"3 more killed as Egypt’s military takes to TV to criticize protests" December 20, 2011
CAIRO - Egypt’s ruling military questioned the morals of a female detainee, accused a prominent publisher of incitement, and bashed the news media for allegedly working to destabilize the country in a new effort yesterday to crush the democratic movement trying to oust the generals....
Major General Adel Emara, a member of the military council that took power, showed videos clearly aimed at discrediting those involved in the protest movement.
One image was designed to raise questions about a female detainee’s morals. It showed the woman talking about her husband, then later saying she was not married to her partner. Sex outside marriage is considered gravely immoral in conservative, mostly Muslim Egypt....
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"Women protesters march on Cairo" December 21, 2011|By David D. Kirkpatrick
CAIRO — Thousands of women marched through downtown Cairo last night to call for the end of military rule in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping, and kicking a female demonstrator on the pavement of Tahrir Square.
The event may have been the biggest women’s demonstration in Egypt’s history, and the most significant since a 1919 march led by pioneering Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi to protest British rule. About 10,000 women took part in the protest, the Associated Press reported. The scale was stunning, and utterly unexpected in this strictly patriarchal society.
Go get 'em, girls!
Previous attempts to organize women’s events in Tahrir Square this year have either fizzled or, in at least one case, ended in the physical harassment of the handful of women who did turn out.
“Drag me, strip me, my brothers’ blood will cover me!’’ the demonstrators chanted yesterday. “Where is the field marshal?’’ they demanded, referring to Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council holding on to power here. “The girls of Egypt are here.’’
The women’s chants were evidently heard at military headquarters as well. Last night, the ruling military council offered an abrupt apology.
“The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces expresses its utmost sorrow for the great women of Egypt, for the violations that took place during the recent events,’’ the council said in a statement. “It stresses its great appreciation for the women of Egypt and for their right to protest and to actively, positively participate in political life on the path of democratic transition.’’
Although no one in the military has been publicly investigated or charged in connection with any misconduct, the statement asserted that the council had already taken “all the legal actions to hold whoever is responsible accountable.’’
On the fifth of day of clashes between demonstrators and military police, the outpouring of women represented a stark shift for a protest movement that has often seemed to degenerate to crowds of young men trading volleys of rocks with riot police. It comes at a moment when many protesters were beginning to despair that they were losing a propaganda war against the military rulers’ attempts to portray them as vandals and arsonists out to ruin the country.
Just two hours before the women massed, a coalition of liberal and human rights groups unveiled a plan to try to break the state media’s grip on public opinion by holding screenings around the country of video capturing recent military abuses.
Groups of soldiers have been recorded beating prone demonstrators with clubs, firing rifles and handguns as they chased protesters, and more than one version showed soldiers stripping female demonstrators.
That's damn disrespectful anywhere!
In the most famous of those, a half dozen soldiers beating a woman with batons rip away her abaya to reveal her blue bra before one plants his boot on her chest. Fearful of the stigma that would come with her public humiliation, she has declined to step forward publicly, but the images of “blue bra girl’’ have been circulated over the Internet and broadcast by television stations around the world.
In Washington on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton alluded to the episode when she called the recent events in Egypt “shocking.’’
“Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago,’’ Clinton said. “Women are being attacked, stripped, and beaten in the streets,’’ she added, arguing that “this systematic degradation’’ of Egyptian women “disgraces the state and its uniform.’’
When the core of activists called for a march to protest the military’s treatment of women - organizers on the Internet service Twitter used the tag “BlueBra’’ - few could have expected the magnitude of the response.
By 4 in the afternoon, thousands had gathered in Tahrir Square. Instead of the usual core of activists, it was a broad spectrum including housewives demonstrating for the first time and young mothers carrying babies. A majority wore traditional Muslim headscarves and a few had face-covering veils.
I don't know, I just thought the paragraph was important, and really liked it.
As they marched toward the headquarters of the journalists union, two long lines of hundreds of men joined hands on either side of the column of women to protect them from any possible harassment.
That's nice to see, too!!!
The crowd seemed to grow at each step as the women in the march called up to the apartment buildings lining the streets to urge others to join.
“If you don’t leave your house today to confront the militias of Tantawi, you will leave your house tomorrow so they can rape your daughter,’’ one sign read.
