Mubarak’s crackdown on the left continues. Ministry of Social Affairs officials, in the company of State Security agents, shut down the Center of Trade Union and Workers’ Services branch in Mahalla, on Wednesday 8pm, sealing its door with red wax.
Activists will assemble Sunday 15 April, at 1pm, in front of the Ministry of Social Affairs HQ in Cairo’s el-Qasr el-Eini, for a two-hour sit-in, to protest the closure.
Muslim Brotherhood blogojournalist Abdel Moneim Mahmoud is now in Mubarak’s police custody on the run. A police force raided Moneim’s house early this morning, but he was not present. He mass mailed us a message about the raid, before he said he was to turn himself in.
I have so much respect for Moneim, who is one of the greatest and most active young Brothers in the media field. In the journalist and activist circles we like to call him “Ikhwan’s Reuters.” Polite, diplomatic, and does not miss an event, whether organized by the Islamists or secularists, Moneim enjoys wide popularity among his peers in the MB and leftist circles.
Moneim was detained in 2004, and brutally tortured by Mubarak’s Gestapo in State Security’s HQ in Nasr City (also known as Egypt’s Guantanamo, as victims of extraordinary renditions like Abu Omar, Muhammad el-Zawahri, Mamdouh Habib were tortured there).
The Muslim Brotherhood bloggers are calling for a solidarity sit-in tomorrow Saturday, 5pm, in front of the Press Syndicate. They are asking for the solidarity of activists from all political tendencies.
In solidarity with the Center of Trade Union and Workers Services (CTUWS) against the regime’s crackdown–which started with an arbitrary decree to close down the center’s branch in Naga’a Hamadi, Qena, on 29 March, followed by the ongoing harassment of the el-Mahalla el-Kobra branch–a conference will be held at the center’s branch in Mahalla, tomorrow Thursday 12 April at 6 p.m.
The Center is located at Abu Shahin residential buildings, Building #3, Entrance B, in front of Abu Shahin bakery, in el-Mahalla el-Kobra.
Transportation will be arranged for Cairo participants. A bus will be available in front of the Lawyers’ Syndicate, in Ramses St., and will take off to Mahalla at 3.30 p.m.