Tag: workers

Cry out in anger at Egypt’s show trials

Posted on By 3arabawy

A CALL FOR SOLIDARITY:

The US-backed regime of Hosni Mubarak is prosecuting 49 Egyptians in the Emergency High State Security Criminal Court. It is accusing them of involvement in the recent two day uprising in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla.
Egyptian security forces occupied Ghazl el-Mahalla, the biggest textile mill in the Middle East with 27,000 workers, on the 6 and 7 April.
They were attempting to crush a strike in protest against skyrocketing food prices. The workers also demanded a raise in the national minimum wage, which has remained stagnant since 1984.
The strike was organized by the Textile Workers’ League, an independent labor association formed last year following a wave of successful textile workers’ occupations.
The association called the strike on 6 April. The regime responded by flooding the Nile Delta town with thousands of troops. They surrounded the textile factory compound.
This move triggered a mass demonstration that drew in workers and the urban poor.
Protesters fought back when security forces attacked demonstrators with batons, tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and live ammunition.
Crackdown
At least three people were killed and hundreds injured. Police then swooped on neighborhoods and arrested hundreds of Mahalla citizens, including key strike activists.
Many of these activists were released following international pressure, but 43 ordinary people swept up in the crackdown are still in jail.
Detainees who were released shortly afterwards spoke of horrific torture meted out to them in police stations and state security facilities.
These included severe beatings, electric shocks and sexual abuse. Prisoners were forced to sleep on the floor and threatened with rape. On several occasions security forces personnel trampled over the detainees as they lay helpless on the ground.
The detainees have found themselves trapped in a maze of laws and prisons.
State security agents have ignored orders from the prosecutor’s office to release some of the prisoners.
Others who had made it out of the detention facilities were either kidnapped or rearrested under wide-ranging security powers.
Mubarak’s regime has decided to transfer 43 of the detainees to an exceptional court – which has been denounced by human rights groups as lacking the international standards for a “safe and just trial”.
Six others are on the run and will be tried in absentia.
All the detainees will be tried on trumped up charges and face prison sentences of between six to ten years hard labor.
Egyptian activists have denounced the regime for using the detainees as scapegoats for the uprising. The trial is expected to begin in August.
International solidarity with the Mahalla detainees is urgently needed. Statements of support from trade unions and human rights groups will help put pressure on the Egyptian dictatorship.
To get copies of the petition contact the Stop the War Coalition. Phone 020 7278 6694 or go to » www.stopwar.org.uk
For more information about the solidarity campaign email cairoconference@stopwar.org.uk
Send letters of protests to the Egyptian Embassy, 26 South Street, London W1K 1DW

The petition has already been signed by hundreds of activists and trade unionists who took part in Marxism 2008, including:

Trevor Ngwane, Anti-Privatisation Forum (South Africa)
Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of Public and Commercial Services Union (UK)
Jane Loftus, vice-president Communications Workers Union (UK)
Eamonn McCann, journalist and anti-war campaigner (Ireland)
Alex Callinicos, Academic and SWP leading activist

Please circulate the petition.

Factory workers protest 15-month salary delay

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports…

Some 100 workers from the Strow Misr company and their children gathered on Sunday in Dokki, Cairo, protesting the failure of the company’s management to pay them for over 15 months.
The protest was held outside the office of former Egyptian Prime Minister and Strow Misr executive director, Ali Lotfy, to coincide with a general assembly meeting.
Strow Misr — located in 10th of Ramadan City and which was put into liquidation in March 2007 — was the only factory in the Middle East producing Citric Acid, used in foodstuffs and carbonated drinks such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
“Management told us in December 2006 that the company was making losses and that they were considering putting it into liquidation,” Medhat Muhammad, a Strow Misr employee who joined the company in the late 1980s told Daily News Egypt.
The decision to put the company into liquidation was announced in March 2007.
Muhammad says that the factory’s 247 workers have not been paid salaries, or received any sort of redundancy compensation, since the company’s liquidation in 2007.
“How the only company in the Arab region producing such a vital ingredient can make a loss is baffling: even if we worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week we would never fulfil the Coca-Cola order alone.”
“The only explanation is that the factory was mismanaged, but this isn’t a matter which concerns us. If they want to put the company into liquidation, fine — but give us what is rightfully ours,” Muhammad continued.
He alleges that senior management are benefiting from the protracted process of liquidation.
“About 15 or 20 members of senior management continue to receive salaries while factory floor workers are getting nothing,” Muhammad told Daily News Egypt.
Talks between company management and workers ended Sunday with a promise from Lotfy that workers would receive the payments they are entitled to on Aug. 15, 2008.
“This isn’t the first time we have received such promises but we’ll wait until August, see what happens, and act accordingly,” Muhammad said.