ITUC demands that Egypt ensures full investigation into Giulio Regeni's murder

International Trade Union Confederation
Egypt: Justice for Murdered Researcher Giulio Regeni

The ITUC has called on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to ensure a full investigation into the murder of PhD student Giulio Regeni in Cairo 

January 24, 2017

Twenty-eight-year-old Regeni, a student at Cambridge University researching Egypt’s independent trade union movement, was brutally tortured and murdered on 25 January.

Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said, “This atrocity, against an innocent young researcher, must be fully investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice. The heavy-handed tactics of Egypt’s police, the string of disappearances in recent months and the mounting repression of civil society show that President Sisi’s government is heading in the wrong direction.

The prospects for fundamental democratic rights and freedoms, including the right to freedom of association for the country’s workers, are receding by the day. We call upon the government to change course, to support and protect human rights and avoid yet more bloodshed and the possibility of further mass unrest.”

Italy: Parliament to host Giulio Regeni memorial scholarship campaign

Mada Masr
Italian Parliament to host Giulio Regeni memorial scholarship campaign event

January 19, 2017

Italy’s Parliament has announced it will host an event for the campaign working to establish a scholarship fund in the name of slain researcher Giulio Regeni, which would allow an Egyptian student to study at the United World College (UWC) of the Adriatic to obtain the two-year International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma.

The campaign organizers have told Mada Masr that they will launch their fundraising efforts during the parliamentary event, relying on crowdfunding to supply the necessary money for the 2018 scholarship and a matching funds program through which institutions and corporations can donate money to ensure the scholarship’s continuation.

Regeni, the 28-year-old student whose body was found in a ditch in a Cairo suburb on February 3, 2016 exhibiting signs of torture, studied at UWC-USA in New Mexico.

The idea was suggested by Regeni’s former UWC-USA classmates, Federico Torracchi and Lorenzo Bartolucci, according to the Italian La Repubblica newspaper.

The scholarship fund “sends a message that counters hatred,” Bartolucci told La Repubblica. “Giulio wanted to improve people’s lives. We want to remind people about who he was and what he did before he died.”

Regeni, a Cambridge University doctoral student, was researching labor issues and writing his PhD dissertation on Egypt’s independent trade union movement. He was conducting field research in Egypt through a one-year visiting scholar program at the American University in Cairo. He went missing on January 25, 2016, as he was traveling from his apartment in Cairo’s Dokki neighborhood in the direction of Tahrir Square amid a heavy security presence for the fifth anniversary of the January 25 revolution.

Regeni’s body was found bearing signs of torture, evident from cigarette burns, cuts, bruises and his de-nailed fingers — all hallmarks of Egyptian security forces’ torture practices. However, Egypt’s Interior Ministry has repeatedly denied responsibility for his torture and death and sought to distance themselves from the case, causing strained diplomatic relations between Egypt and Italy.

The initial police investigations to emerge from Egypt claimed that Regeni had died in a traffic accident, despite subsequent autopsy reports, which confirmed he was tortured over a period of several days.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry later claimed security forces had shot and killed five members of a gang that it claimed often stole the identities of foreign nations and with whom Regeni’s personal belongings were allegedly found. However, the family members of the five men strongly denied these claims.

Italian politicians and investigators have persistently urged Egyptian authorities to hand over all evidence concerning the case, and to cooperate more fully on ascertaining details concerning his death.

United World Colleges has played a prominent role in providing Egyptian students with education opportunities for the last 30 years.



*Photo by Riccardo Antimiani, courtesy of CameraPress/Redux

Additional evidence of torture in Giulio Regeni case, Italy demands Egypt's full cooperation in investigations

Mada Masr

With new evidence from Giulio Regeni autopsy, Italy exhorts Egypt to heighten cooperation

Monday, February 8, 2016

The Italian government is urging Egyptian authorities to heighten cooperation with their investigations into the torture and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, whose body was found in a Cairo suburb on February 3. The pleas came after additional evidence supporting the theory that Regeni was tortured to death emerged on Monday, according to Italian coroners.

New evidence from the autopsy conducted in Italy showed that the nails on the 28-year-old's toes and fingers had all been ripped off, and that all of his fingers were broken, the Associated Press reported.
On Sunday, Italy’s Interior Ministry said the PhD student was subjected to “animal-like” brutality.

That day, results from Regeni’s autopsy suggested a broken cervical vertebra was the cause of death. The autopsy also revealed that Regeni’s body bore the marks of cigarette burns, cuts, several stab wounds and bruising.

"We will not settle for purported truths, as we have said on the occasion of the two arrests initially linked to the death of Giulio Regeni,” Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told the Rome-based daily newspaper La Repubblica on Monday.

Gentiloni was alluding to Egyptian security forces’ reports that two suspects in Regeni’s death were arrested a few days ago. Scant information has been released on the suspects, who were described by Interior Ministry sources as criminals not linked to any terrorist organization.

On February 5, Egypt’s Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement declaring Egypt and Italy’s “mutual desire to uncover the reasons behind this incident and its perpetrators.”

However, in his interview with La Repubblica, Gentiloni argued, "We want those who are really responsible to be apprehended, and to be punished on the basis of law."

Regeni’s murder “is a very grave stain on a fundamentally authoritarian regime,” Gennaro Migliore, Italy’s under-secretary to the justice minister, told the Associated Press.

Regeni disappeared on January 25 – the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising against the regime of Hosni Mubarak – near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. Security forces were deployed en masse across the country that day, and local media reported more than 150 opposition protesters were arrested.

In hopes of unraveling the mystery of Regeni’s death, Italy dispatched members of its special operations police unit to Cairo to partake in the investigations.

On Monday, Egypt's Interior Ministry held a press conference presided over by Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, in which he touched on both Regeni’s death and the events of January 25.
He said he was "disturbed by the coverage of some media outlets,” who he accused of “jumping to conclusions."

"Some have implied that Egypt's security services are involved in this incident,” he noted, but “we only received notice of his disappearance on January 27." The minister went on to claim that Egypt's security forces are conducting investigations with "complete transparency and professionalism" to help identify those responsible for Regeni's murder.

Ghaffar then offered his condolences to the Italian people.

On Sunday night, around 2,000 people held a candle-lit march and vigil for Regeni in his hometown of Fiumicello in northeastern Italy, Reuters reported.

"We want a commitment at every level to shed light on what happened to Giulio,” Fiumicello Mayor Ennio Scridel told Reuters.

