Police forcefully shut down independent Labor Day conference: Organizers relocate

Mada Masr
Routes to Journalists Syndicate blocked to prevent independent Labor Day conference, organizers relocate

Sunday, May 1, 2016


Pesha Magid and Jano Charbel 

 
Security forces blocked the downtown Cairo streets leading to the Journalists Syndicate ahead of a planned Labor Day conference to be held at the syndicate and organized by independent trade unions.

The conference, called “United for Union Freedoms,” was to take place at 5 pm inside the Journalist’s Syndicate and aimed to address the grievances of independent unions and discuss their proposed amendments to existing trade union and labor laws.

Hundreds of police personnel were stationed in the vicinity of the syndicate, according to a Mada Masr reporter who arrived at there around 5.30 pm for the conference. Security forces near the syndicate included riot police, armed police and security personnel in civilian clothing, as well as riot police trucks, Central Security Forces trucks and prisoner transport vehicles.

The reporter stated that security forces would not allow people to enter the syndicate unless they were carrying a syndicate membership card, and that they were blocking off Abdel Khalek Tharwat Street and Champollion Streets.

The conference leaders relocated the conference Center for Trade Unions and Workers Services on Qasr al-Aini Street, where over a hundred attendees gathered.

Earlier in the day a protest was called in front of the Journalists Syndicate by the Coordinating Solidarity group, a coalition of syndicates that formed to protest against the Civil Service Law. The group posted on its official webpage that police had forcefully prevented the event.

“Labor leaders gathered to participate in a demonstration planned by Coordinating Solidarity to mourn workers on Labor Day, but police prevented them from reaching the Journalists Syndicate,” wrote Coordinating Solidarity. “The police stated that they were preventing workers from gathering in front of the syndicate.”

The decision to block access to the Journalists Syndicate follows a similar decision on April 25, when demonstrations were planned to protest of ceding of the Red Sea Islands Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia. Journalists were prevented from entering the syndicate and security forces blocked public streets leading to the syndicate.

The Journalists Syndicate had filed a formal complaint against the Interior Ministry and Cairo Security Directorate for violations against journalists on that day. Violations included the arbitrary detention of journalists as well as allegations that the security services deployed plainclothes police officers, who attempted to storm the syndicate’s headquarters while denouncing the journalists inside as traitors and foreign agents.

The Front to Defend Egyptian Protesters published a report documenting 1,277 arrests across 22 Egyptian cities between April 15 and April 27, which was the period of the popular mobilization against Egypt’s decision to transfer of the two islands to Saudi Arabia.

Labor unrest has been increasing countrywide over the past year. In 2015, 1,117 strikes and other industrial actions were reported, according to Egyptian NGO Democracy Meter, and between January and April 493 labor actions were reported. "This currently represents an average of six industrial actions each day, and a 25 percent increase in such labor unrest in comparison to the same period last year,” the NGO wrote on May 1.

The state also continues to crack down on independent trade unions, while further restricting freedoms of association.


*Photos by Jano Charbel

Labor Day 2016: Sisi addresses nation from luxury hotel, as industrial actions increase nationwide

Mada Masr
Labor Day 2016: Sisi addresses nation from hotel, workers air grievances

Sunday, May 1, 2016 - 13:57

Jano Charbel

 

Over the past three years parades and street rallies for Labor Day have not been permitted in Egypt, and this year too the events have been subdued and held indoors.

An official state celebration was held on April 28 in eastern Cairo, at the Armed Forces’ luxury Al-Masah Hotel, and a smaller commemoration by independent labor organizations is scheduled for the evening of May 1 at the Journalists’ Syndicate in downtown Cairo.

At Al-Masah Hotel, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi delivered his first televised Labor Day speech to the nation, surrounded by ministers, top generals and leading members of the state-run Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF.)

Last year, Sisi broke with a decades-long presidential tradition of addressing the nation on Labor Day. He commemorated Labor Day at the Police Academy in New Cairo with a select group of workers in lieu of a televised address.

This year, Labor Day comes amid a backdrop of new austerity measures, increased costs of living, faltering industries, a devastated tourism sector, unemployment growing to (officially) nearly 13 percent, and increasing countrywide labor unrest with hundreds of industrial protests and strikes.
Independent trade unions continue to decline and a concerted crackdown on them persists.

Many independent unionists and workers’ rights activists have expressed pessimism regarding the future of Egypt’s labor movement, but Sisi sounded optimistic about how labor relations will develop during his rule.

