A solidarity statement with the Mahalla strikers has been issued, jointly signed by the Alexandria Port workers, Kefaya’s chapter in Alexandria, the Socialist Students in Alexandria, and the Center for Socialist Studies (Alexandria).
Tag: students
Mahalla updates
I’ve spoken with a Socialist activist inside the factory. He says around 3am one of the members of the company board showed up and “tried to offer the workers a weak settlement, but they refused. Then around 8am in the morning a delegation from the (govt-founded) National Council for Human Rights and said they were here part of a fact finding mission to investigate the conditions of the workers.
These are positive signs that the police is not going to storm the factory soon, as they were planning earlier. But of course I could be wrong, who knows how the Interior Ministry thinks. It looks like the government may be heading for a compromise to end the strike.
“If the strike ends in victory,” he continued, “can you imagine the domino effect it will have? That could well open a new season of strikes like what happened in December (2006). Anyways, let’s wait and see.”
On another front, the Socialist Students in Helwan and Cairo Universities issued a statement in solidarity with the strikers.
State Security Police raid Fayoum U campus
From Ikhwan Web:
Immediately after the visit of the Minister of Higher Education to Al Fayyum university, two students were arrested at the gate of university, a few days after two other students were arrested, one of them at the gate of the university and the other from his house just before Iftar (breaking the fasting).
Both students were jailed 15 days under investigation.
On Monday morning, Sep, 24th, Motasim Salah Youssef, a third year student at the Faculty of Social Work, and Ramadan Mahmoud Muhammad, a student at the College of Specific Education, were arrested while entering university to attend classes.
Officer Marawan Ahmad Mazen who is tasked with the file of university and education at the State Security Police service supervised the detentions operation. He even chased a student at the Faculty of Education using a police car.
And here’s a video of the arrest, I received from the MB: