As unprecedented protests rock Egypt, journalists are apparently being targeted by Egyptian police.
Assad Sawey, a reporter for BBC Arabic, was beaten and bloodied by the police. He managed to make it in front of the BBC's cameras, bandaged and still drenched in his own blood, to tell the story of what happened to him.
He said he was watching a protest of 15,000 people when plainclothes police surrounded him and his camera crew. "They didn't care about BBC or any other organization, " he said. "They were targeting journalists."
They arrested Sawey, and beat him with steel bars and ones he said were electrified. The police were, he said, "very very brutal."
Watch Sawey describe the beating to CNN:
The Committee To Protect Journalists also reports that Ahmad Mansour, a journalist for Al-Jazeera, was detained for over an hour, and that several journalists were prevented from entering Egypt through Cairo's airport. In addition, four French journalists were reportedly arrested by police.
Another journalist, CNN's Ben Wedeman, saw Egyptian police take the camera of the photojournalist he was with.
According to Wedeman, who told the story of the confrontation on CNN Friday morning, the police grabbed a camera from his fellow journalist, Mary Rogers, cracked the camera's viewfinder and took it away.
WATCH:
While media analysts debate whether social media is fueling revolt in the Middle East and North Africa or whether the US has helped keep regional dictatorships in power, one thing is very clear: The Arab masses are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
From Tunisia spread a renewed hope that Arabs are experiencing a re-awakening of the collective conscience. The protests we have seen there as well as in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Algeria and Yemen are not simply about the deposition of an authoritarian president or ruling party.
They are about dismantling archaic forms of governance in which the ruler is considered to be beyond reproach and economic policies are determined by his self-preserving business elite allies.
During World War I, Turkey was referred to as the sick man of Europe. But in the 21st Century as Turkey, Israel and Iran came to dominate the discourse in the region, Arabs realized that they were suffering from a malaise - one they helped to propagate by wallowing in self-defeatist insecurities.
Decades of often brutal repression against civil liberties, iron-clad control of the media, corrupt economic policies, single-party rule and the establishment of police states contributed to stifling Arabs' pursuit of true democratic practices.
If one really thinks about it, Arabs (with the exception of Lebanon decades ago) in the region have never known democratic or even pluralistic rule. In the post-colonial era immediately after World War II, it was revolutions and coups by the military that ushered in dictatorships. Coups and counter-revolutions, often bloody as in the case of Iraq in 1958, largely silenced civil society and forced reformists to flee the country.
The 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty further entrenched some of these dictatorships as governments which repressed their peoples but later covertly supported the so-called Middle East Peace Process curried favor with Washington and were labeled as "moderates."
Tunisia was one of these countries, a regular stop for Bush administration officials soliciting the help of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in stamping out political Islam. In return, Tunisia under his rule was referred to as "stable".
But it's the economy, stupid. Tunisia may have been secular and had progressive laws guaranteeing women's rights but what good are such developments when university graduates struggle to find meaningful employment? In the town of Sidi Bouzid, where the spark of revolution was lit, unemployment had hit 30 percent.
When people go hungry and are unable to provide for their families, are forced to bribe their way to survive inflation, are unable to voice their frustrations and forced to watch as the ruling elite grow more powerful and richer, frustration eventually steamboils into public outbursts of anger.
And so, too, is Egypt's story.
It was not the US State Department, WikiLeaks, foreign influence or Israel that instigated the protests earlier this week.
It was not the increasingly cornered Muslim Brotherhood or the defunct and dysfunctional political opposition groups and parties which assembled on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Mahala, Suez, and Ismailia.
Inspired by events in Tunisia, voluntary grassroots mobilization brought people to the streets on January 25, taking everyone, even the organizers by surprise. Misery loves company, the saying goes, but so does dissent.
In years past, the small opposition groups like Kefaya and April 6 were barely able to muster several hundred protesters, usually outflanked and outmanned by black-clad riot police. This time the picture was reversed; it was the security forces that found themselves outnumbered.
