Category: Blog

The Revolution will be Twitterized

Posted on By 3arabawy

I just wanted to share this (already known I’m sure) tip with you: GET ON TWITTER!

Though most people tend to use Twitter as a means to update other friends on social, personal events, etc., it has proved to be a savior in the case of James Buck, and in general it’s been popular for a while (say for the past couple of years) among Egyptian activists, for political mobilization and spreading news. It is one I strongly recommend for IST bloggers around the world.

During the Mahalla Sept ’07 strike and Apr ’08 uprising, in addition to downtown Cairo demos, Twitter was widely used by the Egyptian activists to disseminate information about the demonstrations or arrests. You can also install a simple plug in and your tweets will be posted automatically on your blog (Please look at the right side bar of my blog, under “3arabawy on Twitter”). This means you can blog while you are at demonstrations in the streets, provide continuous updates, as well as alarm your comrades about police moves, arrests, minute by minute. I also recommend that comrades in Egypt have a ready-typed text in the “drafts” of your mobile phones messaging menu saying something like: “State Security is at my house” ready to be sent out right away to your twitter page. And just click “send” as soon as the SS pigs show up at your doorstep, to quickly alert your comrades as well as the world that you are getting arrested. There are all sorts of other tips and applications Twitter can make your blogging life easier with, so I recommend you check Twitter Blog for more info.

Make sure you also add your website link to your profile on your Twitter homepage, as a way to increase the internet traffic to your blog. Once you get a Twitter account and install it on your blog, add me to your network of contacts and I’ll add you back. This way we can exchange information much faster.

Doctors begin series of protests calling for a minimum wage

Posted on By 3arabawy

Down with the govt

Sarah Carr reports:

Doctors staged protests Wednesday calling for improved pay, implementing a Doctors’ Syndicate vote agreed upon during an emergency general assembly meeting on March 21.
The protests were to be held at 12 pm in government hospitals throughout Egypt.
Around 50 doctors gathered at Abbaseya psychiatric hospital in Cairo, carrying placards saying “an Egyptian doctor’s salary over three years is equivalent to one month of an Arab doctor’s salary” and “there will be no compromise on demands for a minimum wage.”
Doctors are calling for a LE 1,000 minimum wage. A junior doctor working within the Ministry of Health currently starts on a basic salary of roughly LE 240. Senior doctors receive on average LE 500.
“We have to pay LE 1,800 a year for masters degree tuition fees. I just cannot afford these fees on my wages,” one doctor at the Abbasseya protest told Daily News Egypt.
“The Minister of Health promised that wages will be increased but this hasn’t happened,” she continued.
The Doctors’ Syndicate previously voted to stage a two-hour strike in hospitals, during an emergency general assembly meeting in February.
The strike was initially endorsed by Syndicate head Dr Hamdy El-Sayyed but was subsequently suspended after Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif suggested in a radio interview that such action would be illegal.
The decision to suspend the strike prompted a one-week sit-in in the Doctors’ Syndicate by members of the Doctors Without Rights lobby group in March.

More reports from the local media could be found here.

Student to PM Nazif: Release Egypt!

Posted on By 3arabawy

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.