--- title: Why They Protest: Egypt, Libya and Syria | TIME description: TIME's Abigail Hauslohner on the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Libya's civil war and Syria's ongoing violence canonical: https://time.com/video/4bPgDZLR/ og:title: Why They Protest: Egypt, Libya and Syria og:description: TIME's Abigail Hauslohner on the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Libya's civil war and Syria's ongoing violence og:url: https://time.com/video/4bPgDZLR/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/4bPgDZLR/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why They Protest: Egypt, Libya and Syria twitter:description: TIME's Abigail Hauslohner on the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Libya's civil war and Syria's ongoing violence twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/4bPgDZLR/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Why They Protest: Egypt, Libya and Syria > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Why They Protest: Egypt, Libya and Syria [Watch (HLS stream): Why They Protest: Egypt, Libya and Syria](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/4bPgDZLR.m3u8) (4:30)  _Published 2011-12-14. TIME's Abigail Hauslohner on the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Libya's civil war and Syria's ongoing violence_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [An Islamic Crowd Fills Cairo's Tahrir Square](/video/9hcFabll/) ### An Islamic Crowd Fills Cairo's Tahrir Square [Making the Daily Rounds in Cairo's Tahrir Square](/video/kPINlnRU/) ### Making the Daily Rounds in Cairo's Tahrir Square [Tahrir Square: The Epicenter of Cairo's Protests](/video/LaS22JJt/) ### Tahrir Square: The Epicenter of Cairo's Protests --- ## Transcript I protest because I, demand my rights. [ NOISE ] I protest because I think Egyptians need change. [ FOREIGN ] I protest against political corruption. [ FOREIGN ] I protest against injustice. [ MUSIC ] On January 25th Egyptians took to the streets en masse to protest corruption, authoritarianism and police brutality. A lot of Egyptians saw what happened on the 25th and they realized that Egypt is capable of people power, that regular Egyptians can go out into the streets and affect change. And so from January 25th onward Tahrir Square became this epicenter of protest in Egypt. And not only that, it became a symbol of protest worldwide. [ FOREIGN ] I'm hoping that history will remember our generation as the generation that stood up against the dictator. As the generation that pushed for real democracy. As the generation that changed the history of this nation. The level of unity in Tahrir has ebbed and flowed. [ NOISE ]. What started in January as a mass protest to call for change quickly transformed into a unified call for President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Since then, the original protesters have splintered into groups with all sorts of different goals and different demands. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] Tahrir Square has become a place to gather to call for faster reforms, to call for prosecution of ex- regime officials. We were supposed to find freedom, justice, and social equality this never happened. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] The experience in Syria has been very different from Egypt's. There, the protesters have many of the same demands. They're also calling for democracy, and they're calling for their president Bashir- al Assad to step down. [ SOUND ]. I protest mainly because we, as human beings, have been stripped of our rights for years. [ FOREIGN ]. The difference there is they've been met with a far more heavy- handed response from police. The police have so far massacred thousands of people protesting in Syria, and the protestors have started to arm themselves. [ NOISE ]. In Libya, what started as a protest in February, quickly evolved into a full on civil war and ended in September when Qaddafi was actually captured and killed. The protests this year in the Middle East have toppled dictatorships. They have forced authoritarian leaders to make reforms and they've empowered ordinary citizens to come out and demand their rights. The reason why I protest is that I believe that this country deserves to be better, and it will be better. 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