Year: 2007
Strike wave rocks the UAE’s dictators
From Socialist Worker…
Thousands of construction workers walked out on strike in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last Saturday. The laborers, mainly from South Asia, were attacked by police as they protested for higher wages.
They responded by occupying a building and pelting police cars with stones. The state rounded up workers and deported them.
Strikes have now become commonplace in a country where unions are banned and the overwhelmingly migrant workforce faces repression and exploitation.
Oil dollars have made the UAE, a key US ally, a haven for the global rich, where huge glittering seven star hotels, indoor snow parks and mega building projects have sprouted from the sands.
Campus activism updates
From the Daily Star Egypt:
Two journalists have filed a series of complaints against both campus security at Ain Shams University and its president, Ahmad Zaki Badr, and say that guards obstructed them from reporting on student demonstrations last week, blocking one man’s entrance to the campus and violently beating another who made it inside.
Aboul Seoud Muhammad, a journalist with Al-Masry Al-Youm, says that security forces barred him from entering the campus when he went to cover the demonstrations protesting vote-rigging and state interference in student body elections.
“I gave the security officers at the gates my card saying that I am a journalist and a member of the syndicate, but they said that I couldn’t enter unless I had a special pass,” Muhammad told Daily News Egypt. “I knew this wasn’t right, so I called the President of the University, Ahmad Zaki Badr, and he said he would send someone from the public relations (PR) office down to escort me in to the campus.
“I waited for two hours and no one came,” he added. “I called the president’s office and the PR office again and again and no one ever came down.”
While he stood waiting outside the university, Muhammad says he saw Amr Sharaf, a photographer from Al Dostour, come stumbling out. He had been badly beaten.
“He was badly hurt and had wounds on his head,” says Muhammad. “He said he had been beaten by a police officer.
“We tried to take a picture of Amr Sharaf and his wounds but the security officers said we couldn’t because it would tarnish the reputation of the university.”
Moreover, Al-Masry Al-Youm reports on mass protests on several campuses yesterday in Ain Shams, Fayoum, Ganoub el-Wadi and others over variety of issues including the increase in education fees and text books prices, vote rigging in student elections.
You can also find more background reports on the violations that marred the past student union elections here and here.