Dozens of people were beaten and arrested yesterday by Egyptian riot police during an anti-police brutality demonstration in downtown Cairo (who said irony was dead?).
The protest was one of many following the murder of Khaled Said, the Egyptian man allegedly beaten to death by police after shooting a video of police officers involved in a drug deal.
Shadi Hamid flagged a new WINEP paper summarizing some of the rampant electoral fraud during Egypt's deeply flawed Shura Council elections earlier this month. The outcome was not terribly surprising -- the National Democratic Party always wins an overwhelming (95 percent) share of the seats -- but the widespread fraud is a bad portent for parliamentary elections this autumn.
Because clearly the best response to an immoral blockade is racism:
An Egyptian appeals court on Saturday upheld a ruling that orders the country's Interior Ministry to strip the citizenship from Egyptians married to Israeli women.
There are an estimated 30,000 Egyptians married to Israeli women; their cases will be reviewed individually by the interior ministry. The court directed the ministry to "take into consideration whether a man married an Israeli Arab or a Jew."
On a side note, why is stripping citizenship suddenly in vogue? There's this ruling, the Israeli government's decision to strip Muhammad Abu Tir of his citizenship, and of course Sen. Joe Lieberman's disgraceful proposal to remove US citizenship from suspects accused of terrorism. When did this become popular?
Update: As Chris Albon pointed out to me, article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states (emphasis mine): "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality." (I guess Mubarak's government would claim that stripping citizenship based on who you marry is not "arbitrary"?)
As U.S. policymakers debate whether to hand Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a "stunningly deferential," nearly strings-free endowment to be used over the next five to ten years -- an endowment that Cairo has proposed should reach a whopping $4 billion -- it might be useful to remind ourselves about the reality of life in America's ahwa-sipping, shisha-smoking Arab best friend in the Middle East.
Josh Rogin from Foreign Policy published an important report this week on what we've dubbed the Mubarak trust fund. The U.S. Congress already approved a $50 million endowment for the Egyptian government, essentially a pot of money the Mubarak regime can use however it wants.
The lead headline in Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram this morning was both startling and contradictory (عربي): "The repeal of the emergency, and its restriction to terrorism and drugs." That was followed by a notice from the Egyptian prime minister's office, announcing a 10:30GMT press conference on the renewal of the emergency laws.
Confused? You'd think all of these things would be mutually exclusive: How can you abolish a law, restrict it, and renew it?
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's (slightly belated) labor day speech yesterday was billed as his office as a "major address." Aides said the president would address all of Egypt's major political issues -- though, given the timing, the speech mostly focused on the economy.
The stagnant economy has been a major flashpoint for years; the boisterous labor protests of the last few weeks are merely the latest in a series of more than 3,000 demonstrations since 2004.
The Egyptian government's relationship with Hamas and Hizballah -- already frosty -- will probably take a turn for the worse after the last 24 hours.
Egypt's state security court yesterday convicted 26 men of links to Hizballah; four of them are on the run and were tried in absentia. The men received tough sentences -- including life sentences for three of them -- which cannot be appealed (the security court isn't subject to judicial review, pursuant to the emergency laws). Prosecutors had requested the death penalty.
I'm still excavating my Google Reader backlog (you honestly cannot take a vacation these days, even a short one), so this stuff might be old news to some readers -- but two items worth reading on democracy promotion in the Middle East.
Two rockets landed in Jordanian territory this morning; one damaged a refrigeration warehouse (but caused no casualties) in Aqaba, the port city along the Red Sea, and the other landed harmlessly in the water. The rockets were presumably aimed at the Israeli city of Eilat, just across the border from Aqaba. Both were Katyusha rockets, according to reports.
Initial Israeli press reports said the rockets were fired from the Sinai Peninsula, but the Egyptian military denies that the rockets came from Egypt.
The Associated Press quotes an unnamed Jordanian security official who says the rockets may have come from Jordan. But Al-Jazeera quotes other unnamed officials (عربي) who insist the rockets aren't Jordanian, either.
Hundreds of Egyptian demonstrators took to the streets yesterday (عربي) to protest against a member of parliament who urged Egyptian police to shoot at protesters.
Nashaat al-Qassas, a member of the ruling National Democratic Party, told parliament on Sunday that police have been too lenient with reformists -- particularly the April 6 youth movement, which held a (quickly-dispersed) rally in downtown Cairo earlier this month.
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak went back to work today, holding his first cabinet meeting (عربي) since his gallbladder surgery in Germany last month, and promptly ordered 10 percent raises for state employees and a larger budget for farm subsidies.
