Egypt

Egyptians flood streets to demand Mursi ouster

 

By Shaimaa Fayed and Yasmine Saleh

(Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians flooded into the streets on the first anniversary of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi's inauguration on Sunday to demand that he resign.

 

Waving national flags and chanting "Get out!", a crowd of more than 200,000 had massed by sunset on Cairo's central Tahrir Square in the biggest demonstration since the 2011 uprising that overthrew Mursi's predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

"The people want the fall of the regime!" they shouted, echoing the Arab Spring rallying cry that brought down Mubarak - this time yelling it not against an ageing dictator but against the first elected leader in Egypt's 5,000 year recorded history.

Many bellowed their anger at Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood, accused of hijacking the revolution and using electoral victories to monopolize power and push through Islamic law.

Others have been alienated by a deepening economic crisis and worsening personal security, aggravated by a political deadlock over which Mursi has presided.

As the working day ended and 38 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) heat eased, more protesters converged through the eerily deserted streets of the shuttered city centre, while smaller crowds protested in several other areas of the capital.

The veteran leaders of Egypt's secular, liberal and left-wing opposition, including former chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei and leftist presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, joined protest marches in Cairo.

A Reuters journalist said hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters marched through the Mediterranean port of Alexandria, Egypt's second city, and a military source reported protests in at least 20 towns around the country.

Mursi, an engineering professor propelled to power by the Muslim Brotherhood, was monitoring events from the heavily guarded Qubba presidential palace, where an official spokesman appealed for the demonstrations to remain peaceful.

"Maintaining the security of Egypt is the common responsibility of everyone," presidential spokesman Ehab Fahmy told a news conference. "Dialogue is the only way to reach mutual understanding and to reach national agreement around the different issues of our homeland."

 

via www.reuters.com

Egypt's Mohamed Morsi remains defiant as fears of civil war grow

Read on; the Guardian, by David Hearst and Patrick Kingsley 

Protests against the rule of Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square. Photograph: ITAR-TASS/Barcroft Media

The Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, has vowed there will be no second revolution in Egypt, as thousands planned to gather outside his presidential palace calling for his removal after a year in power.

 

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Morsi rejected opposition calls for early presidential elections and said he would not tolerate any deviation from constitutional order. He said his early resignation would undermine the legitimacy of his successors, creating a recipe for unending chaos.

"If we changed someone in office who [was elected] according to constitutional legitimacy – well, there will be people opposing the new president too, and a week or a month later they will ask him to step down," Morsi said.

"There is no room for any talk against this constitutional legitimacy. There can be demonstrations and people expressing their opinions. But what's critical in all this is the adoption and application of the constitution. This is the critical point."

At least seven people have been killed and over 600 injured in clashes between Morsi's Islamist allies and their secular opposition over the past few days.

With tensions set to rise on Sunday, Morsi's defiant stance sets the stage for a trial of strength that will be played out on the streets of Cairo in front of his official residence. Once gathered, the opposition have vowed not to leave it until he resigns.

The man at the centre of a national storm seems uncannily certain of himself and his staying power. Asked whether he was confident that the army would never have to step in to control a country that had become ungovernable, Morsi replied: "Very."

But Morsi's assured demeanour contrasted with the tense atmosphere that surrounded him on Saturday afternoon. Morsi held back-to-back meetings with top-level state officials, including the prime minister, Hisham Qandil, the interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, and several senior officers, including the head of the armed forces, General Abdel Fattah Sisi – whose ambiguous comments in recent days have led to widespread hopes in opposition ranks of military intervention.

Morsi had decamped from Itahadiya palace, the traditional seat of the president, which is now surrounded by makeshift concrete walls in anticipation of Sunday's protests. In its place, he held court on Saturday at the Quba Palace, the birthplace of Farouq – the last king of Egypt.

Morsi claimed Egyptian private media channels had exaggerated the strength of his opponents, and blamed this week's violence on officials loyal to the former president Hosni Mubarak.

He said the media had taken "small situations of violence and then magnified them as if the whole country is living in violence". He dismissed the organic nature of the opposition to his rule, and maintained that the fighting had been co-ordinated by "the deep state and the remnants of the old regime" who had paid off hired thugs to attack his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood.

"They have money, and they got this money from corruption. They used this corrupt money to pull back the regime, and pull back the old regime into power. They pay this corrupt money to thugs, and then violence takes place."

via www.guardian.co.uk

Egypt, Its Streets a Tinderbox, Braces for a Spark

Read on.

