Egypt

Egyptian Students Get 4 Years In Jail For Protests

September 18, 2014 Ahram Online, english.ahram.org.eg Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Egypt, Protest, Students

Cairo's misdemeanor court has sentenced 17 Al-Azhar students to four years in jail on charges of organising an illegal protest. The defendants were accused of illegally protesting and inciting violence at Al-Azhar University on 12 January of this year. Among the 17 students sentenced, five are females. The defence team plans to appeal the verdict. Meanwhile, Egypt's prosecutor-general on Wednesday ordered the release of 116 students from different universities ahead of the start of the new academic year on 11 October. Hundreds of students were arrested during the last academic year over protests against the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi and also over the detention of their colleagues by security forces. Al-Azhar University – the oldest Islamic university in the world – saw some of the worst unrest among universities, with near daily protests often spiralling into violent confrontations with police.

Al-Azhar Students Sentenced To 5 Years

September 16, 2014 Jihad Abaza, www.dailynewsegypt.com Resist! Education, Egypt, Human Rights

The Nasr City Misdemeanor Court sentenced nine Azhar University students to five years in prison and a fine of EGP 50,000 on Sunday, state-owned Al-Ahram reported. The students were arrested in May during clashes with security forces in the Al-Azhar University dormitories. The defendants are charged with “inciting riots, crowding, resisting authorities, damaging public properties, and joining an armed group that aims to disrupt public peace and order”. The detainment of 49 Al-Azhar students in Abu Zaabal Prison began an open-ended hunger strike on 5 September to demand their freedom, according to the Al-Azhar Students Against the Coup (SAC) group. “More than a year has passed and we have been moving along the corridors of prisons, torturous police stations, and in the cells of prison,” the hunger-striking students said in a statement they released from the Abu Zaabal detentions.

Egypt: Hunger Strikes Against Mass Arbitrary Arrests

September 16, 2014 Revolution-News, www.revolution-news.com Resist! Egypt, Human Rights, Hunger Strike, Mass Incarceration

156 people are now on hunger strike in Egypt, 82 inside Egyptian prisons and 74 outside, in solidarity with all those who have been arrested by the Egyptian military and police forces. Estimates say around 41,000 people have been arrested in Egypt since the ousting of Mohammed Morsi in July 2013. Human rights groups report at least 25,000 people have been arrested this year and many have died while in custody. Reports indicate that torture is still widely used on prisoners. While many in Egypt and abroad are elated with today’s news of the Shura Council detainees being released on bail, there are still way too many people locked up in deplorable conditions for ridiculous reasons in Egypt. It is difficult to keep track of who exactly is in Egyptian jail but here’s a list of some recent arrests.

Egyptian Protests Continue

September 15, 2014 CM, www.blog2.coupmonitor.com Resist! coup, Egypt, Protest

Like every Friday for the past 63 weeks, Anti-coup alliance (ACA) has called for nation-wide protests in Egypt on Friday. In this post we present a digest of the anticoup events that happened during the day. You can view and download the raw data of our monitoring in Arabic and English. We monitored 89 anticoup events in 21 governates. The top three governates were Cairo, Beni Suef and Dakahlia. Rallies were the most common type of events, followed by stands and human chains.Other protest forms, namely vehicle rallies also happened. There was a diverse range of organizers of protests, including youth, students and women. Dank Movement, that organized another wave of protests earlier this week was also present as an organizer of some events.

18-year-old Abused At Trial In Egypt

September 10, 2014 Joanna Kiernan, www.independent.ie Resist! Egypt, Human Rights, Law, militarism

An Irish student locked up in Egypt for more than a year has told how he was beaten up, spat on and dragged down the stairs of a courthouse by his jailers after his latest trial appearance ended in farce. Ibrahim Halawa (18) detailed the shocking abuse in handwritten letters he penned from his Cairo cell to well-wishers who have supported him since he was detained in August last year. Referring to his trial on August 12 last, which was dramatically abandoned mid-hearing, Ibrahim writes: "I didn't get to talk to my lawyer and the court cage was sound-proof (the one I didn't even enter) which is also illegal. We refused to leave until we get to see a judge as a result we were beaten up, dragged down the stairs, handcuffed in threes, we were spat on and all this just because we refused to leave until we were to see a judge." However, Ibrahim assured his supporters he is remaining positive in spite of his ordeal. "After what I went through I returned to the cell joking trying to lighten up the mood because of what I learned I cannot show my enemy I am weak, as they say, 'build a brick wall from the bricks thrown at you by your enemy'. This does not mean that I did not return feeling down and very depressed," he wrote.

