Tag: 1977

1976

Posted on By 3arabawy
[25-11-1976] Leftist students demonstrate outside the parliament building to protest the high cost of living and Sadat's economic policies. Two months later, the country was to witness a national uprising on 18 and 19 January 1977, that was crushed by Sadat's army [Photo by Popperfoto, Courtesy of the UK Socialist Worker Archives]
[25-11-1976] Leftist students demonstrate outside the parliament building to protest the high cost of living and Sadat’s economic policies. Two months later, the country was to witness a national uprising on 18 and 19 January 1977, that was crushed by Sadat’s army [Photo by Popperfoto, Courtesy of the UK Socialist Worker Archives]

Kamal Khalil, recalling the 25 November 1976 Cairo University march which he led as an Engineering graduate student and a communist organizer:

The Nasserists and the Communists were due to march on that day. But there were divisions in every faction.. both among the Nasserists themselves and the Communists. The Workers Communist party activists had announced they were not joining the march. My group’s cell leaders back then, the “Communist Party-8th of January,” voted 3 to 2 against joining the march. I decided to break the organizational orders, and agitate for the protest by noon. We had drafted together with the Nasserists, the “November Progressive Document”, where we stated the demands of the student movement against the reconciliation with Israel, the repression of the opposition and the “Open-Door” Policy [Sadat’s neoliberal reforms]. The original plan, before the student leaders started hesitating, was that we were to mobilize for a march on the parliament, and hand the “Document” to the parliamentarians. The march started by only 200 students, but soon swelled to more than 3000 and those who were hesitating, ended up joining when it became clear the Central Security Forces were not going to obstruct the march.
We camped outside the parliament, at el-Qasr el-Eini. Back then it was two-way street. One thing I’ll never forget was a bus driver who was on the opposite direction. We started chanting: “El-Ta’ayeed el-Tam el-Tam, li Edrab el-Na’l El-‘Am! [Our full solidarity for the transport workers’ strike]”. The bus drivers in Cairo had gone on strike earlier in the summer, bringing the capital to halt. The bus driver stopped his bus, and leaned out of the side window, to hug the demonstrators and kept on honking. A student delegation went up to deliver the “Document” to the parliamentarians. Of course their response was “sure we’ll look into that”.. but nothing happened. In less than two months, the intifada broke out.

Rashad

Posted on By 3arabawy

Rashad رشاد

Demoralized by the failure of the 1977 Bread Intifada, and faced with an escalating witch-hunt campaign and purges by Sadat’s regime against leftists in the universities and civil service, thousands of Egyptian communists and radical nationalists left the country and sought refuge in Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait (yeah, believe it or not, Kuwait received tons of Egyptian communists back then!) and Yemen… Four months after my birth, my family left Egypt for Yemen in 1977, where we lived in Sana’a for two years. In the above photo, taken in 1978 or 1979, my father (on the left dancing while carrying a stick) is dressed together with an Egyptian friend in a Yemeni traditional costume, during a trip outside Sana’a. Below, is a pic of Hoss and Abu Hoss taken on 13 June 1979.

Yemen اليمن