“I am here because of our girls who were stripped in the street,’’ said Sohir Mahmoud, 50, a housewife. “Men are not going to cover your flesh so we will,’’ she told a younger woman. “We have to come down and call for our rights; nobody is going to call for our rights for us.’’
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Related: Islamists refuse to press Egypt's army
That's because they cut a deal with them to rule.
"Egypt bans virginity tests on female detainees" December 28, 2011|By Leila Fadel
CAIRO - An Egyptian court yesterday banned virginity tests on female detainees in military-controlled prisons, buoying human rights groups, who said the civilian court’s ruling was binding on the country’s military leaders.
The ban came in response to a lawsuit filed by market manager Samira Ibrahim, one of seven women who said they were subjected to humiliating virginity checks after being detained by the military at a sit-in in March. At the time, the ruling generals denied their soldiers had conducted such tests and offered no apologies.
An army general was later quoted as saying that tests had been carried out but only to protect soldiers from accusations of rape. Last week, the military announced it was investigating military personnel who were involved.
The generals’ management of the country’s period of transition has drawn criticism from political activists, but reports of mistreatment of women at the hands of the military have incensed a broad swath of Egyptians. In recent crackdowns on protesters, soldiers were filmed dragging unarmed women by their hair, beating them, and in at least one case stripping a woman to expose her bra....
Ibrahim, 25, has been one of the most outspoken about her experience and the most dogged about holding someone accountable.
The young woman posted a video on YouTube in which she said that after she was detained on March 9, she was shocked with cattle prods, accused of being a prostitute, forced to strip in front of soldiers, and then examined by a man in khaki pants in front of laughing soldiers.
The military doctor who conducted the test will face a hearing in a military court beginning Jan. 3, according to state television. A separate hearing is scheduled Jan. 8 for three other soldiers, who are accused of running over unarmed protesters in October when more than 26 demonstrators, mostly Christians, were killed in clashes with security forces.
Related: Egyptian Army Crashed Coptic Christian Protests
Activists worry that in both cases the soldiers will be scapegoated while their commanding officers will not be penalized.
Egypt has no law bearing on the use of virginity tests in prisons, so the court’s outright prohibition of the practice yesterday represents a significant victory for women, human rights groups and legal analysts said....
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Just proving Muslim Men Hate Their Women.
"Egypt’s revolt grew from strike" January 02, 2012|By Liz Sly
MAHALLA EL-KUBRA, Egypt - Much was made of Facebook, Twitter, and the role social media played in lending a sense of youth and modernity to the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Then came the ascendancy of political Islam, which seems to be leading Egypt in a different direction entirely.
But the real roots of the revolution may lie here in this crumbling cottonmill town in the Nile Delta, Egypt’s industrial heartland, and with an old-fashioned labor dispute over pay that began five years ago.
And, according to one reading of the events that unfolded, it all began with a little-known act of courage by Wedad Demerdash, 44, a mother of four who wears a head scarf and was inspired to act because she couldn’t afford to buy meat for her family....
When the men of the mill balked at joining the banned strike action, she seized the initiative and led her female co-workers out into the factory grounds. Chanting “Where are the men? Here are the women,’’ they marched around the mill until the men were shamed into joining them. After three days, the workers won.
Amid the upheaval of the past year, the part labor played in the birth of the revolution has been largely forgotten. But workers joined the revolutionaries in the square in February and continued to stage strikes during the year, taking on a far greater role in Egypt, with its strong industrial base, than labor has in other countries where uprisings have taken place.
The strikes continue to this day, and although they have been eclipsed by the far-better-publicized protests in Tahrir Square, future Egyptian governments will need to address at least some of the demands of an increasingly organized labor movement if the unrest is to be tamed.
The Misr Spinning and Weaving Co. in Mahalla is Egypt’s biggest industrial enterprise and one of the largest cotton mills in the world. Founded in 1927, it was once the flagship of Egyptian industry, producing high-quality cotton sold around the globe.
In recent years, its workforce has dwindled to 21,000 from a peak of nearly 40,000, and it operates at a considerable loss to the state. But to Egyptians, the mill is legendary. Known simply as Mahalla, it has become synonymous over the years with the militancy of its workers.
“Whatever happens in Mahalla sets the tone for Egypt,’’ said Hossam el-Hamalawy, a labor activist and blogger. “If Mahalla goes on strike and wins, you can be assured the rest of the country will go on strike too.’’