Regeni was a PhD candidate at Cambridge University in London. He moved to Egypt in September to research and write his thesis under the supervision of a professor from the American University in Cairo (AUC).

Both Cambridge and AUC are reportedly involved in the investigations.

In an open letter of protest released Monday that was initiated by Regeni's colleagues at the University of Cambridge, more than 4,600 academics expressed their grief for his death, while calling for investigations into his fate as well as the fate of hundreds of Egyptians who have disappeared or been abused and killed while in police custody.

The letter notes that Regeni disappeared "in the midst of a security campaign which has resulted in mass arbitrary arrests, a dramatic increase in reports of torture within police stations and other cases of disappearances."

 "We therefore call on the Egyptian authorities to cooperate with an independent and impartial investigation into all instances of forced disappearances, cases of torture and deaths in detention during January and February 2016," the letter concludes.

Regeni was writing about the labor movement and independent trade unions in contemporary Egypt.

He wrote a number of articles on the Egyptian labor movement for the Italian leftist paper Il Manifesto. An Italian journalist investigating the murder told Mada Masr that, due to security concerns, Regeni wrote his articles under the name Antonio Drius. His articles were generally critical of President Adel Fattah al-Sisi’s administration and his labor policies.

Italian student Giulio Regeni killed due to 'animal-like violence' in Egypt

Daily Mail

Cambridge student found dead in Egypt suffered 'inhuman animal-like violence' says Italian interior minister as Rome opens investigation into his death

7 February 2016 

 

Alex Matthews 

• Giulio Regeni, 28, originally from Italy, was conducting fieldwork in Cairo 
• He was last seen in the centre of the city on the evening of January 25
• Autopsy has revealed signs that he suffered 'inhuman animal-like violence' 
• Examination showed Mr Regeni's neck was twisted or struck during attack 

A Cambridge student whose battered body was found on the streets of Cairo suffered 'inhuman animal-like violence' during his death.

Italian Giulio Regeni was found naked from the waist down near a highway outside the Egyptian capital, nine days after he was reported missing.

An autopsy examination has revealed that Mr Regeni's neck was twisted or struck which broke a vertebra and left him unable to breathe.

Prosecutors from Rome have now opened a murder investigation into the death of the doctoral student and ministers are calling for Egypt's president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to fully cooperate.

Mr Regeni, a student of Cambridge's Department of Politics and International Studies, had been in Cairo for just a few months, as part of his Ph.D. research into Egyptian labor movements, when he disappeared on January 25.

He had left his apartment with a plan to travel by subway to meet a friend in the city, but was never seen again.

A second autopsy in Italy has shed further light into Mr Regeni's death with details so shocking that interior minister Angelino Alfano told Sky TV that he struggled to catch his breath after reading the report.

While opening details have been released analysis of tissue and body fluid, which could help pinpoint or at least narrow the time frame when Mr Regeni died, are expected to take several days.

Mr Alfano said the student had suffered 'something inhuman, animal-like, an unacceptable violence.'

Prosecutor Ahmed Nagi, who leads the investigation team on the case, had previously said 'all of his body, including his face' had bruises, cuts from stabbings and burns from cigarettes, adding that it appeared to have been a 'slow death.'

Italian police were dispatched to Cairo on Saturday and have started working with their Egyptian counterparts on the case.

Mr Alfano said: 'I am convinced that it is in the interest of el-Sissi to work together. No one can bring Giulio back to life, but bring the truth to the surface will perhaps be able to save more lives.'

An Egyptian friend of Mr Regeni, who was from Fiumicello in the north-east of Italy, said that shortly before his death the student had been seeking contacts for trade union activists to interview as part of his research.

This political research had been the main focus when the friend was questioned by police following the Italian student's disappearance, he said.  

Another friend explained he was travelling to downtown Cairo on the day of his disappearance, he said: 'A friend called him after he didn't show up. His cell was off then,' he told MailOnline, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He added: 'We briefly talked on the day of his disappearance, about two hours earlier. He was happy and cheerful, he was about to meet a friend. No indication of any worries whatsoever.

'I just feel terrible for his family, his girlfriend and all his friends.'

 

The Egyptian authorities had intensified a crackdown on dissent ahead of the January 25 anniversary of the Arab Spring, with police raiding apartments in downtown Cairo seeking signs of plans for organised protests and checking people's social media accounts.

For years, rights groups have accused Egyptian police of regularly torturing detainees. 

Over the past year, they have also accused them of using 'forced disappearances' - detaining suspected activists or Islamists in secret without reporting their arrest.

The Egyptian Association for Rights and Freedoms documented 314 such disappearances in 2015, according to a lawyer, Halem Henish. 

Most later turned up in prison, but at least five were found at the morgue, including one with signs of torture like burns and electric shocks. 

He said the group has documented 35 disappearances so far in 2016, including at least two of whom have died.

*Photo of memorial for Giulio in Italy, courtesy of Getty Images

2015: A Year of Animal Headlines in Egypt

Mada Masr

A year of animals making headlines

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Jano Charbel 

Animals proved to be veritable news-makers in Egypt in 2015: From monkey antics on the streets of Nasr City to aggressive airport cats, and from calls to give up meat in protest at rising prices to calls to take up camel meat as an alternative, animals made headlines throughout the year.

Local residents chasing monkeys in the streets in Cairo’s eastern district of Nasr City came to public attention in March. Over a dozen moneys escaped from a veterinary hospital, wreaking havoc, jumping onto ledges of buildings, windowsills, and into trees.

Some outlets reported that 14 monkeys – with others reporting 18 – escaped together from a clinic into a highly populated urban landscape.

Some residents of Nasr City reported that these monkeys rampaged through their urban gardens, eating and destroying some vegetation.

Some users of social networking sites in Nasr City called for poisoning the monkeys while others proposed non-lethal ways of capturing them, such as luring them into cages.

A local resident tweeted: “We should welcome the monkeys and let them live among us like the street dogs do.”

How these monkeys were ultimately captured or apprehended was not subsequently reported on.

Then there was the donkey who made his way to Cairo International Airport on April 27. After breaching fences and several lines of security, the donkey reportedly found its way to Terminal 3. For two days, the donkey lingered around the parking lot as talk-show hosts discussed the issue.

 
“The donkey was chased out by the police and security personnel at the airport,” a statement by the airport police force's general directorate read, adding that the donkey is believed to belong to one of the garbage collectors who frequent the area surrounding the airport.

