Tag: egypt

Fallout

Salama Ahmed Salama, one of Egypt’s most prestigious and influential columnists, in a recent (23 July, sorry no link) Al Ahram editorial:

Egypt should adopt the same policy as Iran with regards to acquiring new military technology, notably nuclear weapons, in order to prevent Israeli threats, which are constantly getting worse.

Strategically speaking, can you say he’s wrong? Incidentally Salama has been going around this issue cautiously for weeks while commenting on the Iran nuclear crisis, but I think this is his most frank statement so far.

Mustafa al-Fiqi, pro-Hizbullah?

Watchers of Egyptian politics will appreciate this:

Just today, I watched an appearance by Mustafa Al-Faqi (chairperson of the Egyptian parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee). He spoke like a Hizbullah spokesperson. A Hizbullah guest on the show (Lebanese member of parliament Husayn Hajj Hasan who is such an ineffective propagandist for the party) noted that tone and that change, even from a few days ago.

Mustafa al-Fiqi? HA! Why is it that Egyptian politicians (although al-Fiqi, arguably the biggest cheater of last year’s parliamentary elections, probably doesn’t deserve to be called even a “politician”) change what they say constantly depending on who they’re talking to, even when their government has a pretty clear line it’s following?

The rest of the post linked to above at the Angry Arab is his reasons why Israel miscalculated. Too soon to tell, as I’m not sure Israel’s objectives are the ones it is stating publicly…

More on anti-torture website

I posted before something on one of my favorite human rights websites that monitors torturers in Egypt.

I received a message from the website editor, with more background information:

This website was founded last January, aiming at covering news about torture crimes committed by Egyptian Ministry of Interior. The working team of torture in Egypt believes that raising people’s awareness of their rights is the first step to create a solid anti-torture movement.
I was the first member who joined the website staff, now we are a growing team editing, searching, publishing news and reports about torture crimes committed in Egypt by the interior ministry, and support those whose rights were violated.

Now, here is our story…
March 2005
Me sitting staring at my PC, a scream came from one of Al-Nadeem reports: “They should die otherwise we will do!” It was a woman telling here experience in a police station, meaning by” they” the police officers.” Nothing could compensate what I suffered,” she explained.

26 June 2005
Alaa is standing in a demonstration lifting a banner says “religion is for God and torture is for all!”
Amr came to the demo, carrying a huge list contained names of men, women, young, old, Muslims, Copts, political activists, criminals, innocents… etc. All were tortured by the interior ministry heroes. Some of them were tortured to death.

August 2005:
Me again in front of my PC trying to build a blog, where I can publish some simple researches about torture I prepared.
I sent an email to Alaa seeking his help. He encouraged and sent me some extra material.

January 2006
Amr, Alaa and me sitting in a café with their laptops preparing new and bigger website named “torture in Egypt.” Each one of us was talking about the role one would play in this website.

Today, al hamdu lelah, we have more sources, many people are helping, we send a periodical newsletter to a huge number of people ,we guide some fans to NGOs where they can volunteer, and the most important, people are now more aware of their right of protection against torture.

Police ban solidarity protest

A blogger with Al-Ghad Party reports that a group of young party activists tried to organize a demo on Sunday in solidarity with the Lebanese resistance, and to mark the 23rd of July “Revolution,” but were banned by the police.

As they were coming out of the party building, the activists were met by General Sami Seidhom, and a phalanx of CSF and State Security agents, according to blogger Mohamed el-Sa3eed. General Seidhom hurled slurrs and threatened the activists with detention if they stepped into the street, el-Sa3eed said. The activists retreated upstairs to the party office, and chanted from the balcony overfacing Tal3at Harb Square. Security forces, according to el-Sa3eed, banned Al-3arabiya crew who arrived at the scene from filming.