Urgent Action: Egypt End The Siege Of Gaza

August 12, 2014 Ali Abunimah, www.electronicintifada.net Resist! Egypt, Gaza, Israel, Wars and Militarism

In response to calls from our fellow human beings and comrades in Gaza who ask that we bring an end to the Egyptian government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide of the people of Gaza: To all of you who understand the interconnectedness of our many human struggles for justice and dignity, we implore you to act in solidarity with Palestine as Gaza burns and bleeds, gathers and buries the lifeless bodies of her children, and contends with carnage, despair, and loss for which there is no language. More than 1.8 million human beings have been under a suffocating, deadly siege imposed by Israel and accommodated by the Egyptian government, that severely restricts all movement of people and products. It is creating in Gaza what has been described as the biggest open air prison in the world, subject to frequent Israeli attacks and used as a laboratory to test and market new Israeli weapons. The average age in Gaza is 17 years, with half the people under the age of 16. This is a defenseless civilian population, densely packed into this besieged enclave with no place to run or take refuge from Israel’s full-on military onslaught.

Report: Women Sexually Abused In Prisons

July 2, 2014 Middle East Monitor, www.middleeastmonitor.com Educate! Egypt, Prison, Rape, Women's Rights

YouTube clip from Al-Jazeera entitled: A catastrophic report exposes cases of rape inside military prisons. One girl was raped 14 times. Presenter: The delegation submitted a general report about the violations that took place against Egyptian women since the military coup and until the first of June. The delegation also submitted another detailed report about cases of rape and sexual assault taking place against female detainees inside Egyptian prisons and police stations. The delegation submitted an authenticated report of seven cases of rape of female detainees. The report included a list of the names of detention centres and the names of police officers and individuals accused of raping the women including the cases of two women who were raped 14 times in one day in one of the detention centres belonging to Central Security Forces. One of the female detainees was suspended naked and sexually assaulted and was forced to watch obscene scenes. The delegation, which is composed of the European Coalition for Democracy and Human Rights, called for placing Egyptian women under a special category by the Committee for Women and Children and called for opening an investigation, by a neutral committee, into the violations and for opening the prisons and police station for inspection as well as for making police officers and cadets accountable for their actions.

Why It’s Way Too Soon To Give Up On The Arab Spring

June 30, 2014 Juan Cole, www.latimes.com Educate! Arab Spring, Egypt, Elections, Middle East, Revolution, Youth

Three and a half years ago, the world was riveted by massive crowds of youths mobilizing in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand an end to Egypt's dreary police state. We watched transfixed as a movement first ignited in Tunisia spread from one part of Egypt to another, and then from country to country across the region. Before it was over, four presidents-for-life had been toppled and the region's remaining dictators were unsettled. The young Arabs who made the recent revolutions are ... distinctive: substantially more urban, literate, media-savvy and wired than their parents and grandparents. - Some 42 months later, in most of the Middle East and North Africa, the bright hopes for more personal liberties and an end to political and economic stagnation championed by those young people have been dashed. Instead, some Arab countries have seen counterrevolutions, while others are engulfed in internecine conflicts and civil wars, creating Mad Max-like scenes of postapocalyptic horror. But keep one thing in mind: The rebellions of the last three years were led by Arab millennials, by young people who have decades left to come into their own. Don't count them out yet.

Egyptian Injustice: Journalists Sentenced To 7 Years

June 23, 2014 AP, www.AP.org Resist! Egypt, Human Rights, Journalism, Prison, Terrorism

An Egyptian court convicted three Al-Jazeera journalists and sentenced them to seven years in prison each on terrorism-related charges in a verdict Monday that stunned their families and was quickly denounced as a blow to freedom of expression. International pressure mounted on Egypt's president to pardon the three. The verdicts against Australian Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed came after a 5-month trial that Amnesty International described as a "sham," calling Monday's rulings "a dark day for media freedom in Egypt." The three, who have been detained since December, contend they are being prosecuted simply for doing their jobs as journalists, covering Islamist protests against the ouster last year of President Mohammed Morsi. Three other foreign journalists, two Britons and a Dutch citizen, were sentenced to 10 years in absentia. Media groups have called the trial political, part of a fight between the government and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network , which authorities accuse of bias toward the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi. The network denies any bias.

From Cairo: Everyone’s Right To Protest

June 22, 2014 Comrades from Cairo, www.roarmag.org Resist! Egypt, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Protest

Having hijacked the popular protests of June 30, 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood to ride back into power, the military establishment is now using every means at its disposal to silence all forms of dissent and annihilate the hard-won political space of the past three years. Violence and intimidation have always been the principal tools of the police force, but in Sisi’s Egypt the judiciary has been given a new leading role in the suppression of freedoms. Their tool is the Protest Law, which in its seven months of life has been used to round up, detain and sentence thousands of participants in peaceful protests — and to target specific and influential activists within them. The most noted example today is Alaa Abd El Fattah. On November 26, 2013, around two hundred protesters gathered outside Egypt’s Parliamentary Upper House were attacked by police with water canons, batons, plainclothes thugs, and tear gas. Fifty people were arrested, and once the women, journalists and lawyers were released, twenty-four men were left in jail. The following night, the police violently arrested Alaa from his home. Now, Alaa and the twenty-four have been sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

Two Journalists Released, 14 Still Behind Bars

June 19, 2014 Committee to Protect Journalists, www.cpj.org Resist! Egypt, Journalism, Prison

The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release from prison this week of two Egyptian journalists and calls on authorities to release at least 14 journalists still behind bars, including three Al-Jazeera journalists whose trial continues on Monday. Abdullah al-Shami, reporter for Al-Jazeera who was jailed without charge, was released on Tuesday in connection with his deteriorating health, and Karim Shalaby, reporter for Al-Masder, was freed on Monday after a court acquitted him of charges that included protesting illegally. "Egypt's newly elected president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, has an opportunity to reverse the drastic decline in the country's press freedom record by doing all he can to ensure that journalists are set free from jail," said Sherif Mansour, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. "Releasing all imprisoned journalists and allowing them to report freely and safely would be a resounding signal that Egypt is changing course."

