Year: 2007

Grain Mills workers score victory; 4000 Alexandrian textile workers on strike

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received news that the government has yielded to the Grain Mills workers’ demands in Giza and Cairo. Frightened by the 9000-strong sit-in and a looming strike, the regime agreed not to cut down the supply of wheat to the company, and revoked its earlier decision to divert part of the supply to privately-owned firms–a move that would have cut down production in the company’s grain mills, decreased workers’ bonuses, signalling the gradual liquidation of the public company.

In other developments, 4,000 textile workers in Alexandria’s state-owned United Arab Bolivara Spinning and Weaving Silk Company resumed their strike yesterday, denouncing the management’s decision to deduct the five days of production stoppage, during last month’s strike, out of the workers’ monthly salaries. I’m told by a Socialist journalist that the strike was suspended last night, but no more details available yet.

Meanwhile, the closure of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services branch in Naga’a Hammadi continues, as the government accuses its directors of being “communists who spread the culture of strikes.”

Anti-torture activists: Mubarak’s police knows no limit

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received the following statement about the Warraq torture incident I blogged about last week:

El-Nadim Center or the Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence
Cairo 3 April 2007
Egyptian Police Knows No Limits
This is a new incident to be added to the black record of Egyptian police, which is full of brutality, abuse of power and unlimited harassment.
On the 14th of March 2007, at 2.30 am police force from El Warraq police station attacked the residence of citizen Fikri Muhammad Abbas, claiming to be searching for Hash.
They broke the door to the flat, threw Fikri to the ground, and tied his hands behind his back. When the son, witness to the assault, asked for a permission to search the flat, the police force beat him up, while the officer in charge threatened that he should shut up or else his father will mourn him. The informant then locked him up in one of the rooms.
The police battalion then went into the bedrooms to finish their mission. There they found the wife and the children. They closed the door, got out their black batons, raised the sound volume of the TV, so that the neighbors would not hear the screams and started beating them with their batons and boots.
Then came the part most favored by the Egyptian police: sexual harassment. They ordered the wife and the 14 years old teen age daughter to strip and when they refused they did it themselves. They tore a golden necklace off the young girl’s neck and continued beating them on their bare bodies. They ordered both mother and daughter to urinate in the room. When they refused the beating became more brutal. Then they took them to the bathroom and forced them to squat on the floor.
The police force then continued to destroy the furniture and when they finished their mission they took Fikry, the father, with them to the police station.
As for the reason behind this mission executed by El Warraq police station, it definitely had nothing to do with a search for Hash. They have plenty of that in their own drawers. The reason, which they did not mention in their report, is to force the family of Fikry Abbas to permanently leave their residence in the interest of the landlord who wants to evict them. This was not the first time the family was subject to harassment to leave their residence.
We shall send the story of this family to the Ministry of Interior who repeats day and night that torture is not widespread and that sexual harassment is foreign to our behavior and conduct.
Some of the names of police personnel involved in this barbaric violation include: Officer Karim, Sergeant Muhammad Gamal and informer Girgis.