Faced with the security violations in the recent Student Union elections, the Muslim Brotherhood and Socialist Students have been mobilizing for the launch of the Free Student Union (FSU), in an attempt to establish an independent association that can represent Egypt’s student community without interference from the security services.
Today, the elections for the Free Student Union are underway in Ain Shams University. I was on the phone with rights lawyer Emad Mubarak, who went to the university campus to monitor the elections together with a group of activist academics.
In the Faculty of Commerce, where Emad is now, the security personnel mobilized the government-appointed Student Union officials to disrubt the FSU elections. Since 11am, dozens of those students have been assembling with drums, shouting and singing and harrassing anyone who approaches the place where the FSU elections poll is set up. The University Security personnel have withdrawn from the scene, in order to make the crackdown to be students vs students without govt involvement. Muslim Brotherhood activists are currently under siege at the university mosque.
In the Faculty of Law, Dr. Omar Helmi, the faculty’s dean, tore down the banner the FSU put up, but elections are still going.
UPDATE: A testimony by Dr. Aida Seif al-Dawla, who was present with a group of academics to monitor the FSU elections, could be found in Arabic here.
Are the respective Socialist and MB leaderships supportive of their student wings cooperating, or are the student groups acting autonomously, do you know? Good for them, anyhow.
The Socialists, as leaders and base cadres, have been pushing for that coordination. Of course there were always debate within the Socialists about that, but the outcome was in favor of coordination on tactical anti-regime issues. In the case of the MB, there were initiative on the ground from some of their students, which necessarily were not blessed by their leadership. But things have improved dramatically on the leadership level since the launch of the National Alliance in the summer of 2005.