Curfew pushed to midnight starting Saturday

The Cabinet has announced that starting Saturday September 21, curfew hours would be shortened from 12 am to 5 am the next morning, with extended hours of 7 pm to 5 am on Fridays, reported the privately owned newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm on Thursday. 

Curfew was implemented as part of the broader state of emergency on August 15, following the deadly violence that overtook the nation in response to the dispersal of major Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins in Cairo that claimed hundreds of lives, injured thousands of others and prompted the arrests of hundreds of Islamists.

The state of emergency was supposed to expire after a month, but Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi ordered a two-month extension last week following deadly attacks in Rafah and the attempted assassination of the minister of the interior in Cairo.

Baseera, the Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research, conducted a poll in early September investigating the living conditions of Egyptians under the curfew. When asked whether their income had been affected by the curfew, 46 percent of respondents said yes, while 59 percent of respondents said that their living conditions had worsened under curfew.

The state’s flagship newspaper Al-Ahram reported earlier this week that the curfew was saving LE8 million in electricity expenditures since it was implemented in August. On the other hand, the UK-based BBC said on September 16 that the Egyptian economy had suffered losses of US$200-$350 million due to the security measure.