A source at the airport described the incident at the time to privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm as an “unprecedented scandal,” that can only be an indication of “serious flaws in the performance of the Ministries of Interior and Civil Aviation.”

According to the anonymous source, it was not the first time this donkey had breached security surrounding the airport.

Photos and videos of the donkey wandering through the parking lot at the airport were widely circulated on social media platforms. Several users suggested that even donkeys want to leave the country. “Donkey emigration … The donkey headed to Terminal 3 in hopes of leaving Egypt and its problems behind.”

In a separate incident in Terminal 3 of Cairo Airport, the chief quarantine officer there told media outlets that four EgyptAir employees were injured when a male cat violently attacked them on September 30. This cat had been sheltering in a storage room, and reportedly pounced upon the employees as they were attempting to remove some items from storage. Scratching and biting them, this aggressive kitty left his mark on the four employees.

Associated Press reported that authorities and staff were trying to capture a “rebellious feline” running around through the airport – ahead of a visit by representatives of the International Civil Aviation Organization. AP reported that as of October 28, airport staff were still chasing the cat around, unable to catch it. Passengers and airport staff had reportedly been feeding it.
AP added that airport authorities had declared the cat to be “persona non grata.”

Camels also captured headlines this year. An escaped camel ran loose through the new campus of the American University in Cairo (AUC) in May after jumping out a vehicle and then running through the campus gates.

When American porn actress Carmen De Luz posted a photo of herself in skimpy underwear on a camel during a visit to the Giza Pyramids, local media outlets reported that she was shooting an erotic film by the historic site.

 
An investigation ensued and De Luz apologized on her Twitter account for any inconvenience that her actions may have caused.

In other news, camel meat — which is not widely consumed as a source of protein in Egypt — is being promoted as an alternative to beef and other red meats, which is growing increasingly costly and beyond the means of many Egyptians. The state-owned Al-Gomhuriyya has recently been encouraging the expansion of the camel meat industry, indicating it currently represents just 2 percent of domestic meat consumption.

Some nutrition specialists have even been questioning the use of donkey meat as a source of protein. Speaking on a talk-show broadcast on Al-Assema satellite channel in June, Hussein Mansour, president of Egypt’s National Food Safety Agency, commented that donkey meat is indeed mixed-in among other meats and sold at some markets and restaurants in order to cut their expenses.

The only way to ensure that donkey meat — or that of cats or dogs — was not being mixed into minced beef was to conduct DNA tests on samples, he said.

With the cost of beef ranging between LE35 per kilo (for lower grade meat) and LE100, a popular campaign emerged in August to boycott red meats altogether.

The campaign dubbed ‘Balaha Lahma,’ which loosely translates as “Let’s forget about meat,” encouraged consumers to refrain from purchasing meat with the aim of forcing the meat industry to bring down its prices to affordable levels. While this campaign picked up steam prior to the Eid al-Adha holiday when sheep are traditionally slaughtered, and even received mainstream media attention, it does not appear to have made much of an impact on the market prices of meat, or the population’s dietary habits.

Also related to the Eid al-Adha holiday and the consumption of livestock, poet Fatima Naoot stood trial this year on charges of blasphemy due to her critical online postings regarding the ritual slaughter of animals on this Islamic festival commemorating Abraham’s sacrifice of a sheep rather than his son.

Naoot’s trial began in January, after a lawsuit was filed against her by a conservative lawyer. In late 2014, Naoot had written, “Millions of innocent creatures have been driven to the most horrible massacres committed by humans for ten and a half centuries,” Naoot wrote. “A massacre that is repeated every year because of the nightmare of a righteous man about his good son.”

The blasphemy charges leveled against Naoot were subsequently referred to another court - for which she could face up to three years imprisonment.

During the last week of this year, the appointment of a new governor in Alexandria has reportedly led to a policy of killing street dogs after complaints from residents about the dogs’ growing numbers and their barking.

The governor denied these allegations while municipal veterinary employees also denied their involvement claiming that they had stopped the practice of killing street animals with shotguns since the year 2011.

A hashtag emerged on social networking sites denouncing the new governor, “The Governor of Alexandria is a Butcher.”

Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that some animal rights activists even sent photos of these dead dogs to Vladimir Putin’s Facebook page as the Russian president is apparently a major dog-lover.

In March, a rare verdict against an act of animal cruelty was issued, in which the Shobra al-Kheima Criminal Court sentenced four men to three years imprisonment in association with the brutal killing of a street dog.

Another act of animal cruelty — resulting in the deaths of several cats — was not referred to trial. In November, cats that had previously roamed throughout the grounds of Cairo’s Ahly Sporting Club were found dead at the entrance.

The club’s media spokesperson initially denied the incident, claiming that a contracted company had only drugged the cats, but protests by club members and animal rights activists against Al-Ahly Club’s management ensued.

According to media reports, after samples from two of the dead cats were sent for veterinary forensic analysis, the results revealed that poison had been put in their food. An official complaint was filed at the local police station, and the Qasr al-Nil District Prosecutor was notified of the vet’s findings, but the incident has not been referred to trial.

Cat killings, reportedly on a larger scale, have also taken place at Cairo’s Gezira Sporting Club in previous years. Similarly, this has resulted in outrage and protests, but no trials.

However, a cartoon animal – Mickey Mouse — did result in a trial and sentencing this year. In October, a military court sentenced 22-year-old army conscript Amr Nohan to three years imprisonment after he digitally altered an image of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, putting Mickey Mouse ears atop his head, and posted it on his Facebook account.

Nohan was then charged and reportedly found guilty of defaming the president and conspiring to overthrow the ruling regime.

Sisi's state begins to demolish revolutionary mural wall commemorating Jan. 25 Uprising

Aswat Masriya
Graffiti wall in downtown Cairo to be removed in part

Thursday Sept 17 2015

 
Workers were seen demolishing a part of the wall surrounding the American University in Cairo on Thursday.

"In the framework of beautifying Tahrir Sqaure, the Egyptian government asked the American University in Cairo to either develop or remove its Science building along with its walls on Mohamed Mahmoud street," Rehab Saad, Director of Media Relations at the American University of Cairo, told Aswat Masriya in a phone interview.

"The university decided to demolish parts of the walls and replace them by an iron gate," she added.

Mohamed Mahmoud street, which is a side street from Egypt's famed Tahrir Square, is known for the graffiti on its walls, which includes symbols of the January uprising , the battles on the street, and murals inspired by Egypt's heritage.


