Tag: women

‘6th of April: To be or not to be’

Posted on By 3arabawy

In the run up to the 6th of April, Ghazl el-Mahalla turned into a battleground of propaganda and agitation between the Textile Workers’ League activists on the one hand, and on the other were the management, security and the group of workers around Attar and Habib who were trying to sabotage the strike.

Each camp was distributing hundreds and thousands of statements in the week prior to the 6th of April. According to two labor organizers I spoke with, the militancy in the garments section, that is composed largely of women workers, was the highest. These were the same workers who started the 7th of December strike, as 3000 of them struck and started marching, chanting “Where are the men? Here we are the women!”

One of the strongest pro-strike statements, distributed in the factory, appeared a couple of days prior to the uprising, titled “The 6th of April: To be or not to be,” signed by “The Women Workers of Ghazl el-Mahalla,” who were close to the Textile Workers’ League.

The statement denounced PM Nazif, the National Democratic Party, the company security and the state-backed union officials, endorsing the call to strike:

Mahalla Testimony

Posted on By 3arabawy

A journalist present in Mahalla during the April uprising, recalling the initial clashes that sparked the intifada in El-Shoun Sq:

It was all peaceful (in the square) until the police assaulted the people. Suddenly, I don’t know from where they showed up, but out of the alleys came big baladi women with sticks and kitchen knives.. young men.. children.. like a sea flood.. I don’t know from where they showed up.. but again, they just appeared. They fought the police back. The women were shouting at the soldiers and corporals: “You Israeli sons of bitches! You Israeli sons of dogs!”

Women relatives of incarcerated prisoners demand their release

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

Around 40 women gathered in front of the governor’s office in Al-Arish in Northern Sinai Tuesday to protest the continuing incarceration of some 70 prisoners from Sinai arrested in the wake of a spate of bombings in the peninsula.
The protesters lifted placards and chanted slogans demanding the release of the prisoners, none of whom are kept in Sinai prisons but in other facilities such as Borg El-Arab, near Alexandria, and Cairo’s Tora prison.
According to journalist and activist Mustapha Singer who was present at the protest, the women chanted slogans saying “Our country’s leaders, why did you take our children?”
Children lifted placards with captions such as “Release my father.”
There was a security presence around the protest and “I was prevented from taking pictures,” Singer said.