alexandria or Kairo, these people will never be like before. Yes, they have stalled rebellions, the subsequent repression has been savage, but yet they have a view of freedom, life and self, which they would not have had if they had not lived it.

The documentary reflects how women raised their voices more than ever before. What place did they have in the uprisings?

They were key, from different groups. The workers gathered in the factories in the clandestine unions, and in 2008 it was the women who joined the factories claiming “Here are the women, where are the men”, saying “this we are going to stop, gentlemen”. And they stopped, and that was the gun shot to get out. Strikes from Mahalla al Kubra, industrial [rural areas but with factories].

Also feminist organizations, left-wing organizations... Also, in the Islamic movements there were women who wanted to manifest, and although the call of the Imam was to “stay in your homes”, they themselves said “neither think”. Many of them were leaders.

This image is very different from the one sold here. Why has the idea come here that Arab women are submissive and we have not seen their real strength?

Unfortunately, in general, there is a great lack of knowledge in relation to the Arab and Muslim world. For example, they identify as if Arabic and Muslim were equal, but there are Arab Christians, atheists ... Furthermore, I believe that we are in the era of stereotypes, of prejudice, of the dehumanization of the “others”, which we can also find here. There are certain powers that are interested in their societies seeing these countries as a mass of submissive and oppressed women. It is true that these women have no freedoms and they have a long way to go – to us as we are here, although we are in another situation, because fortunately we have made more progress.

There is a hegemonic discourse that presents [the Arab world] as a mass of barbaric, fundamentalist and dangerous men to better justify military and economic interventions in these territories. If they really manage to convince their people that all Arab-Muslim people are dangerous and that they are still in the caves, it is easier to justify absolutely unjustifiable things. That is why I believe that in this time of darkness we must be our guide to embrace humanization in the face of those discourses that seek to dehumanize the “others”.

The women that appear in the documentary are very aware, very combative and militant. Do they represent all women in Egypt or just a small group?

I flipped it. From the year 2000 until now I have been linked to Egypt, and I have been amazed over and over again to see how many women of this kind are in cities and industrial areas. There are many like you saw in the movie.

The film begins with harsh images showing and describing the sexual assaults suffered by women in the 2013 protests, on the street, among people, and of which several groups were victims. For four days, 187 sexual assaults were reported and many others were not reported. How did you respond to this barbarity?

The protagonist counts the sexual assaults of 2013 and perhaps the dimension of the problem is not understood. At that time there were Muslim Brotherhood in power, and it is understood that there was impunity. But that was before, in the 2011 uprisings there were hundreds. And I witnessed some, tried to stop some. Some journalists were also attacked. And then the attacks have also been followed.

A case of great international prestige, in which the military arrested the demonstrating girls at Tahrir Square in 2011, they took them to the Archaeological Museum to do what was euphemistically called “virginity tests,” they were actually sexual abuse without their consent. Between 2011 and 2013, there were a lot of abuses of this kind and later. But I repeat that they used the attacks as a political weapon, against women activists and protesters; it has not been found in the alley and sexual assaults, it is different. And the Muslim Brotherhood continued to dismiss the government, even more intensely, because [Abdel Fatah] Al Sisi [current president] has been very hard at suppressing the protests, which has resulted in no protest. It has over 60,000 political prisoners in prisons. In the early years of the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government, it became a dynamic.

Why are virginity tests? Are they legally recognized?

They use them as instruments for political punishment. There is an investigation report by Amnesty International on this. The military's argument was that, because they've been camping, they may have lost virginity, let's check if they've lost it. The base was that these women are a slut, they're protesting, we sleep in the camps, we're going to expose them. An international CNN journalist interviewed one of those military personnel and replied: “These girls are not like your daughter or me, those girls were there, with the boys, smoking...” Machismo comes not only from Islamic organizations, machismo is the essence of the State, within which the army has always applied.

In 2011 the people celebrated the fall of Mubarak, but as you have warned, what has come next has been much worse. How has Egypt evolved?

Mubara was bringing up a number of changes in recent times, through his children, because it was possible for them to acquire power. Rumours were opened and the army became very alert. In fact, the army has a lot of power, controls many companies and owns the wealth of the country. So the general made the rumours of the changes nervous. Of course, during Hosni Mubarak's term of office there was repression, arrests, torture -- but then it came, after the brief mandate won by the Muslim Brothers in the first Egyptian elections ...

From a Western perspective, it is stressed that “these societies are not yet ready for democracy”. When we do not like the outcome, they are not prepared for democracy time and again. For when there is a coup against the government of the Muslim Brotherhood, General Al Sisi takes command of everything, which proves firmly that he told himself and his group: “What happened to Mubarak cannot happen to us. And in order not to happen to us, we have to step.” Therefore, any resistance that might exist in the streets against their seizure was crushed. In the camp of Rabaa Square [Cairo], defenders of the Muslim Brotherhood protested with bullets. Over a few hours more than 600 people were killed and over 1,000 were injured. It was a massacre.

In the weeks and months that followed, when Al Sisi was already in power, every demonstration had been strongly oppressed. And arbitrary arrests are still going on today; they're in jails, they're not given paracetamol, there's mistreatment, people disappear, some people's bodies appear in the desert ... Repression in Mubarca is much greater than in recent years.

Do you think this has led to the despair of the citizens? Will the situation worsen after the dismissal?

In 2011, they already realized they didn't win, of course. At first they welcomed the fall of the Mubarak regime; the more educated activists understood that they did not win because the fact that a military commission took over the leadership for the transition was not very good. His hope was that there were young activists at the army bases who understood that further change was necessary and that there could be no such harsh repression. These young people understood that it was not possible to accept the economic policies that so begged the Egyptian population. Poverty is very high, more than 40% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. They were their hope, but hope was very difficult. How will he rebel against those above the army?

And those who thought they won, as early as the first months of 2011, realized they didn't. Especially in October, November and December, in the months before the elections, in which the least protest was fought by the military, the streets of the city center, like Mohamed Mahmoud Street, became battlefields. I was going through there and you saw that the street was turned into a stone carpet and a bullet that people began to realize.

Today, dissatisfaction in the country is evident in many layers, obviously not among the privileged, because they take advantage of the possession of this repressive and investigative state. But nobody's happy, there's massive depression, especially among activists. Because staying in Egypt is being silenced, living in permanent terror, not being able to do anything. Some have been exiled, many are in Turkey, others in Europe, or in the countries bordering Egypt. There's a lot of left-wing people in jail, a lot of people have been tortured -- there's actually a very devastating situation. Condemning from time to time by the UN or Amnesty International is of no use. Al Sisi has been received in honour by the majority of European governments.

The UN climate summit is being held these days in Egypt.

Many exiled activists, because the unexiled cannot speak, denounce what they call greenwashing. International authorities and experts will come, and I assure you that Egypt does not have an ecological vision. Not only that, it is a country that uses repression on a daily basis.

The other day the activist Ramy Shaath was in Madrid. This man is of Egyptian-Palestinian origin, a plural that has been held for two years without charge or trial, being abused. And it's come out of jail because women are French, because we mobilize a lot of people internationally, and because in a sense it's privileged because it knows a lot of people in Europe, it has important relationships with governments. However, he has been in prison for two and a half years. When it came out, it looked like 20 years went by. It is doing a tour to denounce that the summit is legitimising the Egyptian regime. He denounces the torture of Egypt, the disappearance of people, death, the sentence of death and detention without charge or trial. It's a shame, because Egypt is a wonderful country, and people there inspire you all.