*Photos by Ahmed Hamed - courtesy of Aswat Masriya

Chomsky - Emerging World Order & the Arab Spring

Noam Chomsky | Emerging World Order and the Arab Spring

Labor protests on the rise, across sectors

Egypt Independent

Labor protests on the rise, with demonstrations across sectors

Mon, 17/09/2012

 

A wave of fresh labor protests has hit the country this week at schools, universities and government bodies, mostly demanding better wages and improved working conditions.

On Sunday, the second day of the new school year, thousands of workers at 13 public universities demanded pay equal to that of teaching staff and the ability to participate in university leadership elections. Some workers started a strike, threatening to continue until their demands are met.

While protesting employees demanding higher salaries at Cairo University shut its gates for more than two hours, students at Helwan University demonstrated to complain about delays in making accommodation available at the students’ hostel. Students at the American University in Cairo also protested increased study fees.

Teachers have also escalated their strike, demanding the application of a new teacher payment scheme recently approved by President Mohamed Morsy. Abdel Nasser Ismail, a representative of a teachers’ association, said support for the strike has reached 100 percent of technical education schools nationwide, adding that security authorities have threatened some teachers with detention.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Ibrahim Ghoneim and the Teachers' Syndicate have played down the strike and questioned its true scope.

Workers at the Public Transport Authority also started a strike at six garages in response to an invitation by the Independent Staff Syndicate, demanding that its authority be transferred to the Transportation Ministry and calling for better payments. The other 22 garages did not take part in the strike.

While the official staff syndicate said that the strike had failed, protesting workers said other garages will join force Wednesday if demands are ignored.

In statements to Al-Masry Al-Youm, Mona Mostafa, head of the Public Transportation Authority, described strikes as uncivilized actions because they halted necessary actions at the beginning of the school year.

She said the strike had failed and that negotiations were under way with protesters at two garages. Mostafa stressed that legal action would be taken against the strike’s instigators, adding that the authority had prepared contingency plans for affected citizens.

Protests also reached the judiciary as workers at the Cairo Appeals Court, the New Cairo and Abbasseya courts, and the High Court of Justice protested a 10 percent salary cut. The protests brought activities inside the court to a halt.

At the Agriculture Ministry, hundreds of casual workers at ministry departments in Fayoum, Daqahlia, Kafr al-Sheikh and Beheira stormed the building and announced a sit-in inside calling for permanent employment.


*Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
**Photo by Nadia Ahmed

The curious case of a censored history book

Egypt Independent
The curious case of a censored history book 

Sun, 26/08/2012

Omar Cheta 

A government censorship agency banned a book. Two days later, it revoked the ban. Should we be thankful that the ban was temporary? No, we should be concerned that a censorship agency exists in the first place, whatever its mandate and however infrequently it uses its authority.

Last week, the Egyptian Print Censorship Authority held a shipment of history textbooks that was headed to the American University in Cairo (AUC). Everyone involved must have been puzzled.

Khaled Fahmy, the history professor who ordered the book, is by no means the first to assign it. The American University in Cairo bookstore has probably been selling the book since it first appeared in 1994.

True, the AUC has been in the middle of censorship controversies in the past, most famously in 1998 and 1999 when it faced (and unfortunately, succumbed to) government and media campaigns to ban the teaching of Maxime Rodinson’s “Muhammad” and Mohamed Choukri’s “For Bread Alone.”
But in these instances, the accusations revolved around denigrating Islam and offending the students’ cultural sensibilities. Even those clichéd phrases are irrelevant to the book in question.

“A History of the Modern Middle East” is a popular introductory textbook that covers the history of the region since the 19th century. William L. Cleveland, a historian of Arab nationalism, originally authored the book. Due to its success as a textbook, second and third editions were issued in 1999 and 2004. Both times, as is the norm with academic works, Cleveland revised parts of the original text, added new sections (covering, for example, the American occupation of Iraq) and summarized his revisions in a preface.

Cleveland passed away in 2006 but the textbook continued to be widely taught in English-speaking universities around the world, including Egypt. A few years later, another historian, Martin Bunton, took on the task of issuing a fourth edition of the book, which came out in 2009. This latest edition, now co-authored by Cleveland and Bunton, expectedly became one of the main English language introductions to the history of the Modern Middle East.

Like any effective textbook, the popularity of “A History of the Modern Middle East” comes from its comprehensiveness and organization. The book covers a very wide range of topics from Muhammad Ali’s attempt to build a modern state in Egypt 200 years ago, to Islamic activism in the contemporary Middle East. Because it is impossible to tackle each of these issues in depth within the span of a single book, even a 600-page book like this one, and since this is an introductory textbook in the first place, the authors have also included a concise list of specialized history books as an appendix.

The bottom line is, not only is it an extremely useful book for students who are seeking an introduction to the history of the region, it is not a controversial book. Even if an instructor wanted to indoctrinate his or her students in a certain idea they would not be able to use the book, which is specifically designed to encourage its readers to seek more specialized knowledge outside it.

Why then was the book (temporarily) banned? The censorship agency explained that the maps in the book were inaccurate. No wonder, of course, that their justification had to do with an image rather than with the written word. Who has the time to read 600 pages of history anyway?

The book contains 18 maps, none of which is of contemporary Egypt. Following the process of elimination, one is left with a possibly controversial map on page 168 that is entitled “The Middle East in the interwar period.” The map is centered on the Arabian Peninsula and is meant to show the countries occupied by Britain and France in the period 1918-1939. Only the eastern part of Egypt appears in it. Probably, what the censor found most unnerving about the map was that the Halayeb triangle (unlabeled on this map) fell outside the border of British-occupied Egypt and inside Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

Needless to say, both are political entities that have ceased to exist for almost 60 years. Convinced that he arrived at a reasonable resolution to this minor crisis, the censor finally decided to lift the ban on the book after “correcting” the maps in each copy manually.

What is most concerning about the episode we are looking at here is that it does not contain the necessary elements of a censorship cause célèbre. In recent decades, cases of censorship that gained a high level of public attention usually revolved either around religious sensibilities and morality, or were championed by journalists. In the near past, intellectuals protested when a group of lawyers tried to ban the monumental “One Thousand and One Nights” on the grounds that it contained obscene content.

