Tag: students

Thousands demonstrate at Cairo University

Posted on By 3arabawy

Thousands of Muslim Brotherhood and leftist students are demonstrating at the Cairo University campus in Giza, protesting state security’s hassles against opposition candidates running for the student union elections.

The list of candidates certified to run in the elections should have been announced by 3pm. As of the time of writing, it hasn’t. The student activists smelt a fish, expecting the delay to be related to the security going through the names, putting their final touch, and eleminating names of political activists. Demonstrations broke out on campus. The university gate has been reportedly smashed. The students are currently on a sit in, waiting for the lists to be publicized.

The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression has issued a statement denouncing security violations against students in Helwan, Ain Shams and Cairo universities.

UPDATE: The lists were announced sometime after 8pm. About 200 Muslim Brothers were banned by security, according to a MB student I spoke to over the phone. Demonstrations broke out, and the students tried to go out on the streets, only to be met by the Central Security Forces. The troops clashed with protesters violently at the gates of the university. The standoff ended around 9:30pm.

UPDATE: The AFTEE has issued another statement denouncing the security forces’ assaults on students.

Clashes in Ain Shams University

Posted on By 3arabawy

Bloody clashes have been going on for the third day on the row at Ain Shams University campus in Abbassiya, as student union elections approach.

Pro-government students assaulted Muslim Brotherhood activists at the Faculty of Education at Ain Shams University, and tore down their electoral posters. The MB mobilized demos to denounce the attacks, but they were only met by violence.

Pro-government students, armed with sticks and knives, viciously attacked the Brothers, and brought into campus truckloads of Baltaggiya (criminal thugs), who have spread terror on campus.

  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)

And where was the University’s Security, which Minister of Education Dr. Hani Helal described in today’s Al-Masry Al-Youm as “without it, we would have been screwed”? (I’m not joking. That’s the quote.) NO WHERE! The security did not intervene to stop the assaults, and actually aided them. Under their watchful eyes that those herds of Baltaggiya were allowed into campus.

I’ve spoken with Emad Mubarak, the director of the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression, who follows abuses against students closely, and he said this year the government is not taking it lightly at all with the SU elections. “Already the intimidations started before Eid,” he said. “Posters were torn down several times before, but for two days this bloodshed has went out of control. Three students at least have been hospitalized with serious injuries. This exposes what sort of lies the minister of education is spreading in the press about freedoms on campuses.”

UPDATE: Protests at Helwan University after security banned MB candidates from running.

Rights group condemns discrimination against veiled students

Posted on By 3arabawy

No this is not in France, this is in Egypt…

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
Press Release- 11 October 2006

Expulsion of Veiled Students from University Hostel Arbitrary and Discriminatory
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) today condemned the decision by Helwan University’s President to expel female students who choose for religious reasons to wear the niqab, or face veil, from the university’s hostel. The EIPR also regretted the statement by the Minister of Higher Education in support of the decision, which violates the constitutional protections of equality, religious freedom and personal liberty.

The only thing worse than the arbitrary interference with women’s right to choose their dress code is to deprive them of government-subsidized accommodation and meals solely on the basis of a decision they made in accordance with their religious beliefs.”

The EIPR rejected the use of security concerns to justify the discriminatory practice, especially since the students pledged to remove the veil for identity checks to female guards at the hostel’s entrance. Other universities still allow veiled students to live in university hostels, as did Helwan University itself before the sudden emergence of “security concerns” this year.

Banning the wearing of the niqab is an illegitimate restriction of the right to manifest one’s religion or belief, enshrined in Article 18 (3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by Egypt in 1982. The United Nations committee that monitors the implementation of the Covenant ruled on 18 January 2005 that banning the niqab at universities in Uzbekistan violates the Covenant. The ruling said that “to prevent a person from wearing religious clothing in public or private may constitute a violation of article 18, paragraph 2, which prohibits any coercion that would impair the individual’s freedom to have or adopt a religion.”

Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court (SAD) had annulled in 1989 a decision by Ain Shams University’s President to ban the niqab on campus. However, another panel of the same Court ruled in 1999 in support of a niqab ban imposed by Mansoura University. The SAD’s Chamber for Unification of Principles is currently considering the question in an attempt to establish a legal precedent on niqab restrictions. In February 2005, the EIPR submitted to the SAD a brief on the Egyptian government’s legal obligations under international law to protect women’s freedom to wear the niqab.