Sisi Says Outside Forces Trying to Destabilize Egypt After Protests

Egypt’s president on Sunday warned against outside forces trying to foment unrest in the country following a recent string of anti-government protests urged by an exiled opposition leader.

“There are people who fill you with fear and doubt,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said in a televised speech on Sunday at a ceremony to inaugurate an oil refining complex near the capital, Cairo.

“People cannot be deceived by talk even if they are experiencing hardships,” the president said, as quoted by UAE’s National.

“They [the unidentified groups] have been trying to start a fire over the past few weeks, seeking to take advantage of the difficult situations we create [by introducing economic reform]. The state and the people are united and no one can come between them,” he added.

Sisi referred to recent anti-government protests throughout several villages in Egypt. The demonstrations have been small in scale, with dozens of participants, according to videos of the gatherings. News and videos of the protests have been widely shared across social media, especially by sympathizers of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, according to Saudi Arabia’s Arab News. Sisi came to power in Egypt in July 2013 after then-president and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was deposed in a military coup. Morsi was the first democratically elected president in the history of the country.

According to Arab News, the recent village protests started in response to the Egyptian government’s ongoing campaigns “to stop illegal construction, which have required people to pay fines to legalize home-ownership.” The initiative has impacted rural and low-income areas most significantly.

The unrest over economic reform has been further stoked by exiled businessman Mohamed Ali. An opponent of Sisi’s rule, Ali has repeatedly called for widespread demonstrations against Egypt’s government since at least September of last year. His most recent call for anti-government rallies over the past few weeks directly contributed to village protests against the illegal construction reform as recently as Sunday night, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency.

During his speech on Sunday, Sisi thanked the majority of Egyptians for not heeding the calls to protest, saying the government was enforcing the new measures as part of necessary economic reforms to stabilize Egypt.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry said over the weekend that state security forces arrested four people involved in anti-government protests in the southern city of Luxor. The group was allegedly found in possession of “firebombs that they intended to use to ‘incite rioting,'” the ministry said, according to the National.

The ministry further said that “police also detained a ‘group of people’ who tried to torch a police car in the town of Badrashen, in Giza province.”

“[F]amily and medical sources” claimed that a man “was killed in clashes between protesters and police in a village south of Cairo” on Saturday, Arab News reported.