Sunday, May 15, 2011

Another Sleepless night in Cairo

I do not know from where to start but from two hours ago not less 500 thugs "according to eye witnesses" suddenly attacked the strike of Egyptian Christians at the ERTV building Maspero .
The thugs opened reportedly opened their fires on the protesters from 6th of October building and threw Molotov cocktails before coming down from there to start ugly and violent clash with the protesters at Maspero. You can watch videos from the clashes here.
According to Reuters 2 protesters were killed and to Egyptian sources not less than 60 were injured including 2 in a very critical condition while 10 cars were set on fire and 50 were arrested. Update : According to ministry of health only 58 were injured , most of them have left the hospitals in the morning except 9 in the ICU. 
There are no radical Muslims in the attack according to eye witnesses , in fact people are speaking about professional thugs similar to those who were hired in the infamous camel battle , in fact many activists and observers consider it as camel battle 2 !!
Now according to Al Jazeera bureau chief in Cairo those thugs or rather the clashes started when a motorcyclist from popular area Boulaq was denied access by the protesters in the strike and had a fight with them. Then this angry Boulaq motorcyclist decided to avenge for his dignity and to bring it down on the protesters. Thus he went back to the popular quarter and brought back his family to Maspero to teach the protesters a lesson !! So that motorcyclist or rather biker based on his behavior brought back his family , the 500 thug !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
According to the one of the tweeps , someone spread a rumor in Boulaq that the protesters in Maspero were burning a copy of Quran !! Again it is worth to mention that there were no radical Muslims in the scene but rather professional thugs who do not care about anything as they are thugs.
Now this video from radical Christian channel "The Way TV" got a very interesting detail about one of the thugs arrested by the protesters , they found a NDP ID with him !!
NDP ID with one of the thugs
The army and the police came as usually late in a way that forces us not to ask questions but to suspect intentions as well especially with happened yesterday. First marches heading to the borders stopped at El Salam bridge and then we got the bombing of Sheikh Zowaid shrine in Al Arish then there will be huge protests in front of the Israeli embassy after few hours in the morning and the afternoon.
Of course this is aside from the tragedy of the day , late Ramy Fakhry a 27 years old engineer working in oil field was killed by a mistake by army patrol. According to one of late Fakhry's friends he was in his way to work at night in one of the oil fields in Damietta and got stuck in some fight between army patrol and some drug dealers. He freaked out and made a U turn , the army patrol thought that he were a drug dealer trying to escape and shot him down. Late Fakhry's funeral was yesterday. We wanted to hear an explanation from the army about the incident , why and how it happened.
Despite I find it trivial in our issue , Fakhry was Christian and what happened tonight at Maspero will make Christians furious after this sad incident.
Yesterday I was in the area of Maspero , two blocks or even less away from the strike and I saw two CSF vehicles , I do not know where those vehicles went !?  According to eye witnesses the army went to protect the ministry of foreign affairs building.
It is now the curfew time in Cairo. I got contradicting news from the clashes are still there to the army came with its tanks and closed the street !! The army fired tear gas grenades for the first reportedly.
I do not know if I should expect the SCAF's next 52nd statement with a declaration of martial laws or what !! I do not know what is going on honestly.
Amazingly the Nile News channel is transferring the event something like that on air. This is something that should be recorded.
Now people say that it is the Christian protesters' mistake because they should not have stayed that long in front of Maspero and that they should end their strike. Well with my all respect it is not a reason to end a strike like that in that criminal way.
Azami Bashara , the famous Palestinian analyst told Nawara Negm in Qatar that we should be careful from the sectarian file if we want to continue in our revolution successfully insh Allah. Strangely he was not worried about the army or the SCAF but about the sectarian division.
I still have faith.
Updates: 

  • Pope Shnouda has called the protesters at Maspero to end their strike immediately. 

5 comments:

  1. Bad news indeed Zenobia. Of course, the old groups will try its best to derail progress but I don't know if they can fan the flames of sectarianism, when everyone is in the same desperate straits. Like Syria, everyone suffers
    from the same unemployment, insecurity and fears.

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  2. Yes, Zeinobia! We still have faith! Not only in you as egyptian youngs, but as arabs and 3d world youngs!
    And with faith, we have also hope on the goals of the arab awakening!
    Go ahead, Misr belady! The world is with you! :)

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  3. I'm a regular reader of your chronicles and one of your followers on twitter. Your articles are always very informative and reliable. But for the love of your readers' brain cells, can you please re-read them before posting them? The Egyptian-isms are cute though and I admire the way you just snub punctuation.
    Sorry for being an ass..Much love.

    ReplyDelete
  4. We're already under martial law.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The fall into the abyss ..... stop, look at what is left of Egypt .... remove rose-colored glasses! You have destroyed the country!

    ReplyDelete

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