A wider outcry occurred when journalist Ibrahim Issa was sentenced to a year in prison for defaming the former president. A couple of days ago, Islam Afify, the editor of Al-Dostour, was detained briefly by a criminal court, where he is being tried for insulting the current president. All of these cases rallied support because they were easily identified as assaults on freedom of expression.

In the case of the banned/altered history textbook, we are facing a different kind of challenge. First, the case received very little media attention because history occupies a rather paradoxical place in our public conversations. On the one hand, history is perceived as a compilation of verifiable objective facts. On the other, it is considered an entirely subjective enterprise that follows no standard.

Hence, censoring a history book could take place on the grounds that it got its facts wrong, or alternatively, because it produced a politically motivated account. In either case, seeing a historical study as an exercise in freedom of expression is not a straightforward conclusion for most. Second, even though politically motivated, those who imposed the ban are nameless bureaucrats who did not claim to heroically protect society from false knowledge.

The ban was a silent, routine act of censorship undertaken by a clerk who was probably protecting himself against the offhand chance that his superior might accuse him of not doing his job properly.

This routine episode is a reminder that we should reject all forms of state censorship. We cannot blame the censor for doing his job, nor should we praise him for being permissive. Both of these positions are self-defeating and will lead us time and again to the question of where to draw the line and who is to draw it.

The burden of authenticating any form of knowledge should not fall on a state appointee, however knowledgeable. In a democratic society, this burden is undisputedly reserved for the citizen.

Egypt: Authorities ban popular history book on Middle East

Ahram Online
Egyptian authorities ban popular history book on Middle East

Monday 13 Aug 2012

Mohammed Saad

Egyptian authorities have slapped an import ban on 'A History of the Modern Middle East' by eminent Canadian academics, without disclosing the reasons

 

 

The Egyptian Print Censorship Authority has banned the import of A History of the Modern Middle East by eminent academics William L Cleveland and Martin Bunton, now in its 12th edition.

Khaled Fahmy, chair of history at the American University in Cairo (AUC), said that he received an email from the university informing him that the book he had requested for his modern Arab history course had been banned from entering the country. The short email did not give any reasons for the ban.

The author of All the Pasha's Men said that he has no idea of why the book was banned especially it does not contain anything that is particularly contentious. Fahmy thinks "it's an excellent simple book for the freshmen students of the modern history of the Mideast. I've been using this book for almost 10 years, for its simple smooth presentation of the modern Arab history."

Fahmy expressed dismay at the ban."It's strange how we as a society give the responsibility of the Egyptian National Security to some clerks in the Print Censorship Authority, who prove everyday that they lack the basic knowledge of the priorities of scientific research, as well as their disregard of national security too."

Books that relate in particular to Egyptian military affairs since the 1950s are more likely to be banned than others. Fahmy asserted that the best way to protect national security is by making books available, not banning them.

The Egyptian Print Censorship Authority could not be reached for comment.
 

Video: Artists use graffiti to depict Egypt's revolutionary stories

Al Jazeera English
Artists use graffiti to tell Egypt revolution's stories
February 27, 2012



Running south from Tahrir Square toward Egypt's interior ministry in central Cairo, Mohamed Mahmoud street has become one of the revolution's most violent battlegrounds. Twelve people died in the area during February street battles between protesters and police stemming from a deadly football riot in Port Said.

With the neighbourhood calm, at least for the moment, Mohamed Mahmoud now serves as a canvas for some of Egypt's most creative revolutionary street art.

Murals portraying the revolution's dead as martyrs and the military as a predatory monster spread along walls next to figurative paintings that draw inspiration from millenia-old pharaonic art. Nearby, the artists debate with anxious business owners, and the revolution continues.

Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh reports from Cairo.

Journalists & student detained for over 2 days in Mahalla

Egypt Independent
Journalist, student and translator detained for two days in Mahalla

Although all three have been released, a few of the trumped-up charges leveled against them have not yet been dropped. Authorities have imposed travel bans pending further investigations.

Mon, 13/02/2012

Jano Charbel


Three youths — an Egyptian, American and Australian — who traveled from Cairo to the Nile Delta city of Mahalla on 11 February to cover a planned day of civil disobedience were detained for two days before being released Monday night.

After being mobbed by bystanders in Mahalla, they were handed over to security forces amid claims that they were instigating, and even funding, acts of unrest in the city. According to their lawyer, Sayed Fathy, these claims were largely dismissed by prosecutors due to conflicting accounts by the claimants.

Australian freelance journalist Austin Mackell headed to Mahalla, along with Derek Ludovici, a US graduate student at the American University in Cairo, and Aliya Alwi, an Egyptian translator, to report on a planned protest march in the city. The three were interviewing Kamal al-Fayoumi, a worker-activist at Mahalla’s Misr Spinning and Weaving Company, in public near Shaun Square when they were assaulted by a group of angry bystanders. The cab driver who had transported them was also assaulted, and his car was damaged by the angry crowd that gathered around them.

All five were arrested and transported to military intelligence in the nearby city of Tanta. Prosecutors there ordered the release of Fayoumi and the cab driver on Sunday. Mackell, Ludovici and Alwi were transferred back to a police station in Mahalla Sunday before being released Monday night. The three are reportedly on their way back to Cairo.

According to human rights lawyer Ragia Omran, who has been closely involved with the case, investigations and interrogations were concluded this morning.

"Obviously the foreigner issue is being used as propaganda to portray this situation as an act of meddling by foreign hands in Egypt. Xenophobia is the way the authorities are trying to spin it. There's somebody from the embassy assisting Derek at the moment," said Ludovici's friend, Beth Warner.

"Derek hasn't been involved in any sort of trouble before, and his paperwork is all valid." Warner said, "but I'm worried that they may continue to hold him and mix his case up with that of the foreign NGOs case."

Egypt is currently trying 43 NGO employees, 29 of whom are foreigners, for working for illegally funded NGOs, in a case that has sparked tension between Egypt and the US.

Ludovici was reportedly able to make a phone call to his parents in the US. "He said he's not being abused or mistreated. He's doing well, just worried about being deported," Warner added.

Ludovici is writing an MA thesis about the labor movement in Egypt.

Mackell has previously visited Mahalla without any problems. In April 2011, he produced documentary videos about labor issues and the textile industry in this city. Upon hearing of industrial workers’ actions planned for 11 February, the freelance journalist said he had hoped to cover the protests in order to better understand the working-class demands behind them.

