Category: Blog

From the Daily News Egypt:

“Mr. President, Mr. President, Egypt’s youth are behind bars.” With those words Belal Diab, a 20-year-old literature student at Cairo University, interrupted Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif as he addressed the student body on campus Monday, kicking up a media storm.
“We want you to release those detained on April 6. Mr. President those are the people you were talking about who use the internet, those are the people who stood up and defended you when you were criticized at the World Economic Forum for saying Egypt is globalizing. Mr. President I want to tell you one thing, Education is zay el fol [perfect] the university is zay el fol, there is bread, there is democracy and freedom, release Egypt Mr. President, release Egypt Mr. President!” he said as students clapped passionately.
“I was provoked [by Nazif’s speech],” Diab told Daily News Egypt. “How can he talk about information technology, the internet and how the youth has to use it to express their opinions and get their voices out there when those who did exactly that are now all behind bars,” he said, referring to students who created the Facebook group promoting the April 6 strike.
“I admit that I was out of order but I had to get my voice out there, officials have to start listening to us instead of detaining us,” he said.
When Diab had completed his outburst, Nazif had turned to him and said, “I feel sarcasm and pain in your words, but I’m telling you Egypt is alright and you have to look at everything with objectivity because there are many challenges facing this country.”
“There objective reason for detaining these people is the acts of destruction they committed and there is a thin line between expressing your opinion and encouraging destruction, striking and rioting. Many want such chaos in this country but we won’t let this happen. Egypt is not a chaotic country,” continued the Prime Minister.
Diab, however, insists that he wasn’t wasn’t being sarcastic. “I was speaking passionately and my tone was serious. As for the sarcasm he was talking about who is really being sarcastic in this country, is his cabinet … those telling people that everything is fine and were are progressing,” he said.
The incident led to an abrupt halt of the lecture. Neither the Minister of Higher Education, Hany Helal, nor the President of Cairo University, Ali Abdel Rahman, gave their scheduled speeches.
As soon as Diab had ended his impassioned speech, two security guards sat behind him, but when the lecture was over and they tried to grab him they were prevented from doing so by the crowd, which saluted him for having “the guts” to speak openly.
But soon enough, the same security guards, accompanied this time by a police officer and a university professor, caught up with him. The professor asked for Diab’s university ID. It was then that the guards took hold of him in front of the crowd and escorted him to the office of the head of the university’s security.
“They did that in public to set an example to all students that this is what happens if you object or express your opinion,” said Diab.
When Diab’s friends saw what had taken place, they and others who had witnessed the event exchanged text messages on their mobile phones and congregated around the security office and successfuly demanded his release.

The incident was captured on a mobile phone:

Here’s a report from Al-Masry Al-Youm. Bilal is a Ghad Party activist, and a member of Haqqi, a united front spearheaded by the Socialist Students in Cairo and Helwan that campaigns against the rising tuition fees and the deteriorating quality of higher education.