Updates on the detainees: Sharqawi released; Mahalla labor activists ‘disappear’

Posted on By 3arabawy

Blogger Muhammad el-Sharqawi has been released around noon today.

I couldn’t get thru to him or his fiancé Naira, but I spoke with Amr Gharbeia and Malek Moustafa few mins ago, and they both confirmed it. According to them, Sharqawi was not abused in custody this time, but his health is in a poor state since he had been on a hunger strike since Thursday. He spent the night in Qasr el-Nil Police Station and was then taken to the Qasr el-Nil Prosecutor’s Office, where he was interrogated on charges related to Magdi el-Shafie’s “Metro”. Sharqawi was allowed to go home sometime around noon, but the interrogation is not over yet, and it seems the (Mubarak’s book-burning) govt wanna push for a trial in court.

More worryingly is the news about the Mahalla detainees… The confirmed names of those who “disappeared” in State Security custody in Mahalla, according to Socialist sources in Cairo, are: Ghazl el-Mahalla labor activists Kamal el-Fayoumi, blogger Kareem el-Beheiri, Tarek Amin el-Senoussi and Abdel Halim Ahmad as well as others from outside the company: Mostafa Elzoghby Ibrahim, Ibrahim Abdallah, Mahmoud Ahmad. There are unconfirmed reports these detainees, whose release had been ordered earlier by the Prosecutor, are now transferred to Bourg el-Arab Prison (Alexandria). But no one could confirm this from the Socialist and legal sources in Cairo I phoned. If this is true, then this means the Interior Ministry has issued them detention decrees.

I received this message from a Turkish activist who saw Kareem el-Beheiri ten mins before his arrest on the 7th of April:

I am Cigdem Cidamlı from Turkey and I was in Mahalla on 6th April as a representative of Turkish workers movement and Hayat TV together with … and Kareem. Actually Kareem was arrested just 10 minutes after we left the hotel we stayed together at late evening. We had to return back to Turkey on 7th and after our program about Mahalla on Hayat TV various solidarity actions and statements are issued by Turkish labor circles. Below is the statement of Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (80 thousand membership) about Mahalla workers.
In solidarity,
Cigdem Cidamli
Stop The Repression of the Egyptian Workers Movement
In response to a call for a strike on April 6th by the workers in the Mahalla textile complex, the biggest factory in Egypt, the Mubarek regime decided to occupy El Mahalla complex with security forces, abduct strike committee leaders Kamal El Faioumy and Tarek Amin and arrest political
activists of every political tendency in Cairo and other cities. Not able to suppress the protests, the Mubarak security forces used rubber bullets, tear gas and live ammunition against the Mahalla people who decided to protest on the streets of the city and in different villages, leaving at least two dead and hundreds injured and around 800 arrested.
We send our solidarity to the Egyptian workers and their supporters. We call on the Egyptian dictatorship to release the 800 detained yesterday including more than 150 political activists (socialist, liberals and Islamists), more than 600 protesters from Mahalla (mainly women and children) and Mahalla strike committee leaders.
Tayfun GORGUN
GENERAL SECRETARY OF DISK

I received also photos of the solidarity protest that took place in front of the Egyptian Embassy in Paris… Click below…

Strikes in Egypt: Female workers on the frontline

Posted on By 3arabawy

Eman Morsi highlights the central role of women in the current Egyptian strike movement:

What really stood out in these demonstrations, apart from the huge number of workers participating in each of them, was the fact that most of these events were led or initiated by women. These women not only participated during the daytime activities but have also gone against social norms by spending the nights in their factories during sit-ins instead of going back to sleep in their homes as “respectable” women in society are expected to do.
While all the female leaders of the workers’ movement are middle aged women, a huge percentage of the women who participated were in their 20s or younger. According to Amal, one of the female leaders, who is in her late 30s, “these young girls were too hesitant and afraid at the beginning to join but when the actual event took place they acted with more enthusiasm than the men” She said with pride.
…. Though the prominent role of female workers in the workers’ movement might lend itself easily to a “feminist” interpretation, female workers of all ages deny the “accusation”. “We don’t want anything of the sort [feminist demands], we just want to have a good salary and a decent life for both of us, women and men.” 29 year-old Soad said.

For more on the role of women in the ongoing wave of labor strikes, check out this link, this posting, and that one.

Victory for the Bahariya residents

Posted on By 3arabawy

The residents of the Bahariya desert oasis who took to the streets Friday and clashed with Mubarak’s pigs protesting the administrative restructuring of local governance, have won!

The Daily Star Egypt reports: 

The restructuring was not without its problems, though, as clashes erupted in Al-Wahat Al-Bahariya Saturday between local residents and security forces over the decision to bring the oasis under the jurisdiction of the governorate of Minya.
Yet a decree by Minister of Housing Ahmad El-Maghrabi was issued Saturday after an emergency meeting of the National Democratic Party’s General Secretariat, reversing the decision and attaching Bahariya and Ayat to the new governorate of Sixth of October.

That only serves to show that demonstrations and strikes are the only language Hosni and his pigs understand. Mabrouk for the Bahariya residents.