Joel Beinin, a Stanford University professor who has written on Egypt’s labor movements, added that “the women were more militant than the men.’’
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"Egyptian critic of military rule beaten in street" by Hamza Hendawi | Associated Press, January 20, 2012
CAIRO - A prominent Egyptian activist was attacked as she left work at Cairo’s Nileside state television headquarters late Wednesday in the latest violence against the protest movement that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime to be captured on video.
A clip posted on social networks showed a small crowd punching and kicking Nawara Negm and hurling abuse at her. Her assailants could be heard saying she wanted to drive a wedge between the ruling military and the people. Others called her an “agent,’’ presumably of a foreign power.
Negm told a television interviewer Wednesday that the beating left her with a swollen eye, but that she was otherwise unhurt. She said the beating took place while scores of police officers and soldiers stood by and watched.
Negm is the daughter of Ahmed Fouad Negm, Egypt’s best known satirical poet and a longtime critic of Mubarak. She was a key figure in the 18-day uprising that forced Mubarak to step down last February. Also a newspaper columnist and blogger, she has been sharply critical of the generals who took over from the ousted president.
Negm was questioned by prosecutors this week over her alleged role in deadly clashes last month between troops and protesters in Cairo.
The generals have repeatedly accused some of the activists behind Mubarak’s ouster of illegally receiving foreign funds, and the state media has portrayed them as reckless troublemakers.
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Related:
"Little support for new Egypt protests; Heavy-handed crackdown not drawing outcry" December 19, 2011|By Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press
CAIRO - The protesters have tried to drum up Egyptians’ anger at the military by spreading videos and photos of military police savagely beating young men and women to the ground with sticks and truncheons - and the resonant scene of a woman in a conservative headscarf being stripped half naked by soldiers who stomp on her chest.
But so far their efforts to win public sympathy don’t seem to be gaining traction in the face of the military’s campaign to depict the crowds of hundreds in the streets as hooligans and vandals, not the idealistic activists who succeeded in bringing down Mubarak....
“The military has failed in everything except for its stunning success in making people hate the revolution, its history, and its revolutionaries,’’ prominent columnist Ibrahim Eissa wrote in an editorial in the independent prorevolution newspaper, Al Tahrir.
Led by a general who served for 20 years as Mubarak’s defense minister, the military has been methodically seeking to discredit the revolutionaries, accusing them of illegally receiving foreign funds and being part of a plot hatched abroad to destabilize Egypt. The generals have sought to portray themselves as key players in the 18-day revolt that toppled Mubarak’s 29-year rule and hence have earned the right to rule. In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the ruling military council yesterday called the clashes part of a “conspiracy’’ against Egypt. It said its forces had the right to defend the “property of the great people of Egypt.’’
They may well be right on that one; USrael can not have liked the drift from Mubarak's lock-step.
Seeking to depict protesters as hooligans - and apparently to counter the widely published images of protesters being beaten or dragged - it also posted on the page footage of young men throwing rocks at a basement window of the Parliament building and of at least one man trying to set the place ablaze.
The generals’ campaign plays on Egyptians’ frustration with continued instability and economic woes....
Sound familiar, Amurkn?
The military has been using the state media and sympathetic private TV stations to market an image of itself as the protector of the nation, filling its statements with patriotic rhetoric and grave warnings if turmoil persists....
Now I'm SURE THAT LOOKS FAMILIAR to you!
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"Egypt’s military crackdown intensifies, leaving nine dead; Attacks launched against protesters in Tahrir Square" December 18, 2011|By Maggie Michael and Sarah El Deeb, Associated Press
CAIRO - Hundreds of Egyptian soldiers swept into Cairo’s Tahrir Square yesterday, chasing protesters and beating them to the ground with sticks and tossing journalists’ TV cameras off balconies in the second day of a violent crackdown on antimilitary protesters that has left nine dead and hundreds injured.
The violent, chaotic scenes suggested that the military - fresh after the first rounds of parliamentary elections that it said bolstered its status as the country’s rulers - was now determined to stamp out protests by activists demanding it transfer power immediately to civilians.
TV footage, pictures, and witnesses accounts showed a new level of force being used by the military against prodemocracy activists the past two days.