NY Times, by David K. Kirkpatrick

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times Egyptians protested against President Mohamed Morsi in Cairo on Saturday. A Muslim cleric has warned of “civil war.”

CAIRO — Thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, many wearing hard hats and armed with makeshift clubs, are camped near the presidential palace in anticipation of a battle to defend their ally, President Mohamed Morsi. In three days of protests against him around the Nile Delta, gunmen have killed at least five Brotherhood members and set fire to several of its offices.

The use of firearms is becoming more common on all sides. Secular activists who once chanted, “peaceful, peaceful,” now joke darkly about the inevitability of violence: “Peaceful is dead.”

With a new wave of protests scheduledfor Sunday, Egypt’s most respected Muslim cleric warned in a statement this weekend of potential “civil war.”

A year after Egypt’s first credible presidential election, the ballot box has failed to deliver on promises of unquestioned legitimacy or the nonviolent resolution of political disputes. In more than two years of post-revolutionary chaos and crises, the streets have never felt so tense.

Mismanagement or sabotage by the institutions of the old government has stunted the transition to democracy. Egypt’s new Islamist leaders all but gave up on building support beyond their faction. And now long-suppressed conflicts over questions of national identity or entrenched interests are threatening to tear apart the national cohesion that was a hallmark of the 18-day uprising in 2011 against President Hosni Mubarak. The strife is beginning to challenge the historic sense of nationhood that long distinguished Egypt from volatile neighbors whose borders were carved out by colonial powers.

“It is gone — that unity is gone completely,” said Islam Lotfy, a former youth leader of the Brotherhood who helped lead the revolt against Mr. Mubarak. He no longer knows what side to stand on in the protests on Sunday, he said, because as a governing party the Brotherhood has turned out to be “a bunch of losers” while the opposition in the streets now includes too many elements of the former autocracy, “the people who killed my friends and who tried to kill me.”

President Obama, on a visit to Johannesburg, said the administration was working to ensure the safety of United States Embassy and consulate staff, and he urged all sides to denounce violence. “We do not take sides in terms of who should be elected by the Egyptian people," Mr. Obama said.  “We do take sides in terms of observing a process for democracy and the rule of law.”

Some of the discord is inside the government, which Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood are still struggling to control. The Interior Ministry, in charge of Mr. Mubarak’s feared security forces, is still largely intact since his ouster, and the police are in more or less open revolt. At a recent meeting of the main police officers’ association to discuss the planned protests, one policeman recalled their “betrayal” by the collapse of the Mubarak government and called their current diminished status “a catastrophe.” Alluding to Mr. Morsi’s time in jail for his Islamist politics, the officer denounced “people who were in prison and are now presidents,” and he said that if even a single officer went to protect a Brotherhood office on Sunday, “I swear to God almighty, he will be shot.”

via www.nytimes.com

Dangerous Divisions in the Arab World

NY Times, Editorial Board

Even in a region where violence has become all too commonplace, the killing of four Shiite men in Egypt last weekend seemed particularly vicious. According to news reports, a cheering Sunni Muslim mob armed with clubs, swords and machetes raided a house in a Cairo suburb where about 30 people were marking a religious festival and beat, stabbed and lynched the four men. Video footage showed the victims’ bodies, bloodied and motionless, being dragged through the streets. Among those killed was a prominent Shiite cleric, Hassan Shehata.

The incident illustrates a pernicious sectarianism that was largely repressed by pre-Arab Spring dictators but that now threatens Egypt and much of the Arab world. If left unchecked by newly elected leaders who either exploit simmering historical animosities or refuse to address them constructively, divisions will worsen between Sunnis and Shiites or between Muslims and other minorities, like Christians, ensuring prolonged regional turmoil.

In Egypt, President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Sunni Islamist party from which he hails, have failed to unite the overwhelmingly Sunni country and its Christian and Shiite minorities around a centrist agenda in the post-Mubarak era. Instead, they have solidified ties with Salafist hard-liners in the Islamist camp; derided opponents, including many secularists, as “enemies of Egypt”; and demonized Shiite and Coptic Christian minorities.

The mob attack came after months of anti-Shiite hate speech; the week before the incident, Mr. Morsi appeared on stage at an event with hard-line Sunni clerics who denounced Shiites as “filthy.” Tensions over Mr. Morsi’s rule have been running strong for some time. On Friday, at least three people were killed and hundreds were injured in protests, and many fear violence during protest rallies set for June 30, the first anniversary of his inauguration. The army has warned it may intervene if things get out of control. Mr. Morsi’s speech to the nation on Wednesday offered little to appease critics demanding his resignation.

