Tell everyone: Egypt’s revolution is sweet and peaceful | Amr Shalakany

No one wants the Muslim Brotherhood to take over, no one wants violence – just elections and a new constitution This is a sweet, sweet revolution; it is peaceful. Tell everyone we are peaceful. We do not owe this revolution to the Muslim Brotherhood, not to anybody. They say the Ikhwan is more organised – maybe. But this is the people on the street; this is not about any political party. Look, he says, more and more people are coming; Tahrir Square is getting more and more full. I am sorry, the man tells me, but I hate your president. What is this speech he gives? Why can’t he support us? He says we can have human rights but he gives us no political rights? To America, we are monkeys, monkeys, monkeys. We Egyptians don’t deserve a constitution, don’t deserve freedom, don’t deserve democracy. We are in the streets every day since 25 January and you give us Omar Suleiman , an agent? We are out here demanding our rights and you give us the head of intelligence? We will not accept Suleiman. America puts the security of Israel above the people of Egypt. We are monkeys to America. They are saying we Egyptians don’t deserve political rights, don’t deserve freedom. It’s over… the fact that the outside world continues to engage this guy Mubarak is ridiculous. It’s over. This has nothing to do with any political party. It is truly a popular movement. There is concern about what is going to happen next. We need to continue to experience this with joy. We have to remain peaceful until we get our demands. Look, there are more and more people walking into Tahrir Square. We want new elections to set up a committee to write a new constitution. We want clean elections; once we have a new constitution, we can elect a new government. We are not less than South Africa. Tell the Americans we are not less than South Africa. We deserve our rights. So far the judges have not spoken yet. We are waiting to hear from the judges about bringing about the constitutional changes that we need. But the judges are not being allowed to speak to the people. Clinton just spoke: she says we deserve human rights. We want political rights. Please tell the people in America we want our rights. Please explain we don’t have internet. Everyone has to understand that the rights of the Egyptian people are being sold for Israel’s security. Our rights are being sold. It’s as if we are monkeys. They have one strategic consideration and that’s Israel. We sleep at night in fear. We sleep without police at night. Do you know what that’s like? To wake up one day and there’s no police, no prisons, no safety? The police is over. We are scared. The curfew was for 6pm and the police were told to go home. There are two theories of what happened to the police a) the police were shocked by the people’s reaction, got scared and took off b) the ministry of the interior is teaching us a lesson, so they withdrew the police to scare us. But it backfired. We were out all night in the streets guarding our neighbourhood in Zamalek. Together, neighbour with neighbour. We worked together. Most of us hadn’t even met before this. The ministry of the interior pulled all the police to scare us: it backfired. We are taking care of each other. There is too much anger at police. Some are good and tried to stop the chaos. But there is a lot of anger: in one neighbourhood someone got shot. The interior ministry is under siege; they are shooting live ammunition into the crowds. There is a street battle. This is why they turned the phones back on because the ministry of interior people needed to be able to talk to each other – they had no phones themselves, they were using walkie-talkies. In some police stations, there are stand-offs. Police are trapped and they are shooting. The army needs to take over the interior ministry. Nothing short of this. The level of demand is high. The people are so aware, they know what they want. The majority of people are happy but some are scared and concerned about what will happen next. No one wants the Muslim Brotherhood to take over, no one wants violence. We are being peaceful, tell them we are being peaceful. On Thursday night they shut down the internet. Khalas . Tell them we have no contact, no texting, no internet, nothing. Listen, they are chanting in the streets: “Gamal, Gamal, tell your father we hate you.” Are the crowds anti-US, I ask. Not so far, no anti-American sentiments in the crowds. They have brought back the slogan from the 1980s: “Mubarak traitor, agent of Americans.” It’s a sweet, peaceful revolution. Tell them. Look, more and more people are coming into Tahrir… Egypt Protest Middle East Amr Shalakany guardian.co.uk

Posted by on January 30, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry