Historian Khaled Fahmy on the philosophy of torture.
Hossam el-Hamalawy
I received a statement signed by “Kafr el-Dawar Workers for Change,” declaring solidarity with Ghazl el-Mahalla workers.
Here’s an English translation:
Kafr el-Dawar workers are in the same trench as Ghazl el-Mahalla
We the textile workers of Kafr el-Dawar declare our full solidarity with you, to achieve your just demands, which are the same as ours. We strongly denounce the security crackdown which prevented the (Mahalla) workers delegation from traveling to stage a sit-in at the General Federation of Trade Unions’ HQ in Cairo. We also condemn Said el-Gohary’s statement to Al-Masry Al-Youm last Sunday, where he described your move as “nonsense.” We follow with concern what is happening to you, and declare our solidarity with the garment-making workers’ strike the day before yesterday, and with the partial strike in the silk factory.
We like to you know, we the workers of Kafr el-Dawar and you the workers of Mahalla are walking on the same path, and have one enemy. We support your movement, because we have the same demands. Since the end of our strike in the first week of February, our Factory Union Committee has not moved to achieve our demands that instigated our strike. Our Factory Union Committee has harmed our interests… We express our support for your demand to reform the salaries. We, just like you, await the end of April to see if the Minister of Labor will implement our demands in that regards or not. We do not put much hope on the Minister, though, as we haven’t seen any move by her or the Factory Union Committee. We will depend only on our selves to achieve our demands.
Thus, we stress that:
1- We are sailing with you on the same boat, and will embark together on the same journey
2- We are declaring our full solidarity with your demands, and assert that we are ready to stage solidarity action, if you decide to take industrial action.
3-We will move to inform the workers of Artificial Silk, El-Beida Dyes, and Misr Chemicals of your struggle, and create bridges to expand the solidarity front. All workers are brothers during times of struggle.
4-We have to create a wide front to settle our battle with the government unions. We have to overthrow those unions now, not tomorrow.
An AP report by Nadia Abou El-Magd:
International and local rights groups on Tuesday demanded the release of an Egyptian blogger and member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood who was arrested after reporting on torture.
Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, 27, a well-known blogger and correspondent for the London-based Al-Hewar Arabic TV Channel, was arrested early Sunday at Cairo International Airport.
Mahmoud is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood _ Egypt’s largest opposition group that has been banned since 1954. Egyptian authorities accuse him of being part of banned group and publishing and disseminating news about torture at police stations, his lawyer Islam Lutfi told The Associated Press.
He was ordered detained for 15 days pending an investigation, Lutfi and police said.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday called for Mahmoud’s immediate release and voiced concern over the “increasingly repressive policies toward online dissent” in Egypt.
Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Mahmoud’s arrest was another example of how the Egyptian government was prosecuting a journalist because he reported on human rights abuses.
“The government should focus its energies on ending the abuses, not silencing those who expose them,” Zarwan said.
Mahmoud’s arrest comes two months after another Egyptian blogger, Abdel Kareem Nabil, was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak. The U.S. and several rights groups have criticized Egypt for his conviction.
“The Egyptian government has now detained bloggers for criticizing Islam and for belonging to a group that promotes it. The real targets are free speech and those who use this right to criticize the government,” Zarwan said.
Mahmoud spent six months in prison last year and a few weeks in jail in early 2003 for belonging to the Brotherhood. In recent months, authorities have stepped up their crackdown against the Brotherhood, arresting dozens.
In late March, Mahmoud told a conference about torture in Cairo that he was tortured during his 2003 detention. On his blog, he also campaigned against transferring civilians to military courts.
Last week, Amnesty International accused Egypt of systematic torture in prisons and police stations. It warned that human rights abuses were likely to worsen because of constitutional amendments approved last month that suspended civil rights in terror investigations and enabled the state to prosecute civilians in military courts. Egypt rejected the report, calling it inaccurate and unfair.