Mackell has been residing and working in Egypt since early 2011. His writings — primarily on labor, economy and finance issues — have been widely published in media outlets including the Guardian and the Scotsman in the UK, Australia's ABC, The Canberra Times, Lebanon's Al-Akhbar English, Canada's CBC, and America's CBS. He maintains a blog called The Moon Under Water.

Prior to coming to Egypt, Mackell reported from numerous hotspots in the Middle East, including Lebanon during the 2006 Israeli invasion and Iran during the popular protests against the 2009 elections results. He moved to Cairo last year to report on the 25 January revolution and Egypt's transition to democracy.

There are a number of other incidents in which foreign journalists have been detained and harassed in Mahalla.

American graduate student and photojournalist James Buck was detained at a Mahalla police station for 24 hours, along with Mohamed Maree, his interpreter, after a planned strike at Misr Spinning and Weaving Company was thwarted on 6 April 2008. An uprising ensued in this city on 6 and 7 April, and Maree was locked up for nearly three months, while hundreds of others were also arrested. Three workers from the textile company — Fayoumi, Wael Habib, and Kareem el-Beheiri — were also imprisoned.

During another strike at Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in February 2001, this reporter was denied entrance into the mill. His photos were erased by military police officers, and he was forcefully removed by an armed escort to the outskirts of the city while being threatened with referral to a military tribunal.


*Photo courtesy of AFP

University students support GUC civil disobedience call

Daily News Egypt
University students support GUC call for civil disobedience

February 3, 2012

Heba Hesham

CAIRO: Students of several universities have expressed support for the German University (GUC) Student Union’s call to participate in a general strike on Feb. 11, which could be escalated to a civil disobedience until their demands are met.

The GUC student union on Thursday demanded that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) immediately step down and hand over power to an elected civil authority. They also want withdrawal of confidence from Kamal El-Ganzoury's cabinet, holding it accountable for its crimes, and to form a revolutionary cabinet.

GUC student Karim Khouzam, freshman studying management, was among 74 killed Wednesday night in the Port Said violence following a football match between Al-Masry and Al-Ahly.

The American University in Cairo (AUC) had also announced that Omar Mohsen, an economics senior slated to graduate in February, was among those killed during the violence.

"The state run media have been connecting such chaotic events to the revolution to scare people from instability. However, these events took place directly after the cancellation of the state of emergency and the interrogation of the interior minister in parliament [in which he claimed] the impossibility of a complete cancellation of emergency law," the union's statement said.

The students reiterated statements made by members of parliament in which they blamed the police, for both incompetence and complicity.

"The SCAF is seeking to systematically discipline the youth forces that have participated in the revolution," the statement added.

On the same token, the Modern Sciences and Arts (MSA) University's student union held SCAF responsible for the tragic events that took place over the past year, since it assumed power and for the martyrs.

MSA supported GUC's student union in its demands and said that it might participate in the strike and escalate its actions to civil disobedience if the demands were not met.

AUC also supported the demands of the two universities, condemning the brutal massacres which "Egypt didn't witness even during the days of the former repressive regime, but which have become normal under SCAF," according to a statement by the university's student union.

"To mourn the loss of our student and the many other victims who lost their lives, the university will observe a day of mourning on Sunday, Feb 5. The University will be open but all classes are suspended," Lisa Anderson, President of AUC, said in a statement published on the student union's official Facebook page.

The student union also announced three days of mourning, adding that the university will pursue judicial procedures against the perpetrators of this crime, without specifying the target of the case.

Egypt: Mass strikes for unmet economic demands

Al-Masry Al-Youm
Unfulfilled economic and political demands keep Egypt’s laborers furious

Thu. 15/09/2011

Jano Charbel


The first two weeks of September have witnessed a massive wave of strikes, with many more planned for the rest of the month. These are taking place despite the law - issued in April - criminalizing strikes which harm the national economy, and despite regulations issued by the ruling military junta making negotiations during the course of strikes unacceptable.

Hundreds of thousands of workers and employees have launched strikes, sit-ins and marches to protest their working conditions. Among these are public school teachers - who are planning a general strike on the new academic year's first day of classes, 17 September; workers at private and public-sector textile mills; security and custodial workers at the American University in Cairo; farmers; and nurses and doctors in eight different governorates.

These strike actions come against a political backdrop that once seemed encouraging to Egypt’s 27-million labor force.

Shortly after President Hosni Mubarak's resignation in 11 February, over 500,000 workers, professionals, farmers, employees and pensioners moved to establish their own independent trade unions and federations to provide a bargaining mechanism for workers long deprived of negotiating with both the state and the business community. These independent unions are reportedly playing a significant role in organizing protest actions and strikes nationwide.

Yet the recent resurgence of widespread strikes, analysts say, reflect a deep disillusionment with the democratic transition process, with workers feeling more and more that improving their economic and political conditions were but hollow promises from the revolution.

"The primary demand behind all the strikes - in the public, private and informal sectors - is improved incomes in line with increasing living expenses," said Karam Saber, director of the Land Center for Human Rights. Other common demands include the payment of overdue bonuses, incentive payments, fixed or full-time contracts for full-time work, among other demands.

"The interim authorities have made very little progress in terms of raising wages, incomes and salaries; or in terms of putting a cap on the salaries of managerial officials in the form of a maximum wage," Saber said.

According to Saber Barakat, a member of the caretaker council at the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, there are other reasons motivating the working class to protest and strike. One of the main factors causing dismay is the fact that Mubarak's officials and generals are still calling the shots and pulling Egypt's strings. The old guard is still in power.

"The revolution gave workers the impression that their conditions would improve; but reality has proven otherwise," said Barakat. "The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has sent signals to investors reassuring them that their interests will be protected and upheld."

In April, the SCAF and the interim cabinet issued a law outlawing strikes, and they have failed to issue a new trade union law to replace the old and restrictive 1976 law which places severe bureaucratic hurdles on independent labor organization. Furthermore, these authorities have insisted they will not engage in negotiations with strikers until they stop striking or protesting.

Egyptian laborers’ grievances are countless, and the fruits of the 18-day revolution that raised the slogans of freedom and social justice are yet to be reaped.

The interim cabinet has been procrastinating over implementing an LE700 minimum wage. On Wednesday, Finance Minister Hazem al-Beblawy said that the government will implement it in January 2012, six months later than originally announced.