Military police openly beat women protesters in the street, slapped elders on the face, and pulled the shirt off of at least one veiled woman as she struggled on the pavement. Witnesses said they beat and gave electric shocks to men and women dragged into detention, many of them held in the nearby Parliament or Cabinet buildings, witnesses said.
Aya Emad, a 24-year-old protester, had a broken nose, her arm in a sling, her other arm bruised. She said troops dragged her by her headscarf and hair into the Cabinet headquarters. She said soldiers kicked her on the ground, an officer shocked her with an electrical prod, and another slapped her in the face.
With Egypt in the midst of multistage parliamentary elections, the violence threatens to spark a new cycle of fighting after deadly clashes between youth revolutionaries and security forces in November that lasted for days and left more than 40 dead. The clashes in November involved the widely disliked police force. But in a key difference, this time the police have stayed away and the crackdown is being led entirely by the military.
That could indicate a new confidence among the military that it has backing of the broader public - after elections held under its watch that saw heavy turnout, and which were largely peaceful and the fairest and freest in living memory.
Ahmed Abdel-Samei, who came to check on Tahrir Square, said he opposes protests. “Elections were the first step. This was a beginning to stability,’’ the 29-year-old said....
Noor Noor, an activist who was beaten up trying to protect Emad, said, “Public opinion is addicted or naturally inclined to favor stability or the illusion of it. But in time, it will be hard for the army to cover everything up.’’
The heavy-handed crackdown could galvanize the military’s opponents and even some in the public who praised the army for delivering clean elections. Among those killed Friday was an eminent 52-year-old Muslim cleric from Al-Azhar, Egypt’s most respected religious institution.
At the funeral yesterday of Sheik Emad Effat, who was shot in the chest, hundreds chanted “Retribution, retribution,’’ and marched from the cemetery to Tahrir. Tahrir and streets leading to the nearby Parliament and Cabinet headquarters looked like war zones. The military set up concrete walls between the square and Parliament, but clashes continued.
Flames leaped from the windows of the state geographical society, which protesters pelted with firebombs after military police on the roof rained stones and firebombs down on them.
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Look, it's raining concrete in Egypt:
"Violence erupts as Egypt vote continues; 2 people killed, over 200 injured" December 17, 2011|By David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times
CAIRO - The center of the Egyptian capital erupted in violence again yesterday as military police beat up demonstrators challenging military rule, angry protesters hurled Molotov cocktails at the empty Parliament building, and hundreds of judges monitoring the polls threatened to quit over violence around the ballot-counting the night before.
The Ministry of Health said two people were killed, eight were wounded by live ammunition, and nearly 220 others injured as of early last evening. In response to the violence, at least two members resigned in protest from a new civilian advisory council established by Egypt’s military rulers to bolster their tenuous legitimacy.
The chaos came after Egypt’s first parliamentary elections since the ouster of former strongman Hosni Mubarak 10 months ago. It is a new blow to the moral authority of the ruling military council, whose military police watched passively for at least eight hours as a small group of men hurled chunks and tiles of marble from the top of the towering Parliament building into a growing crowd of protestors on the street below. The rain of rocks did nothing to disperse the protestors - in fact, their numbers grew from hundreds to thousands by nightfall - but still sent a parade of demonstrators to the hospital with wounds.
The fighting injected an unpredictable new variable into a looming confrontation between the military council and the incoming Parliament over control of the transitional government and the drafting of a new constitution. The military has sought to carve out permanent political powers and autonomy under the new charter.
In a recent briefing with foreign reporters, a general on the council argued the military should give its own chosen representatives a voice in choosing a constitutional drafting committee because social instability surrounding the elections would undermine the elected Parliament’s ability to speak for the public. But civilian political leaders - led by Islamists who are dominating polls - have insisted that Parliament alone should control the transitional government and constitutional drafting.
The violence broke out as reports of party officials monitoring ballot counting said the second phase of the three-part election for a lower Parliament confirmed the trend of the first: the Islamist party founded by the Muslim Brotherhood led the polling, followed by the ultraconservative Islamists known as Salifis, and then an alliance of liberal and leftist parties known as the Egyptian Bloc.
