It was a great evening, with hundreds of activists filling the syndicate’s entrance and main hall, listening to representatives of Egyptian leftist and Islamist parties, leaders of Arab resistance groups, and international anti-war activists.
The Press Syndicate’s was buzzing with movement, as young students and activists from the Muslim Brothers, Karama, Revolutionary Socialists, and independents set up booths, with political pamphlets, publications, leaflets. The MB youth also held banners denouncing Mubarak’s military tribunals.
It was my first time to see Socialist activist and friend Khaled Abdel Hamid following his release.
I missed half of the speakers, as I was busy standing with journalist Ibrahim el-Sahary and others at the Center for Socialist Studies‘ booth outside the hall.
Mahdi Akef, the Chairman of the Muslim Brothers, was one of the speakers in the opening rally. Among things he said was “American soldiers are dying today as victims of American Capitalism” and condemned the “military-industrial complex” that “took over” the US. I thought it was interesting, as I never heard this lingo before from Akef.
I was thrilled also to listen to two British revolutionary socialists, who are no strangers to Cairo:
Alex Callinicos (photo above) and John Rees (photo below), whose books and contribution to revolutionary socialist thought have had a strong impact on Egypt’s new radical left.
Comrade Sameh Nagib spoke in the name of Egypt’s Socialists, saluting Arab resistance fighters in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, and denounced the blackmail and pressuring the Arab regimes are exerting on these movements. Sameh also greeted the international anti-war protesters, “who exposed that the current battle is neither religious nor cultural, but a battle between the majority of the world’s poor and those who instigate wars, breed racism and enforce capitalist globalization.”
In the name of Egypt’s Socialists, Sameh also expressed solidarity with Khairat el-Shatter and the MB detainees facing unjust military tribunals, affirming that “the struggle against Mubarak’s regime is just in its beginning and not end as the regime hopes. Despite the constitutional coup, passed by force and forgery, the Egyptian state terrorism will not intimidate us. Their laws and dictatorial constitution will not deter us from fighting for freedom and justice.” The way forward has been shown by the tens of thousands of striking workers over the past four months, Sameh said, affirming that the movement for political change had no other option but linking their struggle against the corrupt dictatorship with the labor struggles in Mahalla, Kafr el-Dawar, Helwan and Alexandria.
The 70-strong South Korean delegation attracted lots of interest and applause, when anti-capitalist campaigner Choi Il-bung took the stage, to denounce the war in Iraq, the South Korean government’s clientalism to the US, and Mubarak’s Abu Ghraib-style torture of dissidents.
Choi and his comrades demonstrated May last year in front of the Egyptian embassy in Seoul in solidarity with the Kefaya detainees.
One of the stars tonight was Dr. Moussa Abu Marzouk, Hamas’ second-in-command, who was one of the speakers in the opening rally too.
And the head of the Women Secretariat at the Lebanese resistance Hezbollah group.
And Rose Genle, the mother of a 19-year-old UK soldier who was killed in Iraq, denounced Blair for sending British youth to die for a war based on lies in Iraq.
Finally, please check this paper, the Center for Socialist Studies distributed tonight, on the future of political democracy in Egypt.