Mubarak’s crackdown on the left continues. Ministry of Social Affairs officials, in the company of State Security agents, shut down the Center of Trade Union and Workers’ Services branch in Mahalla, on Wednesday 8pm, sealing its door with red wax.
Activists will assemble Sunday 15 April, at 1pm, in front of the Ministry of Social Affairs HQ in Cairo’s el-Qasr el-Eini, for a two-hour sit-in, to protest the closure.
Muslim Brotherhood blogojournalist Abdel Moneim Mahmoud is now in Mubarak’s police custody on the run. A police force raided Moneim’s house early this morning, but he was not present. He mass mailed us a message about the raid, before he said he was to turn himself in.
I have so much respect for Moneim, who is one of the greatest and most active young Brothers in the media field. In the journalist and activist circles we like to call him “Ikhwan’s Reuters.” Polite, diplomatic, and does not miss an event, whether organized by the Islamists or secularists, Moneim enjoys wide popularity among his peers in the MB and leftist circles.
Moneim was detained in 2004, and brutally tortured by Mubarak’s Gestapo in State Security’s HQ in Nasr City (also known as Egypt’s Guantanamo, as victims of extraordinary renditions like Abu Omar, Muhammad el-Zawahri, Mamdouh Habib were tortured there).
The Muslim Brotherhood bloggers are calling for a solidarity sit-in tomorrow Saturday, 5pm, in front of the Press Syndicate. They are asking for the solidarity of activists from all political tendencies.
From Al-Jazeera:
Argentine teachers have held a one-day nationwide strike after a high school chemistry teacher was killed by police last week during a protest over pay in the southern province of Neuquen.
In Buenos Aires, the capital, workers at banks, hospitals, government offices, and public transportation joined the strike for an hour on Monday afternoon.
Police in the northern city of Salta fired tear gas at groups of protesters, local media said.
Carlos Fuentealba, a 41-year-old teacher, died on Thursday, a day after he was hit in the head by a tear gas cartridge when police broke up a teachers’ protest and road block in Neuquen.