Hamas temporarily ordered the closure of all smuggling tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, reportedly in response to pressure from the Egyptian government.
The closure seems linked to a travel warning issued yesterday by the Israeli government, which urged its citizens to avoid travel to the Sinai Peninsula because of a kidnapping threat. This isn't quite unusual; Israel issues similar warnings every few months, like this one from Passover 2009. But yesterday's warning was linked to a specific plot, according to Israeli intelligence officials, and not just generalized fears.
The Kuwaiti government deported four more Mohamed ElBaradei supporters yesterday, on top of the 17 already expelled on Saturday.
All of the detainees were members of a pro-ElBaradei Facebook group; this was to be the group's first in-person meeting in Kuwait City. Three members were arrested at their places of work on Thursday; another 30 were detained on Friday while meeting at a restaurant outside of the capital.
Odd story out of Kuwait, where police deported 17 Egyptians for trying to organize a local chapter of Mohamed ElBaradei's National Association for Change.
They were part of a larger group of 20 to 25 people arrested yesterday, according to wire reports; it's not clear what happened to the other detainees. Kuwait's Al-Watan newspaper says the Egyptians were detained for gathering without a permit (عربي).
The Kuwaiti government declined to comment on the arrests, as did Egypt's foreign ministry, which said only that it heard about the deportations "through the media."
It's unclear whether this has anything to do with Kuwait's government trying to curry favor with Egypt's, or whether Kuwait is simply unhappy about foreign workers organizing political groups (particularly reformist-minded ones).
A striking statistic from a new study (عربي) by the Egyptian Investment Authority, reported by Al-Masry Al-Youm: The average income of a government employee is just LE394 (US$71), well below the official poverty line, which is LE656 (US$119) for a family of four.
Minimum wage has become a hot topic in Egypt recently, both because of frequent demonstrations by activists and because country's Administrative Court ruled last week that the government needs to set a realistic minimum wage (it's currently set at LE35, and hasn't changed since 1984). Labor groups want it raised to LE1,200.
We've remarked before on the disconnect between Egypt's macroeconomic growth and microeconomic stagnation. You can view the Investment Authority's report as another symptom of that dynamic: Public sector employees are falling behind, even as the Egyptian economy grows at an impressive clip.
But low government salaries are also a cause of that problem. If average wages are 40 percent below the poverty line, then hundreds of thousands of families are barely scraping by. No disposable income means less money to spend in their neighborhoods, which means a weaker bottom line for many Egyptian business owners. Higher government wages (even modestly higher ones) could have a substantial ripple effect throughout the Egyptian economy.
Egyptian riot police violently broke up a reformist demonstration in downtown Cairo today, assaulting protesters with batons, rounding up journalists and smashing their equipment.
The demonstration was organized by Egypt's April 6 youth movement (the group organized a general strike on April 6, 2008, hence the name). Demonstrators gathered in front of the Shura Council -- the upper house of the Egyptian parliament -- to demand constitutional reforms, the kind that would make it easier for opposition candidates like Mohamed ElBaradei to run for president.
Mohamed ElBaradei has stepped up his public outreach in Egypt over the last few days -- releasing a video, delivering a speech in Mansoura province, attending Easter services at a Coptic church in Cairo.
He's been greeted by boisterous crowds at every stop -- and while state security is always present, the Egyptian government hasn't tried to prevent ElBaradei from speaking or mingling with supporters.
Cairo's criminal court ordered the release of 16 Muslim Brotherhood members arrested in February, but it's unclear whether the Egyptian government will agree to carry out the verdict.
The court ordered the men released on bail of LE5,000 (US$900) each. The verdict won't be executed for at least another day, though, because this is a public holiday in Egypt (Sham an-Nassim). And the government might decide to ignore it altogether: The Brotherhood's lawyer, Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud, told the group's English-language Web site that the government could use the emergency laws to defy the verdict and keep the detainees in jail (wouldn't be the first time).
The detainees -- including deputy supreme guide Mahmoud Ezzat -- have been in jail nearly two months, and they've been accused of plotting terrorist attacks and forming a secret women's organization within the Brotherhood.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a potential candidate for the Egyptian presidency, released a video on his Facebook page on Saturday urging citizens to join his new National Association for Change. Supporters of political reform in Egypt hope that ElBaradei, 67, challenges 81-year-old incumbent Hosni Mubarak in next year's election, and it seems as though ElBaradei is willing to flirt with the possibility.
My Arabic isn't nifty enough to offer a translation for the video (after the jump), but we'll work on it, and in the meantime, our Arabic-speaking readers should feel free to offer their thoughts in the comments:
