Month: November 2006

The Street Is Ours Demo tomorrow

تعلن حركة الشارع لنا أننا سو� نبدأ حملة د�اعا عن تواجدنا.. عن حقنا �ي الحياة العامة.. وعن حقنا �ي حياة خالية من العن� والتحرش الجنسي..
وندعو الجميع، نساء ورجال، إلى التجمع أمام سينما مترو (أحد مواقع تحرشات وسط البلد)
يوم الثلاثاء، 14 نو�مبر �ي الثالثة بعد الظهر،
تضامنا مع النساء ضحايا أيام العيد وإعلانا بأن الشارع لنا وأن أحدا لن يعزلنا أو يخي�نا بعيدا عنه.
كي لا تخا� أي أم على ابنتها أو أخت على أختها وأي زوج على زوجته أو أب على ابنته.. كي لا يسرقوا منا الشعور بالأمن �ي بلادنا..
الآن: مسئوليتنا جميعا أن ننزل الشارع
مزيد من المعلومات مراسلتنا على البريد الالكترونى
info [at] streetisours [dot] org

The Street is Ours
We shall start a campaign defending our presence, our right to public space, our right to a life free of violence and sexual harassment;
We call upon everybody, women and men, to gather in front of the Metro Theater (one of the locations where the harassments took place)
Tuesday 14 November, at 3 p.m.,
to express our solidarity with the victims of harassment
to make a statement that the street is ours.
Nobody will terrify us away. Nobody will isolate us in our country.

Kefaya Giza coordinator detained

Authorities continued their hassels against Mohamed Al-Ashqar, Kefaya activist and the head of the Popular Committee for the Protection of the Consumer from Corruption in Giza. He was detained yesterday, and his whereabouts are unknown.

Ashqar was to lead the “garbage march” today in Giza, to protest the unfair garbage collection fees decreed by the Governor.

Related link: State Security “detains” Kefaya activist’s car

Garbage march

The Popular Committee for the Protection of the Consumer from Corruption has called for a march on Monday, 13 November in Giza, to protest the Governor’s decree to add unfair garbage collection fees to electricity bills. The silent march is to start in front of the Telephone Centrale in Giza Square, 12 noon, and will proceed to the Giza Governorate building. Participants are encouraged to bring garbage bags which will be dumped in front of the Governorate’s building at the end of the march.

اللجنة الشعبية لحماية المستهلك من الجباية والÙ�ساد والتى استطاعت من قبل وبمأزرة جماهير الجيزة من الحصول على الحكم النهائى بالغاء رسوم النظاÙ�Ø© المضاÙ�Ø© الى Ù�اتورة الكهرباء ØŒ تدعوكم اللجنة الى المظاهرة الصامتة التى ستبدأ Ù�Ù‰:الثانية عشر ظهرا يوم الاثنين المواÙ�Ù‚ 13 نوÙ�مبروبمشاركة كاÙ�Ø© مؤسسات المجتمع الأهلى والقوى الوطنية من امام سنترال ميدان الجيزة يحمل كل منا Ù�Ù‰ يده كيس زبالة حيث تبدأ المسيرة من الميدان لتنتهى امام مبنى محاÙ�ظة الجيزة لالقاء هذه المخلÙ�ات امام مبنى المحاÙ�ظة تحت شعار”الزبالة يا مسئولين زبالة …لن نسدد Ù�واتير اللصوص”

للاستعلام يرجى الاتصال بالارقام”
5725297 – 0123997591

وداعاً أحمد شر�

Communist lawyer Ahmad SharafEddin passed away last night at the age of 57.
Sharaf was a student leader in the 1970s, who went on to become a labor lawyer. He was a devoted soldier in working class battles and a ruthless civil rights campaigner at the Lawyers’ Syndicate.
May he rest in peace…

I’m posting a feature, I wrote for the Cairo Times back in 2002, about Awlad Allam slum in Dokki, where Sharaf grew up.

Continue reading وداعاً أحمد شر�

TI and other corruption indexes

Al Masry Al Youm yesterday carried a nice photo series on its (print only) back page: Someone with a camera at hand observed a police officer stealing fuel out of one of the dark-blue police cars (“boks�). He then infuses it into a private car (probably his).

This rather amusing example ranks at the very bottom of the misuse of public funds (or materials), which is wide-spread in Egypt, as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2006, which was released two days ago, suggests once more. Egypt ranks 70th, with a score of only 3.3 out of 10 (last year it was 3.4).

Highest-ranking country in the Arab world is Qatar with a score of 6.0, the lowest is Iraq with 1.9.

I think corruption is still the best example for why economic reform can’t be sustainable without political reform. Countries with wide-spread corruption attract much less foreign investment, and innovative companies have lesser chances to gain grounds against the established ones. But in Egypt, corruption is too important for the regime to stay in power, so the fight against corruption will always serve only its own interests. So, Egypt just came in 165th on the World Bank’s annual “Ease of doing business� ranking.

Speaking of cars and corruption: The US scholars Ray Fisman and Edward Miguel published a study in which they draw a correlation between the amount of parking fines of foreign diplomats accredited at the UN in New York and the level of corruption in their home countries. In other words: ‘show me where you park, and I tell you how corrupt your home country is’.

Here is the link to the study (pdf-file): Cultures of Corruption: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets

Results: First Kuwait, second Egypt.

FREE KAREEM!

More details are emerging about Abdel Kareem’s case that make me wanna puke.
According to HR-INFO, Kareem was expelled from Al-Azhar University, the so called most prestigious Sunni institution in the world (bla bla bla), for his “secular ideas.” And if that isn’t bad enough, the university itself reported him to the authorities. The religious academics have turned into police informers, it seems.

Free Kareem!

Abdel Kareem was interrogated not on any incidents or crimes he committed, but according to HR-INFO, the prosecutor’s questions were all like: “Do you pray? Do you fast?”….
Kareem is now in police custody, pending investigation into the following charges:
-Spreading statements and rumours that disturb public security
-Insulting the President of the Republic
-Agitating for overthrowing the regime
-Agitating for hatred against Islam
-Misrepresenting Egypt, and hurting its image.
As you can see, the list of charges are similar to those of the Spanish Inquisitions or witch hunting in Medieval Europe. I expect in the future, the prosecutor will ask us questions like, do you own a black cat? Do you repeat Mubarak’s name before going to sleep?

You can find more details about the case (in Arabic) here.

UPDATE: Here’s HR-INFO’s statement in English.