<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[‘Hosni Mubarak, the plane is&nbsp;waiting’]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<h3>by Yasmine El Rashidi | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books</h3>
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<p class="inline-copyright">Pierre Sioufi</p>
<p class="inline-caption">Cairo, January 25, 2011</p>
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<p>Cairo on the morning of January 25 felt like something of a ghost  town. Few civilians were to be found on the streets, most stores were  shuttered, and the typically heaving downtown was deserted. It was a  national holiday, and in the central town square, named Tahrir, or  Liberation, even cars were scarce, and parking spaces—always sparse—were  in abundance. The only conspicuous presence was that of Egypt’s police  and state security. Rows of their box-shaped olive-green trucks lined  thoroughfares and narrow side-streets, in some cases blocking them off  for miles. Beside them were battered cobalt blue trucks—the ones used to  whisk away prisoners and detainees. Throughout the downtown area and in  neighboring districts, police and informants (easily identified by  their loitering presence, darting eyes, and frequent two-second phone  calls) were gathered around the otherwise empty major arteries of the  city. Hundreds of them. Many wore black cargo pants, bush jackets and  clunky army boots. Many more were in plain clothes—standing on street  corners, at calculated intervals on sidewalks, in building entrances, on  bridges, and in the few cafes open on a day when almost everything was  closed.</p>
<p>Youth activist groups had designated January 25 as “Freedom  Revolution Day.” The uprising in Tunisia, which in four short weeks sent  President Zine el-Abidine Ben-Ali packing, had been closely watched by  Egyptian activists and opposition leaders. They included members of the  once-popular Kifaya (Enough), the youth-based <a href="http://www.facebook.com/shabab6april">6th of April Movement</a>, Karama, The Popular Democratic Movement for Change (<span class="caps">HASHD</span>), the National Association for Change, founded by former <span class="caps">IAEA</span> Chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the Justice and Freedom Youth movement, and  the Revolutionary Socialists. Last week, some thirty of these activists  met in the decrepit headquarters of the Center for Socialist Studies in  central Cairo to organize a mass demonstration against the repressive  Egyptian regime.</p>
<p>Egyptians have many grievances, with sectarian strife, police  brutality, inflation and skyrocketing prices, and the vicious clampdowns  by the government on any dissent topping that list. In the lead-up to  last November’s parliamentary elections, press freedoms were curbed and  dozens of opposition members were jailed. The elections themselves were  widely seen as a sham, yielding a sweeping victory for president Hosni  Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party. Then, on the eve of the New  Year, a suicide bombing outside a church in Alexandria left twenty-two  people dead and eighty injured.</p>
<p>The activists’ plan for January 25 was to send tens of thousands of  Egyptians into the streets, and to have them stay there until Mubarak  gave in to demands: justice, freedom, citizen rights, and an end to his  thirty-year rule. The organizers—comprised, largely, of public  university graduates in their twenties—had called on Cairenes to gather  at several locations across the city, prepared for nights in the streets  and armed with cameras—to document any police brutality, which has come  to be expected at any public protest here.</p>
<p>To lobby support, the activists used Twitter and Facebook, targeting  above all the 60 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people who are under the  age of 25. A rap song was <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYTmW3PQgzQ">made and circulated</a>, a video plea by the mother of the slain activist Khaled Said <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgZMz3encLE">recorded</a>, and Facebook groups formed to encourage people to join the protest.</p>
<p>On the 25th, I had made a plan with a journalist friend to head out  early and stop by several of the designated protest locations—the  Supreme Court, Cairo University, the popular Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque, and  Shubra—before deciding where to go. Admittedly, we were skeptical. Just  weeks before, in a similar call for demonstrations in Egypt in  solidarity with the Tunisian uprising, I had arrived at a downtown  square to find it barricaded by 200 shielded riot police. Inside were  only nine protesters holding up three small banners.</p>
