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Police ‘Not Welcome’ In Egypt’s Port Said
Residents of Port Said, plagued by weeks of deadly clashes between protesters and security forces, say they want the reviled police force out of their canal city and the army to take control.
Such is the disdain for the police that residents have taken to providing their own security services, setting up a makeshift security post in a public park dubbed “The People’s Police Station.”
“It may not be a real police station, but it’s a real sign of objection,” said engineer Mohammed Hashem, 40.
“So far we have had 480 reports, we provide traffic duties. We are providing citizens with what the police have failed to give: safety and security,” said Mohamed Ali, 33.
Tensions between police and residents of the Suez Canal city go way back but a deadly football riot last year — which many residents blamed on the police — ushered in a drumbeat of tragedies for the strategic city.
“The police were responsible for the Port Said stadium massacre which has caused all this destruction,” Hashem told AFP, echoing comments of many residents who believe police stood by while rival fans laid into each other.
The clashes at the stadium in February last year between fans of home side Al-Masry and Cairo’s Al-Ahly left more than 70 people dead and sparked days of violent protests in Cairo, in which another 16 people were killed.
Thousands of Egyptians packed the streets in Port Said on Friday in protest at the deaths of local people in clashes with police and before a court decision in a contentious football riot case.
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How the flame started.
Protesters find protection behind a wall to throw stones as they clash with police on an off street of Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday, January 25, 2013, the second anniversary of the uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak. Click here for more photos from today’s protests.
Justin Merriman | Tribune-Review
Source: ptrphotoblog
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Protesters Clash At Egypt’s Presidential Palace
Thousands of demonstrators converged on Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and on the streets around Egypt’s presidential palace to protest against President Mohammed Morsi’s efforts to expand his powers.
By nightfall, fierce altercations had broken out in front of Mr. Morsi’s palace, where masked demonstrators lobbed Molotov cocktails and firecrackers at police officers and over the high palace walls.
Police responded by firing volleys of tear gas. In one incident broadcast on television, police could be seen beating a protester while stripping him of his clothing. Egypt’s presidency said they would begin an investigation into the incident.
Friday’s fighting unfolded against a backdrop of back-and-forth recriminations and failed negotiations between secularist and Islamist political forces in Egypt, as well as between protesters and the politicians who claim to represent their demands. The lack of compromise has polarized Egypt and driven its economy to the brink of collapse.
The fighting began last Friday when peaceful protests against Mr. Morsi’s rule on the second anniversary of the uprising called by opposition leaders devolved into clashes, particularly in the city of Suez.
The following day, a Cairo court sentenced 21 soccer fans, mostly residents of the coastal city of Port Said, to death for their role in a soccer melee a year ago that killed 74 people.
When Port Said residents tried to attack the prison housing the accused, they set off a week of deadly riots across the country.
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Scenes from Tahrir Square: Tear Gas and Tears at a Revolution, Two Years On
Protestors in Cairo filled the now-familiar Tahrir Square on Friday, not just to mark the date, but to vent their anger at the regime that replaced the one they fought so hard to bring down.
Graffiti criticising Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is painted on the outer walls of Egypt’s Presidential Palace,. Photograph: Ed Giles/Getty Images
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Anonymous: MANIFESTO →
In light of the revolutionary awakening of the North African and Middle Eastern countries and the growing wave of protests in Europe it is extremely important for these movements to work not only in parallel, but to support each other.
Unfortunately, the media image of Islamic countries…
Egyptians celebrating the election victory of Mohamed Morsi photograph their friends against murals in Tahrir Square, Cairo on Monday
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Pictures from a Revolution
In April, Human Rights Watch brought Platon to Cairo to photograph revolutionaries in Tahrir Square and other Egyptians. See the slideshow.
Above: Ramy Essam became famous as “the Singer of the Revolution.” He was tortured by soldiers after Mubarak fell.
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by Elliott Erwitt - 1988
Source: andrewharlow
via Link reblogged from The Atlantic with 88 notes
After the Arab Spring →
As violence worsens in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria the rise of democracy may be about to recede.
It seems likely that states in the Middle East and North Africa could divide into three camps. The first, composed of Jordan, Morocco, and the small Gulf states, will do whatever they can to insulate themselves from the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary fray. In the second, Egypt and Tunisia will struggle to realize their revolutionary promise and ideals while resisting the counterrevolutionary forces of the old regimes. And, finally, there is the consortium of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen (if President Saleh somehow manages to hold on), Algeria, Bahrain, and even an outlaw Libya, that all work — not necessarily in concert —to contain and rollback democratic change. There have always been fissures and schisms among the Arab states, but never along these issues and alignments. The Middle East’s two heavyweights — revolutionary, struggling-to-be-democratic Egypt and status quo Saudi Arabia — are likely to find one other at odds on a range of important issues including Hamas, Iran, Hizballah, and political change around the region. It is also possible that Egyptians, empowered by their revolution, will seek to support democracy activists elsewhere in the region. Many have already crossed the Libyan border in aid of the rebels there. Could they next turn their attention to, for example, Syria? Tunisians might seek to do the same in Algeria and Libya. This is not likely to sit well in Damascus, Algiers, and Tripoli, which would see regional democracy activists, and perhaps democracies themselves, as existential threats. One can imagine, in this way, the development of a divided, contested, and destabilized region.
Read more at The Atlantic
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Meet the U.S. Companies Helping to Censor the Arab World →
While the U.S. State Department spends millions of dollars helping people in the Middle East circumvent Web censorship, a handful of California companies are providing autocratic Middle East regimes with the technology to censor the Web, reports The Wall Street Journal. The global Web-security market is a hot industry (valued at $1.8 billion in 2010) and U.S. companies are competing abroad to deliver web-blocking technologies to, in some cases, stridently repressive regimes. Here’s a look at what U.S. companies are up to in the region
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