The sectarian problem, however, goes well beyond Egypt. In Iraq, renewed killing between Sunnis and Shiites has produced the highest death toll in five years. Part of the blame falls on Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who heads an elected Shiite majority-led government that has never made good on promises to re-integrate minority Sunnis, empowered under Saddam Hussein then banished after his ouster, into politics and the work force. In Bahrain, the royal family representing the Sunni minority has cracked down hard on protests by a Shiite majority population seeking a greater role in political life. Sectarian tensions are also roiling Lebanon and, less so, Turkey.

Every country’s situation is unique, but to a great extent the regional ferment has been stoked by Syria’s civil war as it spills across the border and ignites Sunnis and Shiites in neighboring states to also attack one another. The conflict began more than two years ago as peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the minority Alawites, a Shiite sect. Now with 100,000 Syrians killed, Sunnis across the region have become incensed by Mr. Assad’s brutality against the mainly Sunni opposition, while Shiites from outside Syria have joined the fight to defend Mr. Assad. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar — Sunni countries with broader strategic interests — are backing the Syrian opposition, while Iran and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, both Shiite entities, are backing Mr. Assad.

Regardless of what happens in Syria, leaders in neighboring countries need to move quickly to reverse the sectarian slide. That means stating unequivocally that they are committed to the equal rights of all citizens and to ensuring that Shiites and other minorities can practice their religions without fear. Such principles are embedded in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More broadly, it will require an acknowledgment that elections do not alone produce democracies; that governments need to be inclusive; and that nurturing hatreds, for whatever reason, inevitably backfires and makes stable societies impossible.

 

via www.nytimes.com

Egypt prosecutor-general opens investigations against opposition figures

A reaction of someone who doesn't care much about the consequences, who isn't very bright, and who doesn't plan on letting go.

ِAhram Online, by Sayed Gamal El-Din

Talat Abdullah orders investigations of key opposition figures one day before mass anti-regime protests

Egyptian Prosecutor-General Talaat Abdullah ordered Saturday the investigation of complaints filed against a number of opposition figures accused of "conspiring to overthrow the regime" in planning widely anticipated anti-government rallies Sunday, 30 June, judicial sources tell Ahram Online.

Abdullah, appointed by President Mohamed Morsi last November, ordered his deputy, Judge Hassan Yassin, to compile and start investigating all complaints filed against the organisers of the 30 June rallies, one day before they are supposed to take place.

Before prosecutors are complaints filed against opposition leaders Mohamed ElBaradei, Hamdeen Sabbahi and Amr Moussa (the three main leaders of opposition umbrella group, the National Salvation Front) as well as Mahmoud Badr, founder of the Rebel campaign petition, collecting signatures since late May for withdrawing confidence from the president and forcing early presidential elections.

The prosecution has not disclosed the total number of complaints filed.

Rebel campaigners accuse Islamist President Morsi, elected last June, of "failing to implement policies to improve the life of ordinary people." 

 

via english.ahram.org.e

Tamarod: The Organization of a Rebellion, an interview

 

Egypt Erupting: Destruction and Death as Rival Protesters Clash

Anger and frustration are boiling over in Egypt, where supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi are increasingly clashing in the streets.

In Egypt's second largest city, Alexandria, rival protesters turned out in force, fighting with guns and firecrackers. At least one person was killed while the offices of Mr. Morsi's political party were set on fire.

Riot police moved in with armored vehicles to break up the clashes, firing tear gas in an effort to clear the streets.

Thousands of Morsi supporters also demonstrated Friday in a show of support for the embattled president, vowing to stay on the streets to protect his legitimacy.

Opponents, meanwhile, have been gathering in growing numbers in Cairo's Tahrir Square, waving Egyptian flags and calling for Mr. Morsi's departure.

Bigger opposition protests are planned for Sunday, the one-year anniversary of Mr. Morsi's presidency.

Egyptian military officials have urged both sides to refrain from violence and settle their differences through dialogue but neither side appears willing to give in.

Saber Atta defended Egypt's president during Friday's pro-Morsi rally in Cairo.

"Mohamed Mursi will not fall because he has a people who love him and a group who support him. It is impossible and they (the opposition) are wrong to think that one day Mursi will have the same fate as Hosni Mubarak."

Opponents accuse Mr. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement of trying to undermine secular rights and are increasing calling for the current government to fall.

Clashes between the two sides are leaving an ever-growing toll.

Two people have reportedly been killed in the recent violence in Alexandria with scores of other wounded. Over the past two days, battles between Morsi supporters and opponents in the provincial regions of Fayyoum, Sharqiya and Dhekeliya have left at least three dead and 300 wounded.

