Egypt

Strike wave in Egypt

The longest and strongest wave of worker protest since World War II is rolling through Egypt. Initially concentrated in the state-owned textile mills of the Nile Delta, the job actions have now proliferated in other factories and workplaces, including those operated by private companies. The regime of President Husni Mubarak has started to crack down on the strikers, as the most militant activists are shifting their gaze from wages, benefits and working conditions to the explicitly political question of labor's relation to the state. Joel Beinin and Hossam el-Hamalawy report from Cairo in...

Egyptian secular activist jailed - Free Kareem Amer!

By Amina Saddiq 22 year old Egyptian blogger and former law student Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, or Kareem Amer as he is known online, was arrested by the authorities in Alexandria on 22 February and charged with the following offences: • Spreading information and malicious rumours that disrupt public security; • Defaming the president of Egypt; • Incitement to overthrow the regime based upon hatred and contempt; • Incitement to hate Islam and to breach public peace standards; and • Highlighting inappropriate issues that harm the reputation of Egypt and spreading these publicly. He has now...

Egyptian blogger locked up for criticising religion: free Kareem!

Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, better known by his Internet pseudonym Kareem Amer, is a 22-year-old Egyptian law student. On February 22, 2007, Kareem was sentenced to four years in prison: three years for ‘contempt of religion’, and one year for ‘defaming the President of Egypt’. Why? Because he created and ran a blog where he criticised religious extremism, and called for equality between men and women. When his university authorities Al-Azhar administration discovered his blog in late 2005, he was told to attend a disciplinary board at the Sharia & Law Faculty of Al-Azhar University. He was...

Free Kareem Amer!

[Posted 28 Feb, 2007] 22 year old Egyptian blogger and former law student Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, or Kareem Amer as he is known online, was arrested by the authorities in Alexandria on 22 February and charged with the following offences: - Spreading information and malicious rumors that disrupt public security; - Defaming the president of Egypt; - Incitement to overthrow the regime based upon hatred and contempt ; - Incitement to hate Islam and to breach public peace standards; and - Highlighting inappropriate issues that harm the reputation of Egypt and spreading these publicly. He has...

Political change in Egypt

By Mike Rowley In last year’s multi-party presidential elections, the first such in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the oldest and largest political-Islamist organisation in the world, did not stand a candidate. In the December 2005 parliamentary elections, its candidates (nominally independents: the MB is still illegal in Egypt) won 19% of the vote, emerging as the main opposition group in parliament. Both sets of elections featured a lot of corruption and violence. Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of Egypt’s bourgeois-democratic opposition, states “bullets govern[ed] the elections", with pro...

Democracy in Egypt? Not yet!

By Mike Rowley The government of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak claims an 83% “yes” vote on a 54% turnout in its constitutional referendum last week. This will allow opposition candidates to stand for the presidency against Mubarak, but only if they are selected by the dictator’s own oddly named “National Democratic Party”. However, reporters and observers saw only deserted polling stations. Supporters of the opposition Wafd Party, which called for a boycott of the referendum, followed government supporters who voted at eight separate polling stations, their ballot papers not being checked...

Islamism and democracy

Israeli socialist and peace activist Uri Avnery comments here on recent demonstrations against Mubarak in Egypt and on the growth of Islamism in the Middle East. The demonstrations have been severely repressed. That is bad, but it is also worrying that the forces that are initiating the demonstrations are growing. How should socialists face up to this reality? The Western (and, of course, Israeli) media publish enthusiastic reports about the demonstrations for democracy and against the regime of Husni Mubarak. Some of the demonstrators are leftists, but most of them are Islamic militants and...

Egypt: the opposition

The following article by Gamal Essam El-Din, Al-Ahram weekly gives some insight into the social and political crisis in Egypt and the sort of nationalist and Islamist arguments which are being proposed to deal with it Prime minister Ahmed Nazif has been c riticised by the opposition for policies which are exacerbating poverty and unemployment. It is also, they say, the responsibility of almost two decades worth of NDP governments that have consistently favoured the interests of a handful of rich businessmen and foreign investors over the poor and unprivileged majority. The government claim...

Egypt: the opposition

The following article by Gamal Essam El-Din, Al-Ahram weekly gives some insight into the social and political crisis in Egypt and the sort of nationalist and Islamist arguments which are being proposed to deal with it Prime minister Ahmed Nazif has been c riticised by the opposition for policies which are exacerbating poverty and unemployment. It is also, they say, the responsibility of almost two decades worth of NDP governments that have consistently favoured the interests of a handful of rich businessmen and foreign investors over the poor and unprivileged majority. The government claim...

Egypt: month long strike against privatisation

Workers from Esco's Qalyoub textile mill staged a sit in at the headquarters of the government-controlled General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) on Saturday and Sunday 19-20 March. The workers are protesting the government's sale of the Qalyoub mill to industrialist Hashem El-Daghri. They are demanding either to remain in the public sector in order to salvage job security and social security benefits or else an adequate early retirement package. They have been on strike since 13 February. Under the con troversial new unified labour law workers can strike only with the permission of the...

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