Leila Fadel Quotes

Well, human rights defenders, freedom of speech advocates, lawyers that we spoke to said this is really an expansion. After the military ouster of Egypt's unpopular, but elected Islamist president in 2013, we saw political opponents being arrested by the thousands, really. Then we saw a popular comedian go off the air out of fear of retribution.

Both of these places, Cairo's downtown and Tahrir Square, are in the heart of downtown Cairo. They are places where young people gather to exchange political and cultural ideas. And so that's possibly a factor into why they went after these institutions, although there's been no public comment from the government on why these raids happened.

We saw, then, journalists and researchers being arrested. And so this is sort of the latest expansion they say - cultural targets where young people gather, where they exchange cultural and political ideas. So that may be one of the reasons, although the government hasn't made any public comments on these raids.

In some cases, people are silent; they're being complacent. But we're also seeing people speak out against some of these raids, these arrests. So for example, the Townhouse Gallery - the outreach director gave an interview to Ahram Online, which is a semi-official news agency here. And he sort of dismissed it, played it down. But the publisher from the publishing house - the Merit Publishing House, which was raided - he said this won't scare us; we will continue to dream of a free country, a country with social justice, and this won't silence us.