Egyptian opposition leader Amr Moussa Friday urged Mr. Morsi to respect the will of the people.

"He should take the voice of the people seriously and the protests, the angry comments, as an expression - major expression - of dissatisfaction. Please take that seriously and accept the early elections."

Mr. Morsi addressed the nation Wednesday, admitting to making some mistakes but offering few compromises.

Moussa called it a miscalculation.

"They don't want to recognize that there is anger and those are all people who are being pushed and directed by others. And they are missing the point, they are missing a major point in this."

Mr. Morsi took the stage in Cairo's Tahrir Square on June 30 last year as a jubilant crowd celebrated him as the nation's first freely elected leader.

via www.voanews.com

PressTV - Egypt braces for major pro-, anti-Morsi demonstrations

Press TV

Egypt police confront people during a speech by President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo’s Tahrir square, June 26, 2013.

Egypt braces for major rival demonstrations by thousands of supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi.

The supporters and opponents of the Egyptian president began gathering in Cairo’s Liberation Square on Friday, one side calling for the president’s resignation and the other demanding more time for the fledgling government.

On Thursday, one person died and 230 others were injured during clashes between pro and anti-Morsi camps in the Nile Delta city of Mansura, some 120 kilometers (74 miles) north of the capital, Cairo.

Several political groups say the Egyptian government is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The opposition also accuses President Morsi of deviating from the 2011 revolution that toppled the Western-backed regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi’s supporters, however, say the president is cleansing Egyptian institutions of corruption. They also believe that he needs time to put into practice the principles of the revolution.

On June 26, the Egyptian president warned that a polarized state of the country’s politics will “threaten our democratic experience and paralyze the nation.” Morsi also promised to introduce “radical and quick” reforms in state institutions.

Meanwhile, Egyptian troops have been deployed across the country ahead of protests planned by the opposition for June 30 to demand the resignation of Morsi.

Egypt has witnessed continuing anti-government protests since Morsi took office in June 2012 in a landmark election held following the ouster of Mubarak.

via www.presstv.ir

Muslim Brotherhood, FJP offices attacked throughout Egypt

Ahram Online

While massive rallies are held in Cairo in support of Egypt's President Morsi, offices of Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom & Justice Party (FJP) are attacked and torched in the governorates

Offices of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in different Egyptian governorates were reportedly raided and torched on Friday.

In the Nile Delta governorate of Daqahliyah, the FJP's office was set on fire by protesters after the latter claimed to have heard shotguns being discharged from the building, eyewitnesses told Al-Ahram's Arabic-language news website.

The office remains besieged by thousands of protesters.

Eyewitnesses also told Al-Ahram that the number of injured were estimated at ten, including four who had since been transferred to hospital.

The Muslim Brotherhood, for its part, released a statement holding members of the anti-Morsi 'Rebel' campaign responsible for the violence.

Meanwhile, in Alexandria, which has seen clashes between the two rival camps since Friday afternoon, the FJP's office in the coastal city's Sidi Gaber district was set on fire.

The clashes in Alexandria have left over 40 injured, according to Ahram Online's Sayed Gamal.

A Muslim Brotherhood office was also reportedly attacked in the Nile Delta Beheira governorate.

In a statement issued by Ikhwan Online, the Brotherhood's official website, the group accused former regime elements and members of the 'Rebel' campaign – who they called "thugs" – of being behind the attack in Beheira.

"The attackers looted the office," the statement read. "Although the party's young cadres appealed for help, police have refused to intervene."

The Nile Delta Gharbiya and Kafr Al-Sheikh governorates, meanwhile, also witnessed attacks on the Islamist group's offices.

The attacks come as rival protests – both for and against President Mohamed Morsi, propelled to power last year by the Muslim Brotherhood – take place in governorates throughout Egypt.

On Saturday, the Islamist group's office in Morsi's hometown of Zagazig in the Nile Delta was also attacked, leaving one dead and 26 injured. 



Street battles between the rival camps have also erupted in a number of northern governorates. In Mansoura, one person was killed and over 200 wounded.

Fifty-three people have also been injured in Sharqiya and two in Gharbiya in similar confrontations.

 

 

via english.ahram.org.eg

Before Protests, Morsi Takes Critics Head On

NY Times, by Ben Hubbard

Manu Brabo/Associated Press Anti-government protesters began gathering in Tahrir Square on Thursday night.

