First of all, I am fine. The pictures I posted, while some were taken by locals and others by local news agencies (the ones with the '2') at the bottom corner, were not taken by me namely because I avoided being caught at the center of the protests. I actually recieved these photos from a Yahoo Groups mailing list of activists in Egypt. As is apparent, no photos like these exist anywhere else either in the Egyptian news or the international press, namely because journalists (local and international) were arrested, hastled, and their cameras were broken and confiscated. While it is hard to find out exactly what has happened during and in the aftermath of these demonstrations because the press is unable to cover it, most of my information has come from friends who have been involved, from professors at the university who have been looking into the issue, and also from my own observations. While the protests have been for the most part quiet this week, allegations of human rights abuses, police brutality, and calls for further statements and investigations have been rampant.
The demonstrations which have been going on over the past month are most directly related to the "detainment" and "disciplinary trials" of two high court judges, who spoke out about the 2005 presidential elections, calling them a "fraud" and asking for further investigations into the matter. While the judiciary has traditionally been relatively independent from the personalism of the executive (unlike parliament or the bureaucracy and military), it appears that the accusations by the judges went too far--"crossing the red line." Following the removal of the judges, a series of demonstrations and protests broke out in the downtown area of Cairo, especially by the Journalists Syndicate and other major areas which happen to be near my university. The protests were for the large part organized by the group Kefeya, or "Enough," which has been a key activist group (in the past year, especially during the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2005. The group, while not endorsing any candidates for elections, has called for massive political reform and liberalization. While during the time of the elections these demonstrations were permitted to be a little more "rowdy" than usual, likely because at the time the president was running for re-election under the call for political reform and liberalization, he has since "tightened the strings." Technically, under the "Emergency Laws," which have been in place since the 1970s under President Sadat and were recently renewed for another 2 years following the Dahab bombings in the Sinai, public demonstrations are not permitted unless a permit is obtained--which of course, is difficult and rarely is granted. Thus the police are able to "legally" break up these protests, because every person attending is technically breaking the law.
I'm not sure exactly how many protests there have been over the judges, but at least 10 as far as I can remember. Though I didn't see all of them (rather passed by on my way to school or incidentally ran into as an outside 'observer'), everyone always knows when there's something going on because of the massive influx of riot police into the downtown area. They come in huge green trucks, with the Egyptian riot police peeping their heads out from the slit windows. After parking around the embassy and public buildings areas, they then shuffle out into long lines along the curb, with only about 6 inches between them. While the numbers vary, there are usually about 10 times as many police as protestors. I don't have any pictures (as I'm not trying to get my nice little digi camera confiscated), there are usually huge trucks of riot police surrounding the university to "protect" us.
Some protests have been worse than others--the photos are from one of the big ones that went down a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, most of the actual beatings are not by men in uniform, but by plainclothesmen. Though to the first time observer these police appear to be normal citizens, I've lived here long enough to be able to pick them out for the most part, and they are EVERYWHERE. Often, these are the police who do the 'real work'--also, it's easier to shrug off than having a uniformed officer beating someone openly in the street. Often, the state security responds to allegations of abuse by insisting that it is the protestors beating the protestors, but this is clearly not true.
The most recent reports I've heard are surrounding allegations of police torture by two protestors. Last week Mohammed Al-Sharqawy and Karim Al-Shaer were arrested after a protest and taking to an Egyptian prison. In a letter that was smuggled from the prison, al-Sharqawy wrote that he was being tortured, and had even been sodomized by a rolled up piece of cardboard. Others who have seen the bruises on the two detainess have also made allegations of torture.
What is most shocking to me--aside from the events themselves--is the relative silence from the state as well as the international community. President Hosni Mubarak has not yet made any real public statements about the matter, and the state security insist that all of their actions have been within the limits of the law. While recently the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and the State Department have called on the Egyptian government to further investigate these matters, their tone has not necessarily been very aggressive. Though I heard blurbs from the American press about potential cuts in foreign aid to Egypt over the events, nothing major has come of it. Furthermore, what's especially disturbing is that at the same time people were being beaten by the police in the streets, the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, who is suspected to try a takeover after his father's term endes, was being greeted in Washington by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush with warm welcomes. Though officially in the states for "business," Gamal stopped in for a quick hello with the two. So much for building peace and "democracy" in the Middle East...
I'm both stunned and disturbed by what has been going on. Actually since I arrived here the city has been boiling with tension from the elections, then the bombings, now all of this. The future of Egypt is pretty shaky right now, and it remains to be seen what path the country will take. Will it be the liberalizers or the Islamists? Democracy or international (by that I mean the U.S.) control over the decisions of who and what will be next?
posted by Katie Warren @ 4:54 PM
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