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"Egyptians rally in Tahrir Square; Year after revolt, they want change" by Aya Batrawy | Associated Press, January 21, 2012
CAIRO - Several thousand Egyptians marched to Cairo’s Tahrir Square yesterday ahead of the one-year anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, demanding justice and retribution for those killed in clashes with security forces.
Activists have organized the demonstrations as part of a week of “mourning and anger’’ around the Jan. 25 anniversary to rally support for their call to end military rule. They say the generals who took power after Mubarak’s fall have continued policies just as authoritarian and abusive as those of the toppled regime.
The military has tried to counter what some protesters have dubbed “the second revolution’’ by using state-run media to accuse protesters of receiving foreign funding to destabilize Egypt and by calling for celebrations on the anniversary of the uprising to boost the military’s image as the nation’s true patriots.
President Obama spoke on the telephone yesterday with Tantawi, who served as Mubarak’s defense minister for 20 years, to emphasize Washington’s support for Egypt’s democratic transition. The call comes just weeks after Egyptian security forces stormed offices of non-governmental organizations, including three US-based groups funded by the State Department, and accused them of using prodemocracy funds to foment violent protests.
Obama stressed that such groups “should be able to operate freely,’’ the White House said.
Translation: the U.S. is f***ing around in Egypt.
Activists slammed the raids and pointed to Egypt’s own military, which receives nearly $1 billion a year in foreign assistance from the United States
Activists say they will use the occasion as a day to continue protests and push for an end to military rule.
Yesterday, protesters in Cairo set out from different neighborhoods in the city of some 18 million people and descended on Tahrir Square, which served as the epicenter of the 18-days of protests that pushed Mubarak from power on Feb. 11.
Women also marched through central Cairo demanding Egypt’s ruling military step down in a continued show of outrage against soldiers who dragged women by the hair and stomped on them during a crackdown on activists last month.
Yes, don't forget the ladies!
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"Support, reputation of Egypt youth movement slips" January 22, 2012
CAIRO - Members of a youth movement that spearheaded the protests that forced President Hosni Mubarak from power face an uphill battle as they try to recapture the public’s support ahead of the Jan. 25 anniversary of the start of Egypt’s revolution.Now their target is Egypt’s military council, which retains strong public backing.
Liberals have fared poorly in the country’s parliamentary elections, outshone by Islamist candidates who appear likely to claim three times as many seats.
Final results yesterday showed that Islamist parties won nearly three-quarters of the seats in Parliament in Egypt’s first elections since the ouster of Mubarak, according to election officials and political groups.
The April 6 youth movement has shrunk in stature against a backdrop of economic woes and instability, including months of clashes between security forces and demonstrators that have disrupted daily life. Although the group once had near-heroic status, its troubles have been compounded by the ruling military’s success in portraying the group as agents of a foreign-backed insurrection.
Together with other youth groups and activists, the group is trying to organize mass protests Wednesday to demand the immediate transfer of power from the military to the newly elected Parliament, which is expected to be seated soon.
But although leaders of the group say its ranks have swelled over the past year - to 20,000 members from a base of 3,000 - they acknowledge that the organization’s reputation has been diminished in the eyes of many Egyptians, a fate they blame on the military and its supporters.
“They destroyed our reputations. This is more dangerous than detention or arrest,’’ Ahmed Maher, the leader of the movement, said of the military leaders. “They have the most powerful weapon of all: the media.’’
In July, the military issued a statement accusing the April 6 group of “driving a wedge between the army and the people.’’ A member of the military council accused the group of getting illicit training in Serbia, and recently four members of a splinter group of the organization were arrested and released on bail after distributing fliers critical of the military council. “Now, anyone who creates any problem, people accuse them of being April 6,’’ said Engy Hamdy, a leading member of the movement.
The April 6 group soared to prominence after helping to orchestrate the protests that led to Mubarak’s ouster. Poll results released in April by the Pew Research Center found that 38 percent of Egyptians regarded the organization as a favorable agent of change, ahead of the Muslim Brotherhood and trailing only Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council, and Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister who became a popular opposition figure.
But the group has chosen since to focus on street activism. There have been no recent opinion polls to gauge its popularity, but the recent multiphase parliamentary elections suggested that its support has faded badly, with only 2 percent of seats projected to go to the Revolution Continues party, the faction most similar to the April 6 organization.
