Activists are organizing a sit in at the Press Syndicate, 12 noon, on 9 November, to protest the sexual assaults against women during Eid. The activists are demanding the resignation of General Habib el-Adly, the Interior Minister whose security forces stood by watching the assaults without intervention.
Tag: pigs
Clashes in Ain Shams University
Bloody clashes have been going on for the third day on the row at Ain Shams University campus in Abbassiya, as student union elections approach.
Pro-government students assaulted Muslim Brotherhood activists at the Faculty of Education at Ain Shams University, and tore down their electoral posters. The MB mobilized demos to denounce the attacks, but they were only met by violence.
Pro-government students, armed with sticks and knives, viciously attacked the Brothers, and brought into campus truckloads of Baltaggiya (criminal thugs), who have spread terror on campus.
And where was the University’s Security, which Minister of Education Dr. Hani Helal described in today’s Al-Masry Al-Youm as “without it, we would have been screwed”? (I’m not joking. That’s the quote.) NO WHERE! The security did not intervene to stop the assaults, and actually aided them. Under their watchful eyes that those herds of Baltaggiya were allowed into campus.
I’ve spoken with Emad Mubarak, the director of the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression, who follows abuses against students closely, and he said this year the government is not taking it lightly at all with the SU elections. “Already the intimidations started before Eid,” he said. “Posters were torn down several times before, but for two days this bloodshed has went out of control. Three students at least have been hospitalized with serious injuries. This exposes what sort of lies the minister of education is spreading in the press about freedoms on campuses.”
UPDATE: Protests at Helwan University after security banned MB candidates from running.
Police kidnap labor activist
Police kidnapped Muhammad Hassan, an activist with Workers For Change, an hour ago in front of the General Federation of Trade Unions HQ in Cairo. Hassan was distributing leaflets denouncing the security intervention in the labor unions electoral process, and warning of serious vote rigging to come. Security personnel nabbed him, and took him to al-Azbakeya Police Station which has a notorious history of police brutality.
Hassan is still locked up at this moment.
Meanwhile, 25 transportation workers are currently on a sit in inside the Federation’s HQ, protesting the hassels they are facing from the union bureaucracy in issuing their “candidacy certificate” (one of the red tape procedures a union candidate has to go through). And 13 other left-leaning workers from the Helwan steel mills have been eliminated from the candidacy list by State Security.
Workers For Change are calling for a demo, Monday 1 pm in front of the Public Prosecutor office in Ramses St., to protest the violations by the security services.
UPDATE: Muhammad Hassan has been released, after he was kept for three hours in police custody.