Tag: ndp

NDP lawyer demands female film director flogged

Posted on By 3arabawy

The latest religious fundamentalist filth coming from Mubarak’s NDP:

One of the lawyers affiliated with the Egyptian National Democratic Party NDP who is a specialist in Hesba cases (which claim be doing a service by eliminating what is harmful to Islamic society) against authors and artists demanded the flogging of an Egyptian female movie director and sent an official warning to the Sheikh of Azhar demanding the execution of such request, said Arabic Network of Human Rights Information ANHRI today.
The Hesba lawyer offered the Sheikh of Azhar eight days to execute the flogging of the prominent Egyptian female movie director, Enas El-Dighaidy, eighty lashes because of a movie she directed called ¨Diaries of a Teenager Girl¨ claiming that the film defames Egypt.
It is worth mentioning that this same Hesba lawyer demanded, in one of his previous court cases, the cross-cutting of an Egyptian actress because she refrained from wearing a veil. He was also one of the lawyers who demanded to put Ibrahim Eissa, Chief Editor of Aldostour Newspaper, on trial in the case known as ¨the President’s Health Case¨.

This is the ruling party of a regime that is described often in the Western press as “moderate,” “secular,” battling with “Islamic terrorism”.

‘6th of April: To be or not to be’

Posted on By 3arabawy

In the run up to the 6th of April, Ghazl el-Mahalla turned into a battleground of propaganda and agitation between the Textile Workers’ League activists on the one hand, and on the other were the management, security and the group of workers around Attar and Habib who were trying to sabotage the strike.

Each camp was distributing hundreds and thousands of statements in the week prior to the 6th of April. According to two labor organizers I spoke with, the militancy in the garments section, that is composed largely of women workers, was the highest. These were the same workers who started the 7th of December strike, as 3000 of them struck and started marching, chanting “Where are the men? Here we are the women!”

One of the strongest pro-strike statements, distributed in the factory, appeared a couple of days prior to the uprising, titled “The 6th of April: To be or not to be,” signed by “The Women Workers of Ghazl el-Mahalla,” who were close to the Textile Workers’ League.

The statement denounced PM Nazif, the National Democratic Party, the company security and the state-backed union officials, endorsing the call to strike:

Doctors continue to demand salary increases

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt…

Members of the Doctors’ Syndicate along with the Doctors Without Rights movement organized a protest in front of the syndicate Sunday, demanding an increase in doctors’ salaries.
Protesters led by Essam El-Erian, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood group, threatened that doctors will go on strike if their demands were not met. He criticized government policies as well as those of the Ministry of Health regarding salary increases.
“We will keep protesting until our demands are met; if they aren’t we will go on strike like the Fayyoum doctors,” Rashwan Shaaban Rashwan, one of the leaders of Doctors Without Rights told Daily News Egypt.
Rashwan explained that a court case demanding doctors’ right to strike was adjourned to Sept. 1.
“All we want is a reasonable salary that enables doctors to live a good life and continue higher studies,” Rashwan added.
According to Rashwan, a fresh graduate from the Faculty of Medicine is paid LE 250 per month and a senior doctor is paid LE 600, while graduate studies fees are LE 1,600.
Doctors also criticized government policies in combating Hepatitis viruses B and C and ignoring cases that are known to carry them. They also demanded that the ministry increase doctors’ medical insurance in case they are infected — currently insurance is at LE 15 a day, while medication is prohibitively expensive.
Protesters carried banners urging President Mubarak to give the issue some attention and solve their problems before it is too late.
El-Erian criticized a recent decision by the Ministry of Health to hike the fees of mental health institutes, pointing out that they have now exceeded private hospital fees.

The MBs mobilization around the doctors’ issue constitute a classical case of how the Islamist group’s contradictory politics functions…
At the height of the struggle (which is by no means over) last February and March, Erian worked hand in hand with [the pro-govt head of the syndicate] Hamdi el-Sayyed in sabotaging the efforts by the leftist and independent doctors to mobilize for a national strike.

Muslim Brotherhood activists also did their best to curb the militancy of the sit-ins staged by doctors on the doorstep of their syndicate, which even reached the level of physically evicting leftist activists who descended on the syndicate to show solidarity with the protesters.

Now that the strike has been sabotaged, and the series of sit-ins died down, it’s much safer for Essam and the MBs to make such rhetorical statements and threats about the strike.. just to push the regime to act before something concrete happens on the ground which can well go beyond their control.