<p>But this time was different. Our first stop, around noon, was the  Supreme Court, on usually bustling Ramses Street in the city center.  There, we found rows of riot police with their batons, the same  roadblock of trucks, and metal rails cordoning off the patch of sidewalk  that state security had assigned for protesters. The government’s  strategy, as on previous occasions, was to surround protesters with both  metal and human barricades, trapping them.</p>
<p>In the allocated spot of sidewalk, we found only a single man, who we  recognized as the defense lawyer of Ayman Nour, the opposition party  leader who was thrown in jail after running against Mubarak in the 2005  presidential elections. “They’ve been civil with me so far,” he said of  the officers present. “They even offered me a cup of tea.”</p>
<p>We stayed for a few minutes, watching the crowd gathering, spotting <span class="caps">CNN</span>’s  Ben Wedeman and an entourage of foreign press. But tweets and text  messages were coming through about escalating tensions in Shubra—a  working class district in the center of the city known as a stronghold  of the Coptic Christian community. The neighborhood was still reeling  from the New Year’s eve attack on a church in Alexandria, to which it  had close ties. My friend called another friend, Mohamed Waked, an  anthropologist and seasoned activist. He would join us, along with his  brother, Amr, an actor who appeared in the film <em>Syriana</em>.</p>
<p>In Shubra, we joined a marching procession of about one hundred  people, mainly Muslims, who were moving slowly through narrow, muddy  streets, led by activists chanting into a speaker: “Christian or Muslim  it’s not important, similar poverty similar concerns! Hosni Mubarak,  Hosni Mubarak, the plane is waiting, the plane is waiting. Saudi Arabia  is not far!”</p>
<p>Within an hour, the group had grown. The hundred had become a  thousand. Behind them, thirty plain-clothes thugs and state security  followed, not saying a word, not indicating concern. The cohort decided  to proceed to Tahrir Square, Cairo’s central square, where tension was  mounting and processions of 2,000 activists were coming in from  different directions. Through Twitter, the protesters had agreed that  all marches should converge there.</p>
<p>I thought to tell a journalist friend of our plan, and slowed down to  make a phone call. In a second, my head tilted, glancing at the street  behind me, I saw the attack: 300 shielded riot police stormed the crowd.  Onlookers screamed. Police grabbed people by their necks, beat them,  dragged some off, many of them kicking, some visibly bloody. Others  found refuge in building stairwells, and some residents opened their  doors for protesters to come in for cover. My friend and I ducked into a  back street, eventually reuniting with Mohamed, whom we had lost amid  the scramble to escape police.</p>
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<p class="inline-copyright">Yasmine Rashidi</p>
<p class="inline-caption">A man kneels during the protest.  Cairo, January 25, 2011</p>
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<p>We lingered, waiting for a car to come, trying to absorb what we had  just witnessed. Mohamed looked around. He noted a group of informants  with walkie-talkies down the street. “They’re trying to figure out our  next move.” We laughed, and then regretted it, when a split-second  later, four muscular men grabbed him from behind and ran off, taking him  away, yelling at us to get out of the area fast. Despite the chaos, we  somehow managed to hail a cab, headed for Tahrir.</p>
<p>By the time we arrived, Tahrir Square was filling up again with  protesters, about 15,000 of them. Young men in their twenties with  football-themed hoodies and Puma sneakers were everywhere. Young women  too—some of them veiled, many of them not. Fathers with young children  on their shoulders and by their sides filled the square’s grassy center.  I spotted Al-Ghad party leader Ayman Nour, and the outspoken newspaper  editor Ibrahim Eissa, who was fired last year for being too critical of  the regime. Hala El Koussy, the well-known artist, was there too, and I  noticed Amr Shalakany, a law professor at the American University in  Cairo, carrying an Egyptian flag. Someone pointed to the novelist Alaa  El Aswaany, in the distance. I could just about make him out through the  crowds, wearing a burgundy scarf. Some members of the Muslim  Brotherhood were also in attendance, spotted by a journalist friend who  had interviewed them in recent weeks. They were there as independents,  since the group’s leaders had decided it would not participate in the  protests.</p>