CAIRO — President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt moved aggressively on Thursday to preserve order and confront his opponents, deploying the army near government ministries and the Suez Canal, starting legal proceedings against several judges and purging critics from a state-appointed body that helps regulate the airwaves.

While many had hoped that Mr. Morsi would move to defuse calls for mass protests against him this weekend, he instead wielded the power of the state to project power. His message to those challenging his authority was to either work through the political structures that have emerged since the country’s revolution in 2011, or have no say in how the state is run.

“One year is enough!” Mr. Morsi said repeatedly in a televised speech on Wednesday night, threatening to purge holdovers from the clique of former President Hosni Mubarak. He also offered no major concessions to those calling for his ouster, dismissing them as antidemocratic.

“This is the message he is sending, a threat pretty much that his tolerance and patience for so-called subversive acts and extra-constitutional activities will no longer stand,” said Yasser el-Shimy, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “If you would rather work outside the system, we are going to come after you.”

Mr. Morsi’s decision to shrug off the opposition and forge ahead comes at a time when bitter polarization over the direction of the country threatens to unleash a new wave of unrest.

A broad, if loosely organized, cast of opposition groups is organizing mass protests calling for Mr. Morsi’s ouster starting on Friday and continuing through Sunday, the anniversary of Mr. Morsi’s inauguration. Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters are planning counterprotests, and many fear the eruption of clashes between the two camps.

Three people have been killed and more than 400 wounded in violence between pro- and anti-Morsi groups in the last two days alone.

In his speech, Mr. Morsi went after several individuals he said had broken laws and undermined the state. Action against some of them came swiftly, with government figures appointed by Mr. Morsi moving against them within 24 hours. On Thursday, an accountability body inside the justice ministry opened corruption investigations against a number of judges Mr. Morsi had accused of participating in rigging elections. Gehad El-Haddad, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mr. Morsi to power, said in an online commentary that 32 judges were under investigation.

The prosecutor on Thursday also slapped a travel ban on Mohammed Amin, the owner of a satellite TV channel that has often been critical of Mr. Morsi since the president accused him of tax evasion. The prosecutor said Mr. Amin was under investigation for owing more than $60 million in taxes.

“He’s a tax evader — let him pay,” Mr. Morsi said. “He unleashes his channel against us.”

Egypt’s minister of investment on Thursday also purged representatives of three private satellites stations — including Mr. Amin’s — from the board of the Free Media Zone, a state-run body that helps regulate the airwaves.

Mr. Morsi had accused another station owner, Ahmed Bahgat, of owing more than $400,000 to an Egyptian bank.

Mr. Haddad said that Thursday’s moves showed that Mr. Morsi was committed to more forcefully pursuing his agenda.

“What happened today is no more than a fraction of what has been requested from the president since the day of his appointment,” Mr. Haddad said. “These are the basic demands of the revolution, to cleanse the old regime elements from their strongholds in the state.”

Mr. Haddad also said the president had offered no concession to those calling for his ouster because they were working outside of the political process, and they most likely would have ignored anything Mr. Morsi offered.

He said he expected Mr. Morsi to work more closely with groups that have proved their popularity at the polls, like the ultraconservative Nour party.

“Most of the Islamist camp thinks the president has been too lenient with the opposition and has failed to deliver on his political promises,” Mr. Haddad said. “And I think he is picking up the pace.”

Planning for the competing protests this weekend continued on Thursday, with the opposition saying its plans had not changed.

“Dr. Morsi’s speech has only increased our insistence on calling for an early presidential election in order to achieve the revolution’s goals, the foremost of which is social justice,” Mohamed ElBaradei, a leader in the opposition’s National Salvation Front, said Thursday at a news conference.

Reflecting fears that the protests could turn violent, the Egyptian Army has been deploying tanks and soldiers near government ministries, at the central bank and at the entrances to some Cairo neighborhoods. It has also enhanced security in cities along the Suez Canal.

Security officials said that weapons had been distributed to the police, and that those being held at local police stations had been transferred to central prisons, apparently to make room for those detained in any unrest.

The American Embassy in Cairo has repeatedly warned American citizens of the potential for violence and will be closed on Sunday, normally the first day of the Egyptian workweek.

Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party and the Muslim Brotherhood that founded it took steps to ensure their own security.

The Brotherhood has recently reinforced his Cairo headquarters with thick metal doors, and Mr. Haddad its spokesman, said the group had hired private security guards to protect its offices.

Protesters have ransacked the group’s offices in the past and sometimes engaged in clashes with Brotherhood members. Egypt’s interior minister said recently that the police did not have the manpower to protect the offices of all political parties.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

via www.nytimes.com