Eyewitness Cairo--a blow-by-blow account
These reports from Cairo are from Faiza Rady, formerly a resident of
Philadelphia, who has returned to Egypt
February 11, 2011
“There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when
decades happen,” said Lenin. He was so right. This is how in Egypt
decades of political oppression were erased in less than three weeks, when
Hosni Mubarak was forced to leave office today. For the past 18 days of the
revolution, events have moved at a breathtaking pace.
This evening at about 6 p.m. I heard shots near my house. Diamond, my dog,
began to howl. “They’re starting it all over again”, was my
immediate thought. “They” being either the police, Mubarak's
paid thugs, or even soldiers randomly shooting at suspects breaking the curfew.
But when I went out on the street smiling people shook my hands, congratulated
me, saying the dictator had finally resigned.
From a distance I could hear the sound of women ululating, like they do at
weddings. Caravans of cars were driving by, blowing their horns three times in
a row – to signal their joy. Strangers spontaneously shook hands and
embraced, saying “alf mabrouk”, 1000 congratulations to you. I felt
I was in a new world, created by the revolution.
Things looked very different this morning. On my way to al-Tahrir Square,
people looked anonymous; they walked briskly, without talking or looking at one
another. It makes perfect sense, because one out of every 40 Egyptian is
connected to state security or the police. People walking to the square know
that they are most likely surrounded by informers, so they remain silent until
they reach what everybody calls “liberated land.” On the outside,
repression and police brutality are insidious, ever-present; they’re part
of the fabric of daily life.
No more. The revolution has transformed Egypt's reality. I open an email
from a friend, it says: “free, free, free at last.”
Previously:
January 29, 2011
There is no police force. They disbanded. There are thugs on the streets.
These are the thugs who break up demonstrations. They have done that, of
course, with the big demonstrations here. They are like an auxiliary police
force. In the demonstrations it is very clear who is who because the thugs all
stick together. Then they start beating on people so that it looks that the
demonstrators are breaking things and killing people. I have seen the people
who do this a lot and know they are part of the police.
But now it has really gotten out of hand. Yesterday, for example they
destroyed the National Democratic Party headquarters and police stations and
things like that, but today they are attacking schools and stealing equipment.
It is looting and random destruction.
Can you imagine they destroyed a hospital? There is a children's
hospital which was just built 3 years ago. It was built with donations. It is
very well-equipped. It is supposed to be the best hospital in Cairo and can you
imagine? They ransacked the hospital, destroyed the equipment. It is horrible!
In Cairo there are a lot of street children and youth who live on the streets.
A U.N. report estimates that there are between 2 million and 6 million street
children.
Now the police have totally withdrawn. I have not seen a single policeman
out on the streets. I live outside of Cairo and the traffic police aren't
even out.
A friend who lives close to the Nile told me that he saw around 20 army
tanks go towards the south which is the direction of the jail. There are people
trying to break out of jail, so they sent the army there. There is random
shooting which I hear from time to time close by.
All the opposition political parties came out for the uprising. They said
they want to form a government with all the political forces that have been
with the people, and who have been organizing these demonstrations. They say
they want to hold elections and change the constitution once the new government
is in power. But they are weak. The political parties do not really have a
strong popular base and nobody has control of the army. The President has
control of the army and he just appointed as Vice President Omar Suleiman, who
was the head of intelligence. So you can imagine, this guy is going to be worse
than Mubarak.
So right now there is a vacuum on the streets. You do not know what the army
is doing; you do not know what is going to happen. I think it is going to
become a police state with Suleiman in power. And I think Mubarak is going to
go because apparently his whole family fled. They are all in London. And he is
going to leave things with this former head of intelligence who has the backing
of the army. So Mubarak appointed Suliman as Vice President to please the army
so it will side with him.
The opposition and the young people who organize the demonstrations and who
are on the streets cannot stand up to the army. It is not like in Tunisia where
the army did not support Ben Ali and he had to leave. The others do not have
the support of the army either, but will be able to form a coalition government
and protests are going on. But Suleiman has the support of the army. I think
the army is going to control the situation in a couple of days once Mubarak has
left. This is the way I feel, I don't know, you never know what is going to
happen.
I do not see the army siding with the opposition, simply because they have
been very privileged by the president and that is why they support him. And
they know that they will be even more privileged by Suleiman.
