30 May 2007: A woman from Qale’t el-Kabsh slum screaming at the police, outside the parliament in Qasr el-Eini Street, where citizens clashed with troops several times demanding alternative housing and compensations after the slum was burnt down.
Tag: protests
Egyptians’ anger approaches boiling point
“Public disaffection with the government appears to have reached an all-time high,” reports IPS.
And speaking of public anger, I’ve just received news that citizens have set a police car on fire after it hit a woman in the town of Samalut.
UPDATE: It’s not a car accident as reported initially. It’s worse!
Around 100 Egyptians set fire to a police truck on a main road in central Egypt on Thursday after a pregnant woman died during a police raid on her house, police sources said.
Mervat Abdel Salam Abdel Fattah, 32, stood in the way of police looking for her brother in a case of theft in the town of Samalut, 200 km (120 miles) south of Cairo, they said.
A policeman hit her with the butt of his pistol and she fell and died, they added.
In revenge friends and relatives attacked and set fire to a police pickup truck on the road from Cairo to the southern city of Assiut. A brigadier was taken to hospital with injuries from a beating and most of the policemen fled, they said.
The pigs are of course denying any wrongdoing, claiming:
The woman was pushed to the ground by officers when she would not let them enter her home to look for her brother, a suspected thief, police said.
She was in the last stages of pregnancy and died of internal bleeding caused by the fall, police added.
UPDATE: Despite police intimidation, the HMLC lawyers managed to meet with Mervat’s family.
Photographers anti-police brutality protest postponed
There was a stormy meeting yesterday at the Photographers’ Association, after which the senior photographers decided to postpone the anti-police brutality protest planned on Sunday.
General Hamdi Abdel Kareem, the Interior Ministry’s PR Department Director contacted the heads of the association and offered to “negotiate and have a dialogue,” according to a source present in the meeting. The association heads accepted, and decided not to sponsor the protest.
There were divisions in the meeting however, with some of the younger photographers angrily denouncing this move, and accusing the Interior Ministry of maneuvering and killing time.
It’s not clear up till now whether some will still go ahead with the protest on Sunday or not.