Mimicking the Tunisian experience, decades of economic and socio-political disenfranchisement, electoral fraud (most recently during the November parliamentary elections), rampant state corruption and the persistent use of social media helped draw Egyptians from every walk of life, many of whom had never participated in demonstrations and many of whom felt their frustrations could no longer be silenced.
This is the Egyptian street in the strictest sense of the word... the silent majority no longer silent.
Despite the number of tear gas canisters fired at protesters and the number of those who have been beaten and detained, there is a feeling among many Egyptians that a long dormant patriotism and pride has been finally awakened.
Ironically perhaps, the notion of Arab unity, long a running joke in the region, is being felt for the first time as many Arabs pledge solidarity and support for the people of Tunisia and Egypt.
Egypt is the most populous and influential Arab country, a socio-political stalwart. What happens there will resonate in the region and produce a ripple effect much more powerful in magnitude and impact than Tunisia's. Over the past few days, protests in Yemen have grown in strength and gusto.
For years, Western nations have used the lack of democratic reforms in the Middle East and North Africa as leverage to pressure and manipulate ruling dictatorships to bend to foreign interests.
Now that the Arab street is alive with the power of the people for the people and by the people, will policies in Washington, London and Paris accommodate their pursuit of democratic reform?
Hundreds of armed riot police broke on Sunday up groups of young Sudanese demonstrating in central Khartoum and surrounded the entrances of four universities in the capital, firing teargas and beating students at three of them. Police beat students with batons as they chanted anti-government slogans such as "we are ready to die for Sudan" and "revolution, revolution until victory". There were further protests in North Kordofan capital el-Obeid in Sudan's west, where around 500 protesters engulfed the market before police used tear gas to disperse them, three witnesses said. "They were shouting against the government and demanding change," said witness Ahmed who declined to give his full name. Sudan has a close affinity with Egypt - the two countries were united under British colonial rule. The unprecedented scenes there inspired calls for similar action in Sudan, where protests without permission, which is rarely given, are illegal. Before Tunisia's popular revolt, Sudan was the last Arab country to overthrow a leader with popular protests, ousting Jaafar Nimeiri in 1985. Galvanised by social networks Groups have emerged on social networking sites calling themselves "Youth for Change" and "The Spark", since the uprisings in nearby Tunisia and close ally Egypt this month.
"The people of Sudan will not remain silent any more," itsFacebook page said. "It is about time we demand our rights and take what's ours in a peaceful demonstration that will not involve any acts of sabotage." The pro-democracy group Girifna ("We're fed up") said nine members were detained the night before the protest and opposition party officials listed almost 40 names of protesters arrested on Sunday. Five were injured, they added. Opposition leader Mubarak al-Fadil told Reuters two of his sons were arrested on their way to the central protest. Editor-in-chief of the al-Wan daily paper Hussein Khogali said his daughter had been detained by security forces since 0500 GMT accused of organising the Facebook-led protest. Pro-government newspapers carried front page warnings against protests which they said would cause chaos and turmoil. The Sudan Vision daily's editorial blamed the opposition. "Our message to those opposition dinosaurs is to unite their ideas and objectives for the benefit of the citizens if they are really looking for the welfare of the Sudanese people," it read. Prices, frustration rising Sudan is in deep economic crisis which analysts blame on government overspending and misguided policies. A bloated import bill caused foreign currency shortages and forced an effective devaluation of the Sudanese pound last year, sparking soaring inflation. Early this month the government cut subsidies on petroleum products and key commodity sugar, triggering smaller protests throughout the north. Sunday's protests coincided with the first official announcement of results for a referendum on the oil-producing south's secession from the north showing an overwhelming vote for independence, which many in the north oppose Police spokesman Ahmed al-Tuhami told Reuters the police did not have figures for any injured or arrested. "We did not use more violence than necessary - we did not want anyone to spoil this day with the referendum results." |
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