Right now it looks grim because people are being attacked. The houses and
hospitals are being attacked, people are scared. They are organizing street
patrols. Each street has a number of people out to protect the area. But they
are not armed. The others are the ones that have arms.
January 31, 2011
There is a call for a million people demonstration tomorrow. I will try to
go and will give you a report.
Right now they have supposedly blocked off the square where all the
demonstrations take place. They are putting huge cement blocks into every
entrance of the square. I think they are doing it because they are checking the
identity of the people who go in and checking if they have arms. Because
yesterday there were people who had infiltrated from the police and started
shooting. One person died. So they want to make sure that nobody goes there
with arms. But so far, no one has announced that you cannot go to the
square.
And I think that more and more people are going because yesterday, for
example, a group of lawyers and judges joining the demonstration. There is a
very progressive group of judges who have been demonstrating for a long time
because there is no freedom in the judicial system. A great part of the
judicial system is controlled by the party, which tells the judges how and what
to rule. A group of judges is trying to get freedom for the judiciary, and has
come out with very good rulings. But the problem is that nothing is enforced.
These judges have even come out with rulings against the government, for
example, because it refuses to set a minimum wage.
And this is one of the demands of the demonstration-- a call for minimum
wage. One hundred two thousand pounds should be considered the minimum wage.
That is only about $250. This s a ruling was not enforced by the government;
but they should be enforcing it in the private and public sectors. There is no
minimum wage now but the government says it is 350 pounds, less than a $100 a
month.
So there is a very progressive wing of the judges, and the fact that they
are joining the demonstrations says a lot about the support that the
demonstrations are getting across the country.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a very big day and I will let you know.
February 1, 2011
The demonstration today was huge, a million or more from all walks of life
and all ages. It was very orderly and peaceful. The army issued a report
earlier that it would respect the integrity of people and that it supported the
people's demands. It did not repress the demonstrators but was friendly and
courteous with the people.
The demonstration was against the Mubarak government, but it was also
against Suleiman and any attempt by Mubarak to continue the regimen with other
officials. It was against the corruption in government by business men. The
demonstration called for the formation of another government that will draft a
new pro-people constitution.
The demonstration was anti-imperialist, very anti -U.S.A. and anti-Israel -
with many signs in English. It was pro-Palestinian.
However, it seems that Al Baradei could be the next head of state. He is
secular although a liberal and for a free market. He opposed the invasion of
Iraq, and has the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood which has resources.
February 2, 2011
Is Egypt at the tipping point? Things are moving so quickly. Yesterday at
the demonstration of a million the people were hopeful that they had won the
day. Workers, in particular, those who started the strike and factory sit-in
movement in 2003, were a visible and proud group at the demo. They are the ones
who made this intifada possible by starting the resistance movement.
Also Egyptian tenant farmers, whose lands were repossessed by the
government's 1996 tenant laws, formed a big and militant group. They came
from their villages in the Nile Delta, and southern Egypt, wearing their
distinctive traditional clothes, long flowing garbs called
"gallabiyas." They are also among the people who resisted the
pro-U.S. "government of businessmen", as it is called here.
But today things look very different. The pro-Mubarak paid thugs have
regrouped. Yesterday they were 500 of them, now there are 10,000. The people at
Tahrir Square are battling them. So far, the people are resisting and holding
out against the gasoline bombs.
February 3, 2011
Below is a statement issued today by the youth in Tahrir
Square
A Statement from the protesters at Cairo's Tahrir
square to the Egyptian people
The President's promises and the bloody events of Wednesday February
2
We the protesters who are currently on sit-in at Tahrir (liberation) square
in Cairo since January 25, 2011 strongly condemn the brutal attack carried out
by the governing National Democratic Party's (NDP) mercenaries at our
location on Wednesday February 2, under the guise of "rally" in
support of President Mubarak. This attack continues on Thursday February 3. We
regret that some young people have joined these thugs and criminals, whom the
NDP is accustomed to hire during elections, to march them off after spreading
several falsehoods circulated by the regime media about us and our goals. These
goals that aim at changing the political system to a one that guarantees
freedom, dignity and social justice to all citizens are also the goals of the
youth. Therefore we want to clarify the following.
