Due to some time constraints I won’t be able to post a detailed report on today’s pro-resistance demo, that started at 6pm and ended roughly around 8pm. However, I uploaded some photos of the protest and assaults by police-deployed thugs that I hope you’ll check on my flickr account.
I’m totally disgusted by the chocking police presence, and the increasing dependence of our security forces on plainclothes thugs to “keep law and order” during demos.
At least one journalist and several demonstrators were also assaulted, but I don’t know their names. Those I could recognize included dpa journalist Jano Charbel, Ahmad Droubi, who were hit in the face and the head by baton-wielding thugs, as well as Malek.
I’m totally disgusted by the chocking police presence, and the increasing dependence of our security forces on plainclothes thugs to “keep law and order” during demos.
At least one journalist and several demonstrators were also assaulted, but I don’t know their names. Those I could recognize included dpa journalist Jano Charbel, Ahmad Droubi, who were hit in the face and the head by baton-wielding thugs, as well as Malek.
UPDATE: I’ve just spoken with Aida Seif al-Dawla, the chairman of the Egyptian Association Against Torture. She said she was brutally assaulted by plainclothes thugs as the demo was coming to an end. She received several punches in the stomach, sides, and chest.
UPDATE: Here are more protest pix from Mohamed el-Taher’s blog.
hossam, it sure didn’t look like 1000 to me – I’d be surprised if there were half that many people at its height. As for police presence, it was much lighter downtown overall than in previous demos – people were allowed in and out of the circle of protestors and things only got a little rough, when I was there, when police wanted to clear talaat harb st. for traffic and started pushing. I didn’t stay uintil the very end, which may be when things got nastier indeed, the numbers of riot police were buiulding as I left around 7:30….
I think the main thing to note in these demos is total lack of organization – madly conflicting chants, ragtag signage and no one overseeing movements – for example, after 1.5 hours of protest, as p0lice numbers were building, and tons of media had already recorded the presence of, at this point a dwindling, not building crowd (I would say there were no more than 250 max whan I left) – protest organizers should get people out of there in the interest of safety.
My observation when the circle artound the protestors was being tightened by the police, is that there were plenty of hot and harried protestors willing to push back – there is absolutely no need for that – providing you have room to move back, and they did.
Demonstrating, like everything else, requires technique to be effective. Instead of contcentrating on what brutal asholes the police are- something we already know by heart – we should be looking at how to improve the handling of demonstations and how to get more people to come.
What’s wrong with pushing back when cops push us?
It got a lot worse towards the end although their was a big press by the security lines earlier. I arrived at the protest around 6:45. Within 15 minutes, they were already using their standard distract, divide and crush tactics. They drew people, myself included, towards KFC with a bunch of commotion. Of course, to get there you had to jump the fence. Then they started the rough push with the rest of the group that ended up in many getting pushed around, but more significantly, as tends to happen in such scenarios, it gave the deprived and depraved plainclothes privates – not thugs, these were draft conscripts who talked about their meery and khidma – a wonderful opportunity to grope.
Back to the big picture: It was after this maneuver that they managed to build a line of riot police along the fence, trapping the few protesters (like Akram) remaining on the KFC side on the fence. What gets to me so much is how god damn stupid the protesters are. We saw this. We’ve seen this so many times before. A lot of people were yelling this fact back and forth and yet we still managed to fall for it. Several times, in fact, such that we were divided into several small clumps of protesters. It’s a strategy as old as war, yet we manage to succumb to it every time. Sometimes i wonder if we even deserve the right to public assembly.
Throughout this period more troops were being moved in which struck me as really really odd. The number of protesters were dwindling as was their energy level. We’d already sung our national anthem reprise several times and yet they came.
This brings me to the last segment. This was when they started to really pressure us. They gradually constricted their lines as protesters started to leave. Then suddenly, they crushed us. There was absolutely no room and we were fighting to keep people on their feet and women away from the eager arms of plainclothes privates who were really starting to worry us. But i saw something at that moment that i’d never, ever seen before. There was confusion in the ranks of state security. And i mean serious confusion. There were officers, including a general (is that what lewa is?), pushing the privates backwards. But they kept pushing back into us. The officers were screaming their heads off but it seemed to take them 5 minutes to get their command hierarchy sorted out and finally stop the press. (strange, i think, because if i was a soldier and saw the dude in all white and ceremonial hat, i would definitely listen to him)
So if i had to pick a theme for the protest, building on maria’s comment and the above: Disorder
I think that’s all. Thought i’d add another perspective and point that last bit out. I apologize for ambiguity; I’m not very familiar with military terminology in either language.
There’s a lot to be said on the general running of protests. And i guess we’ve kind of forgotten a lot of what we learned last summer and early fall. Then again, there was so much we had yet to get worked out even at the peak of our organization. I’ll refrain from commenting on that for now. Perhaps some other time when i’m not this rushed.
Maria, I stick by the number 1000. It looked that big to me, and as in each demo I did quick survey, asking few reporters and activists about their estimate.. and the numbers I got ranged from 700 to 1500.