ME Politics 101

Here’s an AP story building on the recent news reports about a new initiative whereby Egypt and Saudi Arabia would intervene to try to sway Syria away from its alliance with Iran and Hizbollah–in an very classic exchange for a promise from Washington not to give them any headaches about this annoying democracy thing.
Though the AP story was good quality reporting, the title was rather funny: “Moderate Arabs look to curb militants.� “Moderate Arabs�? AP’s standards for political “moderation� seem to lie in how close the regime is to DC. One regime may sodomize dissidents, the other beheads them, but still according to AP they are “moderates.�

Moderate Arabs look to curb militants

By Steven R. Hurst and Salah Nasrawi

CAIRO, Egypt — Egypt and Saudi Arabia – both with strained U.S. ties – are working to entice Syria to end support for Hezbollah, a move that is central to resolving the conflict in Lebanon and unhitching Damascus from its alliance-of-convenience with Iran, the Shiite Muslim guerrillas’ other main backer, Arab diplomats and analysts said Sunday.

The two Arab heavyweights were prepared to spend heavily from Egypt’s political capital in the region and Saudi Arabia’s vast financial reserves to rein in Hezbollah as well as the Hamas militants now running the Palestinian government. In return, Washington would ease pressure on its moderate Arab allies for broad democratic reform, the diplomats and analysts said.

Continue reading ME Politics 101

Grievances dot net

Rights activist Gamal 3eid, director of HRinfo, and his colleague Sally Sami have launched a new cyber-initiative, humum.net. Humum is Arabic for Grievances.

Gamal said in a press release that this new site

… aims to facilitate for human rights groups, state institutions, and volunteers to contribute to the alleviation of human rights violations.
The Humum.net initiative came as a result of months of efforts exerted by the HRinfo team and a wide range of volunteers. The aim is to interact with a large number of complaints sent to HRinfo from Egypt and many other Arab countries.
The privacy of the plaintiff is put into consideration as all personal information is barred from publishing. Any response made to a complaint will be forwarded directly to the plaintiff.

Continue reading Grievances dot net

The revolt of the frogs

It is said when you throw a frog into boiling water, it jumps out right away. But when you put it in warm water, then heat the pan increasingly till the boiling point, the frog will not take notice, till suddenly it’s faced with a boiling situation and dies. The learned wisdom, the frogs have to revolt now, coz they have nothing to lose but their boiling pans.

With those words activist blogger 3alaa starts a funny posting titled, “Boiling the Frogs between Cairo and Tel Aviv,” where political activism meets his cyber-humour. Behind the cartoon and the Egyptian street slang humour however, there lies a lot in 3alaa’s message.
3alaa, an independent leftist, shares a belief upheld by many on the left in Egypt today: the local is connected to the regional. A blow struck against autocracy in Cairo, solidifies the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon, and vice versa.
During the 15 July demo in solidarity with Sharqawi and Sha3er before their release, 3alaa and his fellow bloggers were distributing a statement, brilliantly written in my view.
The statement affirmed the leftist bloggers’ support for Hizbollah and Hamas in their fight to liberate the Lebanese and Palestinian detainees, but drew the attention to the Egyptian fight to liberate our own detainees in the regime’s prisons. The statement is only available in Arabic, and could be found here. 3alaa did not forget to add his own humourous touch to it, signing the statement in the name of “30th of February Organization,” the name activist bloggers are jokingly referring to themselves by.
In his last posting, you can see a frog chanting against Mubarak, saluting the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance, and stating that “boiling” will not deter dissent.

Pro-resistance Tahrir demo on Wednesday

National Forces For Palestine and Lebanon–a united front of leftist, Islamist political groups, and NGO activists–have called for a demonstration in Tahrir Square, Wednesday 26 July, at 6pm, in solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. Wednesday also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the nationalization of the Suez Canal.
If you are attending, please bring Lebanese or/and Palestinian flags.
And here’s the demo banner, designed by the organizers. It adresses Arab leaders saying “Your Majesties, Your Excellencies… Spit on You!”

Demo banner

Activism Calendar