The Nile Cotton Co strikers staging a sit-in, downtown Cairo:
Month: May 2009
Police crack down on Nile Cotton Co workers
What started as a good day ended in shit! The police intimidated journalists and photographers covering the Nile Cotton workers sit-in by the parliament, before cracking down on the strikers, using sticks and batons, suspending their sit-in by brutal force.
Aid convoy or flying circus?
Al-Youm Al-Sabe3’s website quotes Dr. Arafat Madi, of the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza, saying: “The security authorities in Port Said provided to the European convoy all the facilitation, working on directives from President Mubarak that stem out of his (Mubarak’s) belief in the Palestinian cause and his (yes, Mubarak’s) hard efforts to provide the aid to the people of Gaza.”
Dr. Arafat Madi, are you kidding me?! I strongly urge the European and Western activists to re-think this whole strategy of sending convoys via Egypt in such manner, especially after Galloway’s latest flying circus. The Egyptian regime is happy with this propaganda, handed over for free by the pro-Palestinian Europe-based activists, strengthening Mubarak, providing him with more political capital to continue the siege.
You are not helping this way, I’m sorry. You’ll please the Gazans for one day with your aid which will be brought into the strip amid a state run media extravaganza about “Mubarak’s love for the Palestinians,” but you are providing the political capital for Mubarak to starve them for the rest of the year and to crack down on his pro-Palestine critics domestically. I repeat: You are hurting, if not sabotaging, the efforts of pro-Palestinian activists in Egypt.