Tag: mahalla 49

Solidarity from Vienna with the Mahalla 49

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received the following message from our comrades in Austria:

Dear friends of the Mahalla workers and all over the World.
In Solidarity with the 49 workers, whose show trial starts on the 9th of August, we staged a protest in front of the Egyptian embassy.
We chanted “Long live the International solidarity” and we were greeted by Austrian construction workers.
One of them was the son of a Mahalla resident and he was really happy to see such an act of solidarity in Vienna. We told him that we owe much to the Mahalla workers who were such an inspiration and whose action was felt like an earth quake all over the world.
Also we chanted slogans like: Mubarak – terrorist, Olmert – terrorist, George Bush terrorist to make clear that we from the international antiwar movement see those three as allies against the Arab people.
An activist from the solidarity with Gaza campaign joined in, and she spoke to personnel from the embassy and passersby, about the situation in Gaza and the responsibility of the Egyptian state for not helping the people in Gaza.
In Solidarity
Your friends from Linkswende in Austria

Click on the pic below to watch a couple of pix from the demo

I’d like to thank the Austrian comrades for their solidarity, and I hope comrades around the world would stage similar protests and solidarity actions soon, as the trial is due to start on 9 August.

Our Lebanese comrades told me during the Marxism Festival that they received an overwhelming positive response from the Egyptian migrant workers they encountered in Beirut while they were distributing leaflets in support of Mahalla last spring following the uprising.

Another thing I heard from the British comrades when I went down to Portsmouth was that the copies of Socialist Worker that had Mahalla’s news on the frontpage were eagerly picked up by the Muslim (largely Bengali) worshipers at the town’s local mosque where the SWP sets up a stool outside on Fridays, trying to approach the local Muslim population (which is eating shit and suffering from racism in this little English town).

I urge socialists outside Egypt, especially in places where there is a substantial presence of Egyptian migrant labor community (say like Lebanon), or in Europe where there are Arab and Muslim communities to devote more attention to the solidarity with the Mahalla detainees and to the Egyptian labor movement in general.. Not only that will help us tremendously in Egypt in terms of easing the regime’s crackdowns on the labor movement, but propaganda and agitation around that issue could also be one of the venues to start building bridges with the ME migrant communities you have in your countries.

Tens of Mahalla suspects to face trial in an Egyptian exceptional court

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports:

The trial of 48 men and one woman accused of a range of criminal offences allegedly committed during the April 6 clashes will begin on Aug. 9, their lawyers told Daily News Egypt.
The group — five of whom are at large — will be tried in an exceptional court on what lawyers allege are spurious, trumped-up charges including “criminal damage to public and private property, assault of a public official, unlawful assembly of more than five people and illegal possession of weapons.”
The announcement by workers in the Ghazl El-Mahalla Spinning Mill that they would go on strike on April 6 had prompted calls by activists and political opposition groups for a nationwide general strike on the same day.
When the Ghazl El-Mahalla strike was aborted following intense intimidation by security bodies and worker disunity, hundreds of people in the Delta town of Mahalla, in which the factory is located, took to the streets shortly around 4 pm.
According to journalists and eyewitnesses, the crowds of people which converged on the main square were protesting rising food prices caused by soaring inflation.
While the government alleges that it was criminally-motivated thugs who were responsible for the ensuing violence that broke out on April 6 and 7, eyewitnesses say that heavy-handed policing by hundreds of security body troops who allegedly used live ammunition against crowds was the real cause of the violence.
A 15-year-old boy, Ali Mabrouk, was shot dead while standing in the third floor balcony of his home on the night of April 6.
His family told Daily News Egypt that central security force troops were underneath the house at the time of the shooting.
Hundreds of people — including children — were rounded up and arrested over the course of the two days.
According to defense lawyer Ahmad Ezzat of the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, some of the group of 49 who were either detained or remain in detention, have alleged that they were tortured.
The charges against the group — some carrying lengthy prison sentences — will be heard by an exceptional court established under the emergency law which lacks basic guarantees of due process.
Human Rights Watch in a statement issued on Friday called on Egyptian authorities to quash the transfer of the case to the Supreme State Security Court.
“The Supreme State Security Court was established under Egypt’s emergency law in 1980 and follows procedures that violate internationally recognized fair trial norms,” the statement reads.
“In violation of guarantees of the independence of the judiciary, two military judges may sit alongside the Security Court’s regular bench of three civilian judges,” it continues.
In addition to concerns about the trial process itself, lawyers and activists have expressed concern both about the police investigation process and the motives for bringing the charges.
In early June Egyptian daily El-Badeel published parts of the public prosecution office’s questioning of a state security officer involved in the case.
Muhammad Fathy Abdel-Rahman told the public prosecution office that he had relied on “80 or 90 sources” to gather evidence against those alleged to have committed crimes on April 6 and 7 in Mahalla.
Abdel-Rahman reportedly refused to divulge the name of these sources — some of whom are not police — in order to “protect their safety.”
He was also quoted as saying that not all the sources were actually present at the scene of the events.
Furthermore, Abdel-Rahman allegedly told the public prosecution office that he and other members of the police investigation squad did not actually take part in surveillance of suspects “because of the scale of the events” in Mahalla.
In an op-ed published this month in the Socialist Worker, a British publication, activist Hossam El-Hamalawy alleges that the 49 are “scapegoats for the uprising” in Mahalla and describes the legal process against them as a “show trial.”

9 August: ‘Mahalla 49’ trial set to start

Posted on By 3arabawy

The trial of the “Mahalla 49” is set to start 9 August.

Comrades around the world, WE NEED YOUR SOLIDARITY. The Mubarak’s dictatorship thinks it can get away with this coz these prisoners are not activists. They are ordinary citizens who were rounded up during and after the April uprising, brutally tortured and will be prosecuted as scapegoats in an exceptional court known for its harsh sentences and failure to meet the international standards for a “just trial.”

It will help a lot if you can:
1-Circulate information about the trial and expose the Mubarak’s dictatorship among your network of contacts, peers, and even family members…
2-Collect signatures on the following petition, especially from trade unions and rights groups
3-Mobilize protests in front of the Egyptian embassies and consulates in your country. When you do that, please just snap a photo of the protest, and email it to me.

Down with Mubarak.