Great news!
After nine months of campaigning since last December, demonstrations, clashes with the police and Suzi’s pigs, the Kafr Elw victims will be receiving their new flats from the Maadi local council today 10am, 77 el-Maadi el-Qadima Street, in front of el-Rayyan hospital.
Mabrouk! Demonstrations and strikes are indeed the only language the government understands.
The Daily News Egypt has a report about the Imbaba neighborhood in Giza:
Imbaba, an elaborate squatter area in Giza, Egypt, records 23,000 newborn babies annually, compared to the least fertile upscale Zamalek area with its 235 yearly births.
According to a recently published report by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAMPAS), Imbaba, which has a population of 1.1 million living on an area of 17,000 square km, contributes 1.1 percent to Egypt’s annual population rise.
Official statistics claim that Egypt’s population grows by 1.9 million every year, denoting a birth rate of 25.8 percent. The number is expected to go down to 1.2 in the next few years. The annual death rate of 6.3 percent (452,000 people) means that the overall natural population increase rate is at 19.5 percent.
Imbaba is also witnessing an anti-gentrification fight. The govt is planning to gentrify Ezbet Matar Imbaba (The neighborhoodof Imbaba’s Airport). The area, where the airport that stopped operating since 2001 exists, is surrounded by more than 35,100 inhabitants according to govt figures (I heard double and triple that estimate from others, but may be the other bigger numbers I heard include the neighboring Bashtil and Madinet el-Amal which are under threat too.). The authorities are working on “developing” the area, without any coordination with the locals, who are accusing the govt of planning in secrecy to demolish the neighborhood and turn it into an upscale housing integrated with Mohandessin. A solidarity committee of activists and local citizens in the neighborhood has been set up, trying to fight back.
From the Daily News Egypt:
A protest and lecture held in Cairo against the Agrium plant in Damietta turned into a harsh critique of the regime which approved the project.
Opposition members likened the crisis to the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.
“It is a regime worse than the Nazi gas chambers. It is a regime which causes the death of the innocent and destruction of the land for this generation and the next one. It is the execution of the Egyptian state,” said Deputy Chairman of the Tagammu party Abu El-Ezz El-Hariri.
Damietta residents traveled to Cairo at the invitation of the freedoms committee of the Journalists’ Syndicate to protest the continued presence of the Agrium petrochemical plant in the tourist resort of Ras El-Bar, despite the decision by the People’s Assembly to relocate the plant.
Protesters first gathered on the steps of the syndicate in front of a security cordon and chanted slogans against the plant, indicating in clear terms that for the people of Damietta, it was a matter of life and death.
“Stay away from us you thieves; all we have left is air and water. The government says Amen to thieves and the corrupt,” the protesters chanted.
After the protest, a lecture was held on the fourth floor of the syndicate to debate the issue as a wide array of speakers were given free reign to discuss various other issues.
“We are not just in solidarity with Damietta, but with all Egyptians,” El-Hariri said