Around 2000 Central Security Forces conscripts are on strike in Mahalla, protesting maltreatment at the hands of their officers.
Yes, Mubarak’s tools of oppression are on strike, according to news trickling from the Nile Delta town. The conscripts, say today’s Al-Midan and Mooga website, started a hunger strike yesterday (or the day before–I haven’t confirmed the date yet), after a colleague of theirs, 22-year-old Amir Mustafa Hassan, committed suicide by shooting himself as he couldn’t put up with the officers’ abuse anymore.
In 1986, thousands of CSF conscripts went on strike in Giza and Cairo, after rumors spread the government was planning to extend the conscription period by one year. The soldiers occupied their camps, attacked their officers, and cut the roads into Cairo. Mubarak sent his army tanks and choppers on the conscripts as militancy spread to the slums, with the urban poor descending on El-Haram St., burning the Five-Star hotels and the elite nightclubs.
I’ll update this posting whenever I get more news, but in the meantime, I’ll leave you with this leaked video of a CSF conscript being mocked by his police officers.
UPDATE: Check out this article in Arabic by Ibrahim el-Sahary.