Sorry, posted it at wrong topic yesterday…
Hi all,
I was also at the demo today, as an IAMCR participant from Holland. Besides me were two other participants, from GB, we then also met two Americans, a Canadian and probably there were other conference participants too. It was great to see so much solidarity with the demo. And yes, it did help to wave our badges and talk with the officers standing by that were coordinating the assault on the protestors, if only to confuse and embarres them. But for most of us the experience was especially one of shock. It was hard to get into the group that was formed but quickly closed of by what seemed classic demo ‘thugs’ and of course many police/special forces. Outside we tried to play our role as witness or supporters of all of you who were inside and continuing the protest. The shock we felt was about the amount of force and violence against protesters who were doing their duty as antiwar activists and citizens, for a cause so obvious and legitimate and practiced all over the world as we speak. It confirmed again how scared and volnarable regimes are when they support war-mongering oppressive systems and states like the US and Israel. It seemed like the last thing they wanted is your spirit to be spread on Tahrir square and beyond, because they know how many people potentially support you and thus mobilised. For us the demo today seemed like a fight between the state and the street, as much as silencing a call for solidarity and condemnation of israeli agression. At the conference people tried to mobilize for an official solidarity motion with lebanon and Palestine, in the name of IAMCR, but it seems they too are scared. It was dissapointing that the motion did not make it in the general assembly. But the mood and spirit is there, even amongst us ‘academics’. Our experience has strengthened our sense of international solidarity and we will remember the courage and sacrifice of our egyptian fellow activists with us when we go back. Demonstrating in Amsterdam will surely feel much more easy, thus obligatory, after what we saw in Tahrir today. Hasta la victoria…
Miryam
“protest organizers should get people out of there in the interest of safety.�
Not sure I understand what you mean? Protest organizers should disperse demonstrators or tell them go home if they find their number is little?
“My observation when the circle around the protestors was being tightened by the police, is that there were plenty of hot and harried protestors willing to push back – there is absolutely no need for that – providing you have room to move back, and they did.â€�
I strongly disagree. The pictures speak for themselves about how the security tactics (tightening of the police and thugs circle) become suffocating after a while, literally. The thugs tighten the ring around you, and if you let them do that coz there’s some space behind you, then they’ll keep tightening the circle again and again and again, till you suffocate. The circle has become so tight at some point that I was completely paralyzed in my place, that I couldn’t even lift my arm!
“Demonstrating, like everything else, requires technique to be effective. Instead of contcentrating on what brutal asholes the police are- something we already know by heart – we should be looking at how to improve the handling of demonstations and how to get more people to come.”
You might know it by hard, Maria, but others don’t including some fellow Egyptians. And these practices need to be exposed with no mercy. That’s what organizers should do to ensure these abuses do not happen again, or remind the govt it will get a scandal if it does that. And touching back on the point you mentioned earlier about the need to get more people out, one of the main reasons people do not join protests is that they are SCARED of police brutality. Addressing such abuses then become as crucial as getting a demo together
Re: thugs:
Bassem, the current plainclothes thugs have evolved from the so called “Karate teams� in the 1980s. These were plainclothes privates and conscripts, given a little bit of training in martial arts. Security used to unleash them on demonstrators excessively in the 1980s. In the 1990s, they were rarely used, and there was large dependence on CSF to crackdown on demos, or “keep law and order.�
Increasingly since the beginning of the intifada, the plainclothes tactics were back, and in a new form.
The current baltaggeya battalions the police use come from mainly two backgrounds.
One is conscripted privates in the interior ministry, but the other would be criminals on parole or those who have records as “mossagal khatar� in police stations. The ratio of criminals to privates differ from one demo to the other, or from one event to the other.
For example, during the parliamentary elections’ assaults on voters and anti-Kefaya demos last year, the overwhelming majority were criminals. (For example, a baltagi “detained� by the voters in Zagazig in Novemeber, admitted he was from Shoubra al-Kheima in Cairo, and that he was mobilized to Zagazig as part of a group of thugs mobilized by the police.)
May be those ones from yesterday’s demo were the same old “Karate teams� of the ‘80s, but that does not mean criminal thugs with police records are still not used. They are.
Just a few comments on the “containment” strategy practised by the police at the Tahirr demo yesterday and the British experience.
In 2000 the British police started using the containment strategy at large anti-globalisation demos in London. Prior to this, the approach had been to use relatively few police to guard important buildings and streets, create road-blocks to separate the protests from “normal” people, and attempt to fragment the demo through charges of riot police through the centre. The aim was to fragment and disperse the demo.
In practise the strategy was counter-productive, as the protestors refused to disperse, it created chaotic running battles between police and protestors and a number of photo opportunities of police brutality…
As the movement began to become more mainstream – cooperating with NGOs, Trade Unions and other social justice movements – the fragmentation strategy, and the chaos it created, was seen as too politically risky.
That was then they adopted the containment approach. By using “overwhelming” force, portable metal fences and vehicle roadblocks, the police decided to reverse the demo dynamics. Rather than “defending” the city against the demo, the aim was to imprison and confine the protestors for the duration of their protest and play the waiting game until the protesters got bored and went home.
