On Sunday, political figures from right to left, intellectuals, and officials gathered at the Coptic Cathedral in Abbasiya to bid farewell to George Ishak, a dedicated political and human rights activist who passed away on Friday.
News of his death was not unexpected, given his declining health over the past couple of years. But it still came as a shock to friends and co-activists for whom Ishak, despite his long political experience, embodied the enthusiasm of a 20-year-old.
Born in Port Said, Ishak had many traits of a true Mediterranean. He joked and laughed aloud, and could move from anger to calm at the spur of a moment, traits that had been part of his political profile since he first embraced politics in the 1960s.
In 1964, Ishak graduated from Cairo University’s Faculty of Arts, History Department. He pursued a job in teaching, though it never overshadowed his political zeal which first expressed itself when he joined the demonstrations that began in Egypt in the wake of the 5 June 1967 military defeat.
In 2004, Ishak’s name became more widely known. He joined a group of dedicated and mostly older activists to launch Kifaya (Enough), a political movement that called for an end to the rule of Hosni Mubarak who had come to power in October 1981. The launch of Kifaya on the eve of the 2005 presidential elections helped crystallise opposition to the rule of Hosni Mubarak and the widely rumoured plan that his youngest and politically ambitious son, Gamal, was being groomed for succession.
Between 2004 and 2011, Ishak was a fixture at the mounting protests against Mubarak’s policies. By early 2011, he was firm in underlining the demands of Tahrir Square, as millions of people took to the streets to demand democracy and social justice.
The iconic image of this unassuming Copt is Ishak standing, with silver hair and beard and a red scarf, keeping watch for possible intruders as Muslims performed their prayers in Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the protests against Mubarak.
With Mubarak’s fall Ishak became a household name, appearing on TV channels to share the details of the seven years of protests and activism which had brought Mubarak down.
On 11 February 2011, he rejoiced over the end of Mubarak’s rule which had been the of Kifaya and, subsequently, the Egyptian National Association for Change. It was not long, however, before Ishak was once again at the forefront of political opposition, this time against Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader elected as president in June 2011.
Ishak lent his weight to the calls for demonstrations on 30 June 2012 to protest Morsi’s rule and demand early presidential elections. In the years following Morsi’s ouster, Ishak stressed that human rights standards must apply to the arrest and trials members of the Brotherhood.
Iskhak’s friends attest to several occasions when he used his position as member of the National Human Rights Council, a government-guided body, to appeal against the prolonged pretrial detention of Islamist activists.
In recent years, in a series of articles on the opinion pages of the daily Al-Shorouk, Ishak called for social justice, public and personal freedoms, better health and education services, and equal human rights for all. In his latest articles, Ishak praised the performance of the opposition during the Press Syndicate elections, which he hailed as a possible beginning to more gains.
Ishak never allowed personal grievances to compromise his political positions. He was a man whose political choices were guided by love.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 15 June, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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