Then They Came For The Revolutionaries

June 17, 2014 Bel Trew, www.foreignpolicy.com Strategize! Activists, Egypt, Law, Military, Police, Prison, Revolution

Every night when Egyptian activist Mohamed Kamel goes home, there is a man outside his building who follows him until he enters the doorway. The figure doesn't speak; he doesn't leave his post. He just keeps watch. "I smile at him and tell him, 'Please do come up and have dinner with me,'" said the 38-year-old, Cairo-based high school manager. "What else can I do?" Kamel is part of April 6 Youth Movement, a revolutionary group founded in 2008 to support striking industrial workers. Its members, estimated by the organization to number in the tens of thousands, were also a driving force behind the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak. But now, despite having supported the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, the group finds itself under fire from the military-backed government in Cairo. Last week, an Egyptian court outlawed the movement after a lawsuit accused it of espionage and tainting the image of the state. The group's most prominent voices, meanwhile, have been thrown in jail. In December, founder Ahmed Maher, 32, and Mohamed Adel, 25, were sentenced to three years in prison for participating in an illegal rally and allegedly assaulting a police officer.

Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement Fears New Military Rule

June 14, 2014 Louise Osborne, www.occupy.com Resist! Egypt, Military, Protest, Revolution, Youth

In a quiet cafe in Cairo’s hip Zamalek quarter, Ahmad Abd Allah sits on a sofa hunched over a laptop. A shisha pipe in hand, the 34-year-old types quickly, peering intensely at the computer screen. His mobile buzzes and he picks it up distractedly, his eyebrows furrowed as he types a message before taking another puff on the pipe. “We’re having a protest tonight,” he explains, adding that around 5,000 youth are expected to attend the demonstration despite the threat of arrest and imprisonment under Egypt's new anti-protest law. Allah is a member of the April 6 Youth Movement that was instrumental in ousting dictator Hosni Mubarak three years ago. Now, the rush of those heady days has faded to disappointment. On June 8, former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was inaugurated as Egypt's president, a position he won by a landslide in a vote that many viewed as a sham – and others saw as a victory of stability over freedom. The resurgence of the military in Egypt has also made Allah and his fellow youth activists outlaws. In the run-up to the late May election, an Egyptian court banned the April 6 movement on charges of espionage and defaming the government – what Allah says are trumped up excuses to silence the opposition. “It’s crazy," he said.

Icon Of Egypt’s 2011 Revolt Gets 15 Years

June 11, 2014 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Arab Spring, Egypt

A court on Wednesday convicted a prominent activist from Egypt's 2011 uprising for demonstrating without permit and assaulting a policeman, sentencing him to 15 years in prison. The sentence against Alaa Abdel-Fattah is by far the toughest against any of the liberal, pro-democracy activists behind the 18-day uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak's 29-year regime. It is also the first conviction of a prominent activist since former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi took office as president on Sunday. He was tried in abstentia, AP reported "he did turn up at the Cairo courtroom later on Wednesday and was detained by police." But, this does not describe the strange and unjust circumstances that actually occurred. Ahramonline reported that he and other defendants were actually trying to get into the courtroom for the trial...

How Wealthy Elites Are Hijacking Democracy

June 2, 2014 Sonali Kolhatkar, www.truthdig.com Educate! Democracy, Egypt, oligarchy, Thailand, Ukraine

Mass street protests are usually seen as a hallmark of democratic aspirations. And elections are meant to be a culmination of such aspirations, affording people the opportunity to choose their own leaders and system of government. But in country after country these days, the hallmarks of democracy are being dangerously subverted and co-opted by powerful elites. The question is, are we recognizing what is happening under our noses? Three examples unfolding right now are indicators of this trend: Thailand, Ukraine and Egypt. Thailand has just witnessed its 19th coup in 82 years. Although coup leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-Ocha has promised “genuine democracy,” he has given no timetable for an end to martial law. The U.S. State Department initially refused to call the takeover a coup, insisting that martial law is consistent with Thailand’s constitution. It then changed its tune to issue a strongly worded condemnation. In Ukraine, voters elected a pro-Western leader after President Viktor Yanukovych fled following mass protests over his refusal to sign an accord with the European Union. Although the incoming president, Petro Poroshenko, has promised democratic development, the U.S. has openly sided with pro-Western forces inside Ukraine and raised the tensions of the conflict to near Cold War era levels, rendering any promises of true democracy ineffectual at best.

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