Islamist students at Al-Azhar University demonstrated today in Nasr City against State Security’s intervention in student union elections, which led to political activists being banned from running as candidates. The students declared they were joining the Free Student Union, launched last year by Muslim Brotherhood and Socialist activists, in an attempt to establish an independent association away from the state controlled unions.
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Student union elections marred by violence, controversy on Egypt campuses
The Daily Star Egypt reports.
Police crackdown on MB students
State Security Police have arrested more than 20 Muslim Brotherhood students from their homes on Sunday dawn. The detained activists belonged to the Faculty of Commerce at Helwan University, and were part of the Free Student Union–a new independent student union launched by the MB and the Socialists last year in an attempt to act as an independent association parallel to the government (i.e. security)-dominated student unions in Egyptian universities.
UPDATE: A Reuters report by Aziz El-Kaissouni on the Free Student Union:
Egyptian Islamist students plan parallel election
CAIRO, Nov 6 (Reuters) – Egyptian students affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood said on Monday they were holding parallel student elections next week after most of their candidates were disqualified from the official elections.
The “free” student unions will adopt student causes and defend their rights, they said in a statement.
Egypt has allowed only four or five of about 2,000 prospective Muslim Brotherhood candidates to stand in the elections taking place next Monday, said a source close to the Muslim Brotherhood electoral campaign.
The election authorities disqualified most of the candidates associated with the Brotherhood from elections for workers committees and trade unions.
Hundreds of students, mostly Brotherhood members or sympathisers, protested last week inside several Egyptian universities against the disqualifications.
Twenty-nine Muslim Brothers were arrested on Sunday, 15 of them involved in the student elections in Helwan south of Cairo.
Although officially banned, the Muslim Brotherhood operates relatively openly but is subject to frequent crackdowns by the government, which often detains the group’s members without charge for months at a time.
The Brotherhood holds nearly a fifth of seats in parliament, its members standing as independents to get around the ban.
The U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said last month that Egypt had intensified its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Abdel Aziz Megahed, a Muslim Brotherhood student and secretary-general of a “free” union elected at Cairo University last year, said students from other political groups had agreed to take part in the parallel elections.