Egypt protests – Wednesday 9 February

• Suleiman: protests ‘very dangerous’ and threaten ‘coup’ • US urges Egypt to lift 30 year emergency rule • Protesters target parliament • Muslim Brotherhood gives Hosni Mubarak a week to leave ترجم هذه الصفحة إلى العربية 9.07am: Omar Sulieman’s veiled warnings of a coup are being greeted with a mixture of fear and derision, Chris McGreal reports from Cairo. An Egyptian regime imposed by military coup is considered by some to be laughable, but they might want to listen to elements of the opposition who are more concerned about this. On the extension of the protests to the parliament building, Chris said: So far those protesters [outside parliament] have been left alone, although they have been told not to go into the parliament building, and one of them, who was hanging signs on the railings, was forced to take them down. The protesters now feel they have extended the range of their control beyond the [Tahrir] square. If the military tried to clear them that might well set off a confrontation. A number of strikes have started, including telecommunication and Suez canal workers, Chris reports. Although it is dressed up as about pay, it is also being interpreted as a demonstration of support from outside the capital for the protests against Mubarak. It was notable that at the demonstration yesterday, which was the biggest so, there were quite a number of people who worked for state who would have been fearful of attending demonstrations a week ago. There will be degree of reassessment [today]. The opposition is deciding how it can best keep the momentum of these protests and even extend them. They want to take it to a second stage and reach out to other Egyptians who maybe more ambivalent at the moment. The government, as you can see from Sulieman’s statement, is clearly in a form of disarray. It doesn’t really know what to do. It thought that by beginning the dialogue it could take the sting out of the protests, but the size and scale of the demonstrations plus the sheer variety of people attending yesterday, shows it hasn’t at all. 8.36am: The Egyptian newspaper, Youm7, has images and reports of violence overnight in the town of Al-Wadi al-Jadid in the south-west. It says 100 people have been injured including eight seriously. Scott Lucas , an academic from the University of Birmingham, writing on the blog Enduring America has an unconfirmed report of a “massacre” taking place in the area . It names one man reported to have been killed. The police cut off the electricity and water about 2-3 hours ago. They fired live bullets at the protesters. After brutally beating the protesters, the police were forced to retreat. While retreating they set a gas station on fire. The protesters successfully put out the fire using buckets full of sand. The protesters set the NDP HQ, Governorate building, and the police station on fire (the police station is unconfirmed). The police arrested a lot of youth randomly and took them to an unknown destination. Also the police set a lot of convicts from the Wadi Prison free to scare the people,keeping only political detainees. The latest news was that the convicts are set to attack the museum, and the protesters are preparing Molotovs for defense. Mohammed Hassan Belal, a 20-year-old protester, is the first confirmed death. 8.18am: Protesters have turned on the Egyptian pop singer Tamer Hosny after he appeared on state TV to support Mubarak, al-Jazeera reports. He tried to address the crowd in Tahrir square, but was shouted down, it reports. It also shows a video of protesters chanting against him. 8.00am: Wael Ghonim, the released activist and newly anointed voice of the revolution , has urged protesters to keep up the pressure for Hosni Mubarak to stand down. In a series of Twitter message today he spoke of his pride following yesterday’s massive demonstration in central Cairo, and he urged Egyptians living aboard to return home to join the protests. He also rejected opposition talks with the government. His comments come after vice-president Omar Suleiman, who has been leading those negotiations with the opposition, warned that protests were “very dangerous” and ominously said the only alternative to dialogue was “a coup”. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch now estimates that 302 have died in the unrest and continues to warn that hospitals have been ordered to downplay the casualties. It also condemned the arrest of an estimated 119 people in the crackdown on the protests. It has evidence that five of those people were tortured . Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, said: Arrests by military police of journalists, human rights defenders, and youth activists since January 31 appear intended to intimidate reporting and undermine support for the Tahrir protest. These arrests and reports of abuse in detention are exactly the types of practices that sparked the demonstrations in the first place. Here’s a round up of the other recent developments. • Protesters have spilled out of Tahrir Square to set up camp outside Egypt’s Parliament building. They have erected a sign outside the building which reads “closed until the fall of the regime”. How the army handles the protest outside Parliament is being seen as a key test. • In an interview with the Guardian, a Muslim Brotherhood leader gave Mubarak a week to stand down. “They need some time. We give them this chance. A week,” said Essam el-Erian. • US vice president Joe Biden told Suleiman in a phone call the US wanted “prompt, meaningful, peaceful, and legitimate” reforms. He also urged Egypt to scrap its emergency laws. • Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague warned that the unrest in the Arab world is threatens the Middle East peace process. “Amidst the opportunity for countries like Tunisia and Egypt, there is a legitimate fear that the Middle East peace process will lose further momentum and be put to one side, and will be a casualty of uncertainty in the region,” Hague told the Times (paywall) . Hosni Mubarak Protest Egypt Middle East Matthew Weaver guardian.co.uk

Posted by on February 9, 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