Firstly, we are a group of Muslim and Christian Egyptians;
the overwhelming majority of us does not belong to political parties and have
no previous political activism. Our movement involves elderly and children,
peasants, workers, professionals, students and pensioners. Our movement cannot
be classified as "paid for" or "directed by" a limited few
because it attracted millions who responded to its emblem of removing the
regime. People joined us last Tuesday in Cairo and other governorates in a
scene that witnessed no one case of violence, property assault or harassment to
anyone.
Secondly, our movement is accused of being funded from
abroad, supported by the United States, as being instigated by Hamas, as under
the leadership of the president of the National Assembly for change (Mohamed
El-Baradie) and last but not least, as directed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Many
accusations like these prove to be false. Protesters are all Egyptians who have
clear and specific national objectives. Protesters have no weapons or foreign
equipment as claimed by instigators. The broad positive response by the people
to our movement's goals reveals that these are the goals of the Egyptian
masses in general, not any internal or external faction or entity.
Thirdly, the regime and its paid media falsely blame us,
demonstrators, for the tension and instability in the streets of Egypt in
recent days and therefore for damaging our nation's interests and security.
Our answer to them is: It is not the peaceful protesters who released the
criminal offenders from prison to the unguarded streets to practice looting and
plundering. It is not the peaceful protesters who have imposed a curfew
starting at 3 o'clock PM. It is not the peaceful protesters who have
stopped the work in banks, bakeries and gas stations. When protesters organized
its one-million demonstration it came up in the most magnificent and organized
form and ended peacefully. It is not the protestors who killed 300 people some
with live ammunition, and wounding more than 2,000 people in the last few
days.
Fourthly, President Mubarak came out on Tuesday to announce
that he will not be nominated in the upcoming presidential election and that he
will modify two articles in the Constitution, and engage in dialogue with the
opposition. However the State media has attacked us when we refused his
"concession" and decided to go on with our movement. Our demand that
Mubarak steps down immediately is not a personal matter, but we have clear
reasons for it which include:
His promise of not to run again is not new. He has promised when he came to
power in 1981 that he will not run for more than two periods but he continued
for more than 30 years.
His speech did not put any collateral for not nominating his son
"Gamal", who remains until the moment a member of the ruling party,
and can stand for election that will not be under judicial supervision since he
ignored any referring to the amendment of article 88 of the Constitution.
He also considered our movement a "plot directed by a force" that
works against the interests of the nation as if responding to the demands of
the public is a "shame" or "humiliation."
As regards to his promise of conducting a dialogue with the opposition, we
know how many times over the past years the regime claimed this and ended up
with enforcing the narrow interests of the Mubarak State and the few people who
control it.
And the events of Wednesday proved our stand is vindicated. While the
President was giving his promises, the leaders of his regime were organizing
(along with paid thugs and wanted criminals equipped with swords, knives and
Molotov bombs) a brutal attack plot against us in Tahrir square. Those thugs
and criminals were accompanied by the NDP members who fired machine guns on
unarmed protesters who were trapped on the square ground, killing at least 7
and wounding hundreds of us critically. This was done in order to end our
peaceful national popular movement and preserve the status quo.
Our movement is Egyptian - Our movement is legitimate- Our movement is
continuing
The youth of Tahrir Square sit-in
February 3, 2011 at 11:30am
February 4, 2011
I went to the Friday, Feb. 4 demo along with more than 2 million people. It
was a unique experience. It felt energizing, exhilarating, like being part of
history in the making. Young and old, women and men, and smiling children,
workers, peasants, and middle class people, all rhythmically chanted in unison,
“The people are saying the dictator has got to go!” and “The
people are saying the regime has got to go!” “Kifaya”
(enough), is a word that the masses repeat over and over again.
“Kifaya” is a group that started the “illegal” protest
movement in 2004.
Since 1981, the year Mubarak came to power, we have been living under
so-called “emergency laws” where an assembly of more than 5 people
is illegal. So to witness more than 2 million say “kifaya” and
assembling in defiance of repression is truly liberating. For the first time in
a long time I feel free.
At noon, prayers started for the martyrs of Wednesday's massacre, when
Mubarak's thugs killed at least 11 people. People carried signs showing the
cross and the crescent intertwined. Moslems and Copts (Egyptian Christians)
pray together to morn and honor the martyrs.
