Tag: #RevSoc

12:00pm: I’ve just spoken with a labor activist inside Ghazl el-Mahalla compound:

No street clashes and the town is quiet since last night. And also today it is quiet. Production is going on in the factory. But there are tensions in the air, as everybody is waiting to see if the people [the detainees] get released.

Earlier, I spoke with a Socialist activist in Cairo, who said that the (corrupt, regime-backed) General Federation of Trade Unions officials were disseminating rumors that detained Ghazl el-Mahalla workers, who were among those picked up on Sunday and Monday, will be “released soon.” But as I said, these are rumors and workers like Kamal el-Fayoumi, Tarek el-Senoussi, Kareem el-Beheiri and others are still in police custody.

12:40pm: A fantastic video of the Mahalla demonstrators defacing and smashing the dictator Mubarak’s poster in a public square on Monday.

Omar Said uploaded some videos he took in Mahalla on Monday:

9pm: I received news around an hour ago that Kefaya’s George Ishaaq was detained by State Security who raided his house:

George Ishaaq, leading Kefaya activist had just returned home in El Bostan street, Cairo after a long day of preparation for a Kefaya conference to reply to the allegation of the Egyptian government regarding the recent Mahalla demonstrations on the 6th and 7th of April, when state security officers broke into his house searching all his papers and books. Ishaaq was alone. They confiscated papers and books from his library and seemed especially interested in “The Butterfly’s Flutter” by political activist Ahmad Bahaa Shabaan, a book which describes the evolution, nature and future of the Kefaya movement. SSI also took Ishaaq’s mobile phone and prevented him from contacting anybody. After about an hour of search his wife arrived and found them all over her house. For a moment she thought she must be in the wrong place. Irritated by the heavy police presence in her house and their rude manners she asked them to leave the house. They refused. When they tried to take the computer of her son Shady, she refused and insisted that the computer belongs to her son and not his father. They demanded to see her mobile. She denied using a mobile, upon which SSI arrested George Ishaaq and took him to a place, that remains unknown until now.

Journalist Amina Khairy was also arrested earlier in Mahalla as she was trying to interview families of detainees in front of Mahalla’s 1st Police Station. A Japanese journalist and his interpreter were also detained by the pigs when they tried to do the same… Journalists from Ad-Dustour and Al-Jazeera also are facing intimidation…
The Solidarity Committee with the Mahalla Workers has called for a solidarity protest with the detainees and victims of Mubarak’s police brutality who were killed on the 6th and 7th April… The protest is to take place Saturday, 12 April, noon, in front of Cairo’s High Court (Ramses St, Is3af).

11:pm: I couldn’t get thru to my Mahalla contacts in the evening to find out what’s going on there. But according to Socialist activists I spoke with in Cairo, there was no mass scale rioting or clashes that took place today. There are hundreds assembled still in front of Mahalla’s 1st Police Station awaiting to hear news about or see their loved ones who were abducted by Mubarak’s pigs. Journalists who showed up there were subject to intimidation and arrest by the police. The socialists I spoke with echoed the same concerns made by some bloggers about the SS raid of Ishaq’s house being the start of a security crackdown against leftist dissidents or anyone involved in the solidarity movement with Mahalla. Ishaq as far as we know is now at the State Security Prosecutor’s office in el-Tagammu el-Khames, and is denied access to lawyers. In other news, the detained Japanese journalist and his interpreter were released.

1am: Another Kefaya activist detained. Fathi el-Hefnawi’s house was raided by the State Security pigs in the town of Bassioun, Gharbeia Province, around 11:30pm.