526 Three Protests

Yesterday police rounded up Kifaya protesters attempting to protest the cancellation of ration cards in Sayaida Zainab Square, the center of a low-income neighborhood in central Cairo. Police drove the activists around for a few hours, then dropped them off at the edge of town and told them to find their own way home. Hossam, blogging from Berkeley, does a nice job of synthesizing various reports at 3arabawy.

A few days ago, small protests against Bush’s visit passed uneventfully. Reporters and photographers dutifully showed up at the block that contains the Press Syndicate, the Lawyers’ Syndicate, and the Judges’ Club, photographed the signs, wrote down the chants, and filed their stories. For about a year, the policy seems to have been that protests can take place only on this city block, and maybe around the corner in Talaat Harb Square (and then only if you’re protesting Bush). A protest about food prices in congested Sayaida Zainab, the epicenter of the 1970s bread riots, is right out—this anniversary, anyway (the government permitted last year’s anniversary protest).

On a personal note, I’m relieved to find out why the men in bad leather jackets were back in front of my apartment yesterday. If you’re reading, guys, I no longer work in human rights and no longer chase protesters around town. Don’t tire your feet on my account.

In any case, I am as interested by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abul Gheit’s protest against the European Parliament resolution criticizing Egypt’s human rights record overwhelmingly passed in Strasbourg yesterday as I am in the latest abortive Kifaya demo.

“Egypt totally rejects attempts by anyone who takes it upon himself to be an investigator of human rights in Egypt,” Abul Gheit told the government-owned Middle East News Agency.

And today the Foreign Ministry responded to the EU Parliament’s resolution with a tit-for-tat statement expressing deep concern “at the deteriorating state of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities and immigrants on the European continent.”

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