Some 700 textile workers at the Indorama Shebin al-Kom Textile Company - which was privatized in 2007 - went on strike this week, and around 400 of them blocked highways, roads and even occupied the Munifiya Governorate headquarters on Monday to demand the re-nationalization of their company, as well as improved working conditions and wages.

In the Nile Delta governorate of Gharbiya, over 1000 workers went on strike at the Wool Production Company in the town of Samannoud on Saturday, and on the same day, over 3000 workers at the Nasr Company for Fabric Dyeing in Mahalla City went on strike. Both groups of workers were demanding the payment of overdue bonuses, along with increased incentive payments.

Elsewhere in Mahalla City, over 20,000 workers at the Misr Company for Spinning and Weaving threatened to launch an open-ended strike this past week. Workers at this massive textile mill (the largest in the Middle East) demand increased bonuses and food allowances. They also demand increased investment in public sector textile enterprises in order to save the industry from collapse.

"All of Egypt's workers from Aswan to Alexandria are exploited and under-paid. The interim government and SCAF should set a just and adequate minimum wage, for workers in all sectors of the economy, which is in keeping with rising living expenses," said Mohamed al-Attar, a veteran labor activist at Misr Company for Spinning and Weaving.

"Workers are tired of empty promises. Workers gave the authorities seven months to address these common grievances and have seen little to nothing in terms of actual reforms. We are reaching boiling point.”

On Thursday, Minister of Manpower and Immigration Ahmed Hassan al-Borai said that labor unions’ elections will be postponed till after the parliamentary elections slated for November, yet another blow to the aspirations of independent labor organizations which have been trying to legally consolidate their emerging structures.

"The interim authorities are treating workers and the general populace just as Mubarak did. If they do not change their course then another popular revolt may break out," Attar said.

*Photograph by Ahmed Hayman

Egyptian Parkour Teams Raise Awareness About Global Warming

AL-MASRY AL-YOUM
Unconventional sport with an environmental message
Sunday 04 October 2009



Dozens of Egyptian youth gracefully somersault, vault over obstacles, leap off walls, back-dive, cart-wheel and hand-spring before Cairo audiences
By Jano Charbel

Last week, a group of young Egyptians engaged in an unconventional mix of acrobatic gymnastics and break dancing, known as parkour, to raise environmental awareness. The Parkour Egypt team performed the show for spectators at the Wadi Degla Sporting Club in the Tagammu el-Awwal district of Cairo, during which they discussed the problems of climate change and global warming.

A day later, parkour teams Egy-Flow and Team Free Alex performed their show in al-Azhar Park, near downtown Cairo. In sporty reference to combating global warming, the participants wore t-shirts reading: Jump start the climate deal with a power sector carbon budget, Drop global power sector emissions by at least 10% by 2020, and Roll out clean, green electricity across the world.

"We are organizing these events here in Egypt in coordination with Parkour Generations and Sandbag," Mohamed Sobhy, the organizer of the event and one of Egy-Flow's team instructors, told Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition. Parkour Generations is a London-based academy of experts from around the world, while Sandbag is a UK-based group that works to promote awareness of and actions to combat global warming. "This is a joint effort between these two groups, and we are happy to take part in this global effort here in Egypt. Other parkour teams across the world are conducting similar events in their own countries on September 26," explained Sobhy, adding that the events in Cairo were delayed for a few days due to technical problems and other complications.

According to the campaign's website (sandbag.org.uk), the One Giant Leap campaign, which took place on September 26, 2009, was "The world's largest ever international parkour jam. Raising awareness of climate change and calling for an effective new global deal." The jam reportedly included 3,500 parkour runners who participated in 100 cities and 35 countries around the world.

Parkour is derived from the French word parcour meaning: to run through (a route) or to go all over. It was coined in reference to parcours du combatant or parcours du sapeur-ompiers, obstacle courses for training French soldiers and firefighters respectively. It is also referred to as l'art du déplacement, or the art of movement, and was established as an art and sport in 1997 by French citizen David Belle. Parkour include such moves as the tic-tac, climb-up, cat leap, cat balance, roll, pop vault, swing, dyno, drop and many others. The popularity of the sport soared following the 2004 release of the French movie Banlieue 13 (District 13), starring David Belle, and the 2006 James Bond flick Casino Royale, both of which include thrilling parkour moves in intense chase scenes across buildings. Since then, parkour has spread from France to the four corners of the earth.

"In Egypt, parkour is usually practiced in sporting clubs or parks, less frequently on the streets or in empty buildings," said Amr Mahmoud, an instructor with Team Free Alex. "So far no one has broken any bones, thank God. This is because the first thing we teach the members is how to land safely and how to dismount correctly." He displayed a number of drop and roll techniques which “decrease the force of impact upon landing."

In Egypt, and around the world, parkour is practiced primarily by men, although women have begun to get involved in this exceptional sport. Egy-Flow's chief instructor, 26-year-old Mohammad “Tiger" said, "Almost all the team members are between the ages of 18 and 22. We have only a handful of members who are either older or younger than this age group." Tiger also teaches a number of his team members Capoiera, an art form of Afro-Brazilian origins that combines dance moves with martial arts techniques. Tiger is experimenting with the fusion of Capoiera and parkour moves. All the members of the parkour teams in Egypt are male, except for one.

Passant Omar is currently Egypt's only traceuse (woman acrobat in parkour terminology), and perhaps the only one in the Arab world. This 18-year-old girl has been practicing with Egy-Flow for three months. She said “I would really like to see more girls participating in this sport, but we are confronted with numerous social and familial pressures. People keep telling me that this is a dangerous sport, or that this is a man's sport, but my team members encourage me to continue and to excel. I am determined to continue practicing this sport."

There are four different Egyptian teams which practice this risky and exhilarating sport. The first team to be established was Parkour Egypt, which was founded in Giza in 2006, and currently has well over 50 members. A second parkour team was established six months later, but remained nameless until August 2007 when they chose the name Egy-flow. This second team - which now has more than 50 members - practices parkour in the Nasr City, Heliopolis and Doqqi districts of Greater Cairo. The sport then spread to Alexandria where, in August 2008, the parkour Team 2DF was established, and currently has 20 members. Finally, Team Free Alex was established in December 2008 and presently has 15 members. There are said to be others who practice parkour in Egypt in the Nile Delta city of Tanta and other governorates - on an individual basis - but have not yet established their own teams.

At the closing of the parkour event at al-Azhar Park, Mohamed Sobhy announced that his team, amongst others, will be performing at the American University in Cairo, as part of an awareness campaign against the hepatitis C virus, on 14 October.