<p>The streets were strewn with rocks and other debris from earlier  scuffles with police. I was told that protesters and riot police had  clashed, and that the police had already fired tear gas. We waited,  expecting it to happen again. The chanting grew louder, and the crowd  grew too. By 4:30 <span class="caps">PM</span>, I heard someone say that  the last of the marching protesters had arrived in the square. News  reports estimated that 20,000 to 40,000 people had gathered there. I  debated this with journalists and friends: no one agreed on a figure.</p>
<p>Around the square, security forces began to move in. A bearded man in  faded jeans and a faux suede jacket raised a speaker and called on the  crowd to chant louder. A young man, about 19, climbed a pole and raised  the Egyptian flag. A young girl in a pink sweater hoisted a banner,  asking Mubarak to step down. She must have been about nine. She was  smiling and seemed to think that this was a celebration. As the sun  began to set, activists insisted that people remain here all night, or  until Mubarak yields. They chanted for courage. “No one will die”.</p>
<p>For hours, this went on, chants interrupted by the firing of sporadic  rounds of tear gas. Phone networks were cut and the light had dimmed.  Reports were trickling in that there had been no mention of the protests  on state <span class="caps">TV</span>, and that even Al-Jazeera  coverage was sparse. No one seemed to be leaving. Small crowds tried to,  but people cheered them back, telling them not to fear, to be one, to  unite. Most of them stayed. By late in the evening rumors started to  circulate that the Minister of the Interior had given orders for live  ammunition to be used after 10 <span class="caps">PM</span>. In an  uproar, the crowd shouted that they were still not scared, that nothing  would move them except defeat of their ruler. They moved closer towards  the police barricades, shouting into the air that the force of the  citizens was stronger than any ammunition the police might use.</p>
<p>I had been close to the front of the crowd, facing the riot police.  When I heard talk of live ammunition, I retreated back into the center  of the square. I wondered if it might be time to leave, but others  around weren’t flinching.</p>
<p>We waited.</p>
<p>Close to 1 <span class="caps">AM</span>, we sensed something was  about to happen. The number of riot police had increased, we noticed  more shielded trucks in outlying side-streets, and the security  barricade the police had erected seemed to be inching closer, closing in  on the square. Suddenly, there were groups of thugs—strongmen in cotton  shirts despite the cold—both moving among the protesters and in the  surrounding streets. The riot police pulled down their masks.</p>
<p>The attack was ruthless. The police fired round after round of tear  gas and began to strike protesters indiscriminately with their batons;  the thugs, who were beating down on protesters—in some cases with metal  chains and knives—seemed to have orders to kill. With the air thick with  sulphur, people fell to the ground, many toppled by the sheer force of  the security forces moving in. Water canons smashed through the crowds.</p>
<p>Hours later, many of us were back home, checking our Twitter and  Facebook feeds for news and wondering what would happen next. Would  there be a curfew, would the president release a statement, would the  state concede anything? What would tomorrow’s papers say? People joked  that the ruling family had just landed at Heathrow, a hundred bags in  tow. Ayman Nour tweeted that his son had been detained. Activists  slammed Hilary Clinton’s remarks describing Egypt’s government as  “stable and looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and  interests of the Egyptian people.” A picture of an empty tear gas  canister circulated, the zoom focusing in on ‘Made in <span class="caps">USA</span>’. Organizers circulated a message that the protests would continue, tomorrow, the next day, and Friday after midday prayers.</p>
<p><span class="dquo">“</span>Don’t forget,” tweeted one activist, “that  in Tunisia it took a month. #Egypt is bigger, it will take more.  #jan25, keep it alive.”</p>
<p>At the time of this writing, protests have begun again. I can hear  the echo of sirens in the city, and I’ve been receiving tweets about  what’s happening downtown, about arrests and “abductions.” Our friend  Mohamed has not yet been released from the custody of state security. In  all, 860 protesters were arrested throughout the country, and three  people were killed. A journalist friend who is out covering the events  posts on her Facebook page: “Cairo is under siege today. By the  government’s thugs and security apparatus. Protests, kidnappings,  beatings, arrests, tear gas. What the hell!”</p>
<p><em>January 26, 2011 5:45 p.m.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jan/26/hosni-mubarak-plane-waiting/">‘Hosni Mubarak, the plane is waiting’ by Yasmine El Rashidi | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books</a>.</p>
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