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"100,000 gather in Cairo for anniversary of uprising" January 26, 2012|By David D. Kirkpatrick
CAIRO - A massive demonstration on the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution turned into a contest yesterday between Islamists and other activists over whether to celebrate the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak or to rally against the continued rule of the generals who took power.
Divide and conquer, cui bono?
Declared a national holiday, the occasion brought out teeming crowds in cities across the country, including an estimated 100,000 demonstrators packed into the revolution’s symbolic center in the capital’s Tahrir Square and the surrounding streets. But while the outpouring was as large as any during the original uprising, its spirit of unity gave way to new divisions pitting Islamists against liberals, the political winners against the losers, accommodationists against revolutionaries, on the question of how to end military rule.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the previously outlawed Islamist group that is Egypt’s strongest political force, appeared to be celebrating not only the revolution but also its own success in winning a dominant role in recent parliamentary elections. The Brotherhood had kept a low profile during last year’s uprising to avoid arousing the fears of liberals or the West, but yesterday the group was no longer as coy.
Its leaders, who now include the leaders of the new Parliament, have endorsed the military’s timetable for a handover to an elected president by the end of June. They declared in recent days that they would turn out their members for a display of “pride in the revolution,’’ and many in the crowd here said they had come to ensure that the event stayed peaceful and positive....
The ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis, political rivals to the Brotherhood who won about a quarter of the seats in Parliament, also turned out to help secure the square for the celebration.
Plenty of men with the Salafis’ trademark long beards mingled in the crowd, and for much of the morning there were few women in sight.
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"Fights break out at Egyptian rally; Islamists, secular protesters collide in Tahrir Square" by Aya Batrawy and Sarah El Deeb | Associated Press, January 28, 2012
CAIRO - Muslim Brotherhood supporters and secular protesters hurled bottles and rocks at each other and got into fistfights in Cairo’s Tahrir Square yesterday as their political differences boiled over at a rally by tens of thousands marking an anniversary in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
The scuffles, in which there were no reports of injury, were the first time the two sides have come to blows over resentments that have been rising between them since they worked together during the 18 days of protests against Mubarak a year ago.
Now they are locked in a competition to shape the transition. The differences do not focus on the Brotherhood’s religious agenda - though it worries many in the other camp. Instead, the divisions are over the military, which has ruled since Mubarak’s fall, and whether change will come to the autocratic system.
The “revolutionaries,’’ the leftist and secular activists who launched the anti-Mubarak revolt, now demand that the ruling generals quit power immediately and have vowed protests to force them out. The Brotherhood, meanwhile, has vaulted to political domination by winning the largest bloc in the new Parliament and has been willing to let the military follow its own timetable for stepping down.
The revolutionaries suspect the Brotherhood will strike a deal with the generals - giving them a future say in politics to ensure the Brotherhood’s hold on authority and influence in the writing of a constitution, effectively shelving serious reform. They also bristle over what they see as the Brotherhood’s attempts to monopolize the political scene.
They already have.
Nevertheless, the two sides have been uneasily trying to share Tahrir Square since a giant rally Wednesday marking the Jan. 25 start of the anti-Mubarak protests. But on a new rally yesterday, tempers flared.
“Out, out, out!’’ revolutionaries chanted at the Brotherhood’s main stage in the square, holding their shoes in the air in a sign of contempt at a line of Brothers forming a human chain in front of the podium.
“Dogs of the military council,’’ others chanted at the Brothers.
The political differences have translated into a dispute over the very meaning of the anniversary. The Brotherhood has presented this week as a celebration of the revolution’s successes - particularly their own Parliament victory. The secular groups say there is nothing to celebrate when so many demands of the revolution are left unachieved and killings of protesters are unpunished.
The day’s protests, which included mass rallies in other Egyptian cities, commemorated the first anniversary of the “Friday of Rage,’’ one of the bloodiest days of the 18-day protests that led to Mubarak’s Feb. 11 ouster.
In last year’s “Friday of Rage,’’ Mubarak’s security forces fired on protesters marching toward Tahrir from around the capital, killing and wounding hundreds. Protesters battled back for hours until the police collapsed and withdrew from the streets.
“This is a day of mourning, not celebration,’’ said Abdel-Hady el-Ninny, the father of a slain protester, Alaa Abdel-Hady. He and his family carried large posters of his son around Tahrir.
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Related: Islamists join call for Egypt military to go