*Photographs by Nasser Nouri

Israel Imprisons Egyptian-American Student Activist

I was just speaking on the phone with Egyptian-American student activist Sarah Hawas who is being held in Israel's Ramle Prison/Immigration Detention Center. She has been in prison since August 2 after standing in solidarity with the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem - who are forcefully being evicted from their homes by Zionist settlers and Israeli forces.

Sarah said that Israeli authorities are threatening to have her deported to the US. Her lawyer is attempting to avert this deportation order.

She added that she is in good condition, although she is feeling "bored, depressed and very worried. In comparison to the conditions of refugees and migrants that they are holding here, I'm being treated relatively well."

She went on to say that "we need further campaigns in solidarity with Sheikh Jarrah. Locals are being kicked out of their homes, children under 12 years old are being beaten by Israeli security forces, and live ammunition was being fired at, and within, Palestinian homes."

Sarah is an undergraduate student of literature at the American University in Cairo.

AFP - Egypt swine flu cases rise to 18

CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt reported three new cases of swine flu on Saturday, as two children and a Colombian woman tested positive for the A(H1N1) virus, bringing to 18 the total.

A health ministry official told state news agency Mena the new cases were a 45-year-old Colombian woman and two children aged seven and eight, one of them a dual US and Egyptian citizen and the other a Canadian-Egyptian.

They arrived separately in Cairo last week from the United States, Canada and Colombia.

An American University of Cairo residence in the upscale neighbourhood of Zamalek remains under quarantine after six American students and one teaching assistant were found to have been infected with the virus last week.

The university, which has suspended classes, says courses will resume on Monday, when the quarantine is due to be lifted.

Egypt, which decided to cull its estimated 250,000 pigs after reports of outbreaks in other countries, has not taken any new measures since the World Health Organisation announced a swine flu pandemic on Thursday.

Authorities check travellers at airports and quarantine those who exhibit flu symptoms.

Egypt reported its and the continent's first case on June 2, when a 12-year-old girl travelling from the United States tested positive.

The country is already battling the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has killed 27 people since it was first reported in 2006.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gUvHzD-8S8ioC8zC8R-It7ijWsLA

Egypt Reports 10th Case of Swine Flu

Egypt reports two more swine flu cases

CAIRO (AFP)— Two more cases of swine flu were reported in Egypt on Wednesday, a day after five Americans tested positive for the disease in a Cairo campus residence, health ministry officials said.

One case was reported in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and the other in Cairo, ministry spokesman Mohammed Salam said. Both patients were taken to hospital for treatment.

Deputy health minister Nasser el-Sayyed told local television that both patients were Egyptians who had recently come from the United States.

The health ministry said on Tuesday it would extend a quarantine on an American University of Cairo residence in the upscale neighbourhood of Zamalek after five more residents were found to have been infected with the A(H1N1) virus.

The campus was first locked down on Monday after two students tested positive for the virus. The latest cases bring to 10 the number of swine flu infections in Egypt, the most populous Arab country.

On June 2, a 12-year-old girl who arrived from the United States became the first confirmed case of swine flu in Egypt and in Africa.

Egypt had responded to the outbreak of the swine flu in other countries by undertaking a cull of the country's estimated 250,000 pigs.

Egypt is already battling the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has killed 27 people since it was first reported in 2006.

The authorities have stepped up checks of travellers at airports, quarantining suspected cases in makeshift centres.

Swine flu has now spread to 73 countries with 26,563 people known to have been infected and 140 to have died since the disease was uncovered in April, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gH_vVQkpzT1W_PAjyC_jRnNqlkug

Hundreds of Students at the American University in Cairo Conduct Sit-ins Protesting Astronomical Tuition, Fees & Shoddy Overpriced Services

The American University in Cairo (AUC) is generally regarded as being Egypt’s finest educational institution; the AUC is also the country’s most expense university in terms of tuition and fees – far beyond the reach of average Egyptian workers/employees. The University claims that it is a non-profit institution, yet it charges its students increasingly astronomical sums of money for their educations.

In September 2008 the AUC was relocated from Downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square to its new location in the isolated area of El Qatamiya – tens of kilometers into the rocky-desert outskirts of Cairo. Moreover, the new campus lacks a number of labs, halls and other facilities – many of which are said to be still under construction. Transportation to and from (the now-isolated) AUC, on the university’s buses, is reportedly an expensive service with few routes. Furthermore, the students at this isolated campus do not have access to food/restaurants beyond that which the university’s food court and its cafés have to offer. The food is practically monopolized by a few overpriced restaurants/cafés found on campus. Numerous AUC students also have grievances regarding new housing and dormitory arrangements.

Student protests, sit-ins, and demonstrations are very few and far between at the (elite /bourgeois) AUC – yet some 500-600 students conducted several sit-ins during the course of this week in which they protested against the University administration’s poor planning and its profit-making schemes. The students publicly grilled the University’s President, David Arnold, with their many questions and grievances.

Bravo (Active) Students,
Jano

The following is a message circulated by the dismayed students of the AUC who are struggling to cope with the new University campus:

After the success of the 5th of November sit-in - and by success, I mean the unexpected turn out and the fact that we actually managed to bring the Administration's attention to our demands - President David Arnold has agreed to meet with the students to discuss their demands in an open forum.

This is the time where you can voice any of your concerns about the move to the new campus in a civilized manner.

The basic concerns outlined in the petition signed on Monday include issues on:
- Transportation
- Food
- Housing

However, this forum should not be about individual cases alone. More importantly, it should be about the breach of trust between the student body and the administration that has been building since the start of the academic year.

- The university has been turned into a profit-making institution rather than an academic institution.

- The administration is not aiding or at least not rigorously trying to take action towards providing the students with an environment that will facilitate their learning both in classrooms and extra-curricular activities.

- Concerns, demands, petitions, etc. have been going through a slow bureaucratic process since the beginning of the semester that has not been getting anything fixed.

In all circumstances, we are all part of the AUC community and we should understand that moving to a new campus is never easy and, hence, we need to work together (students, faculty, staff, & administration). However, as long as the administration neglects us, this cannot happen and the problems will continue.

for more information visit:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=87663985598
http://aucpetition08.blogspot.com/

note: please, invite as many of your AUCian friends as you can & if you have any photos or videos of the 5th of November, please upload them to this event.
Thank you for your support & hope to see you all on November 10th.