One particular demonstration in 2000 involved more than 10,000 protestors penned in Oxford Circus (a major road junction in London) for 6 hours until each protestor was let out one-by-one – after having giving their name and address to the gatekeepers.
The strategy has proved incredibly effective, not only does it isolate the demo from the people they are trying to influence, it also makes for very boring media coverage.
My point is, that from the British experience, once demonstrators have been caught within these temporary mini-“Gazas” it is extremely difficult to regain “control” of the protest. This can only be done by breaking free of the compound and becoming an unpredictably mobile demo. And with the proven brutality of the Egyptian police it is difficult to see how this could have been done yesterday without bloodshed. Some may argue that such a move is strategically legitimate because it provokes the state into public brutality. The problem with that is that in a situation of containment – it is the whole crowd who would pay the cost of such a move, and not just the “vanguard” who initiated it.
In this context, I think the “madly conflicting chants, ragtag signage” were a positive for the demo. Given that the only connection with the outside world was through the cameras that were present inside the pen – the diversity of yesterday’s protest gave an indication of the breadth of support accross different political perspectives and at least gave the media some interesting footage….
I thought we handled the aggressive pushing of the cops as well as we could in the circumstances. Blaming an imprisoned protest for being “disorganised” seems a bit harsh.
Ryan, the constructive advice and parallels were greatly appreciated. We need more of this kind of stuff.
Cheers.
Do you think it would be easier to get around the blockading tactics of the cops if organizers were to rotate protests or hold them simultaneously in a few different places? It seems like protests are always limited to one cordoned-off part of Abdel Khaled Sarwat, surrounded by security, while everyone else goes about their life and shops on Talaat Harb, or they are limited to traffic islands in Tahrir. Would it be possible to hold protests in areas where there may be more contact with ordinary people, to surprise the cops, as it were? Like the protests in Sayyida Zainab, Shoubra, etc last year?
As for the pushing and shoving and trying to split the crowd, from my very limited experience with it I remember that it made a difference that I could, as a woman, tell them I wasn’t going to budge and to not dare lay a hand on me. When you’re hemmed in a large crowd it probably doesn’t matter, but when you’re next to the cordon it could. I think khawagas and journalists could also use their privileged position to do this, though the security forces didn’t exactly show them tender mercy either in election protests.
Ryan’s comments are indeed constructive, and everyone else’s too. I think it’s important to critique the handling or relative success of a demo – esp. if by some kind of info. exchange and trying new strategies they can improve. By improve I mean deliver the message and increase the ranks while avoiding violence.
The containment strategy seems to be favored here because it works. And it doesn’t matter if there are several concurrent demos, as there have been downtown in the past, because they all receive the same treatment by the police, who so vastly outnumber the protestors.
This I think is the main issue – how to get people out on the streets, and this is where some creative energy needs to be directed.
I agree, Hossam, people don’t join the protests because they’re scared. But I don’t think they need more images of peaceful demonstrators being beat up by cops to know the nature of the beast they’ve lived with all their lives. Seeing those pics (or watching it actually happen) just keeps people away from demos, however much they may agree with what the protestors are saying. I think we really need to find creative ways of approaching the whole activity, especially since there are so many constraints.
Maybe organizing demos in different parts of the city is a good idea, not only in neighborhoods like shobra etc. but maybe worth a try at some high visibility ones, i.,e. tourist attractions, on the Salah es Salam in front of the citadel, or at the entry to the sphinx/pyramids. Or maybe using cars- imagine all the taxi drivers in cairo converging on Midan Tahrir – and stopping there. With the gas price hikes, they might just do it! (whimsical, I know…)
but theatrics can be helpful – I loved the man dressed in army fatigues wearing chains yesterday and silently carrying his own caption/sign: The Arab Armies. (not that I think the arab armies would help matters, but the man definitely said his piece).
the point is there are other things to try. People demonstrate to make a statement- there are many ways to do that – maybe we need to put our heads together and think outside the blockade.
And one more thing – it’s worth mentioning that these cops are very young; some of them yesterday looked liked kids. They couldn’t take their eyes off the girls, and who can blame them. I don’t think many of them have a clue as to what they’re really doing, what they’ve come to represent, or what we’re doing either. They too are victims of this system. The next demo I go to I’m bringing peace signs to hand out and bottles of water for the riot police. In the old days it was flowers.
I recall as a girl protesting the Vietnam War, how the yuppies and other groups used to organize rallies. There was always music, eloquent speech. I remember once, a helicopter dropped an enormous joint filled with smaller ones from the sky. Sigh. Those days are gone, but they helped end the war. One of the reasons was that students nationwide were organized; they coordinated activities – sit-ins, strikes, what have you.
The current resistance in Egypt has come a long way in a short time under tough conditions – but it has a long way to go. I have an excellent documentary on the Weather Underground by the way, not exactly what we’re talking about here, but highly instructive if anyone wants to see it, I’m trying to organize a showing.