Tag: bedouins

Pigs obstruct Bedouin conference

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

Heightened security in North Sinai led to the delay of a proposed conference of Bedouin tribes in which they planned to make demands from the Egyptian government.
Earlier on Friday, hundreds of Bedouins had driven through towns between Rafah and Sheikh Zowayed to announce the conference, which was scheduled to take place on Saturday.
Although it did take place, many of the representatives were unable to attend due to the closure of all the roads leading to Irsal, Shabana south of Rafah where the meeting was held.
Those who managed to attend released a statement declaring that another conference will be held on Aug. 25 where the Bedouins will make a list of demands.
Among these demands is the release of Bedouins incarcerated since a spate of terror attacks in tourist resorts across Southern Sinai in 2006.
Demands also include reaching an agreement for land ownership with the government and benefits from increased investment in Sinai.
The attendees also called for being given employment priority in projects in the area and that companies investing in Sinai offer services to the people in the vicinity.
“The government is not concerned with the simple people of Sinai and is more interested in the businessmen,” journalist and activist Mustapha Singer told Daily News Egypt.

Sinai Bedouins protest against arrest of tribesman

Posted on By 3arabawy

From AFP…

Hundreds of Sinai Bedouins protested on Wednesday against the detention of one of their tribesmen, burning tires and blocking roads on the peninsula, a security official said.
“Hundreds of Bedouins from north Sinai have blocked roads in the Mahdia area near the Israeli border to protest against the detention of one Bedouin,” the official told AFP, adding that they were setting tires ablaze.
The man, Mahmoud Hassan Al-Menei, 40, was held on Tuesday without charge.

Egypt’s hot summer

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Economist:

BY THIS time next year, Egyptians will no longer be living under an official state of emergency, the government has promised. The news can only be welcome. Except for a few brief interludes, “emergency” laws have been in force ever since the 1952 coup that replaced the constitutional monarchy of King Farouk with an authoritarian republic. Under Hosni Mubarak, who assumed Egypt’s presidency in 1981, activists have frequently charged police with abusing such laws to practise arbitrary arrest and torture.
But during this unusually hot summer, Egyptians may rightly wonder which emergency their government is talking about. For some, such as thousands of Bedouin in northern Sinai who have mounted sit-ins to protest against mass crackdowns on terrorist suspects, police brutality is indeed a priority. Yet a growing number of Egyptians seem unusually incensed about a range of other troubles.
Citizens in five of the country’s 26 governorates, for instance, have been suffering a dire shortage of drinking water. Some villagers have blocked roads and demonstrated outside government offices in what the opposition press has dubbed a “revolution of the thirsty”. Others are angry about the failure of wages to keep up with inflation. Labour activists have documented some 350 protests this year, including strikes by state-employed teachers, postmen and train drivers. This number is not large in a country of 75m, but as public-sector workers have traditionally been mobilized behind the ruling party independent labor action is a disturbing novelty.
With wages for unskilled workers barely averaging $75 a month, with many commodities that were once subsidised by the state now being sold at market prices and with state health and education now only nominally free, Egyptians feel squeezed. Inflation officially peaked at 12% last spring, and has now declined. But independent economists note that food prices have risen 25% since last August and that queues for bread, a commodity that remains subsidised, have lengthened ominously as pinched consumers revert to relying on the staple food.