 
Delivered from a stage covered with the ETUF logo, Sisi’s scripted speech praised Egypt’s workforce of over 28.4 million with patriotic rhetoric and called on workers to “double your efforts.”
“Increased production means increased incomes,” he said.

Like former President Hosni Mubarak in his Labor Day speeches, Sisi emphasized the state’s concern for low-income earners. He did not discuss the austerity measures introduced in 2014, which are said to have impacted millions of low-income families.

“I kindly ask him to actually visit factories and other workplaces, in order to come into contact with real workers and hear their grievances," Kamal al-Fayoumi, a worker leader from the public-sector Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla, tells Mada Masr of Sisi's speech. "Otherwise he just hears the applause and empty talk of ETUF representatives, which does not reflect the reality of our situation.”

Fayoumi spells out his Labor Day aspirations and concerns: “We want wages to increase in line with prices. Our utility bills are increasing exponentially, prices of basic consumer goods are sky-rocketing, while wages stagnate. Real wages are declining, and this will likely contribute to more labor unrest across Egypt.”

Not all workers in public-sector enterprises, let alone private sector workers, are eligible for so-called monthly minimum wage of LE1200 (currently equivalent to $US135), which was introduced in 2014.

Sisi’s speech warned against labor protests, stressing “the importance of promoting dialogue and collective bargaining between both sides of the productive process, to realize amicable resolutions, and to decrease labor protests, which negatively affect production.”

“Who’s going to represent me in this collective bargaining?” asks Seoud Omar, a Suez Canal Authority employee and labor organizer in Suez City. “How are workers supposed to confront exploitation, corruption, mismanagement and poor working conditions when ETUF has failed to over several decades?”

Omar says the ETUF has a membership of nearly 4 million — less than 15 percent of the national workforce — and thus is only capable of bargaining on behalf of a minority of workers. Egypt’s independent trade unions claim a membership of only a few hundred thousand, and have even weaker bargaining powers.

“The ETUF leadership seeks to outlaw independent unions under the pretext that they instigate labor protests and strikes,” points out Omar.

In 2015, 1,117 strikes and other industrial actions were reported across Egypt, according to Egyptian NGO Democracy Meter — an average of three labor protests for each day of the year. As for 2016, it says that, “Between January and April of this year there have been a total of 493 labor protests (including strikes, marches, rallies, occupations, etc.)

This currently represents an average of six industrial actions each day, and a 25 percent increase in such labor unrest in comparison to the same period last year.”

Most of these actions (144) took place in Greater Cairo, followed by the Nile Delta governorates (110), the Suez Canal governorates (63) and Alexandria (60.) Upper Egypt and other governorates witnessed the rest.

These industrial actions affect both unionized and non-unionized workplaces, and include independent unionists and ETUF members alike – although ETUF has officially authorized only two strikes since its establishment in 1957.

“ETUF ignores the national Constitution of 2014 regarding the right to strike (Article 15) and freely establish unions (Article 76),” Omar says, “Just as they ignore international workers’ rights conventions that Egypt ratified decades ago, including the International Labor Organization’s conventions.”

A lawsuit ETUF filed before the Administrative Court demanding the dissolution of independent unions and federations commenced in February and its verdict is scheduled for June 26.

A recently issued ILO statement expressed “concern over threats to human and trade union rights in Egypt” under Sisi. It also cited “the responsibility of the government to ensure the application of international labor conventions on freedom of association that it has freely ratified.”

Egypt has ratified ILO conventions on freedom of association (Convention 87) and the right to organize (Convention 98) since the 1950s, but has not upheld their provisions.

According to domestic trade union legislation, ETUF has been Egypt’s only legally-recognized labor federation since its establishment nearly 60 years ago. It maintained its monopoly until the 2011 uprising against Mubarak, when independent trade union federations emerged to challenge it.

In his Labor Day address, Sisi said the new parliament “will formulate the legislation needed to create an encouraging atmosphere for the process of production, by discussing and issuing the relevant laws, at the forefront of which are the (new) Labor Law and Trade Union Law.”

In an interview posted on ETUF’s website on April 28, newly-appointed Manpower Minister Mohamed Saafan — a leading ETUF member — says his ministry “is adding its finishing touches to the draft laws on labor and trade unions.”

The ministry’s draft laws are to be sent to parliament for review, specifically to the parliamentary Manpower Committee, which is presided over by ETUF chief Gebali al-Maraghi and other members of the state-run federation.

Building on the April ILO statement on Egypt, on April 30 Human Rights Watch called on Egypt to "unshackle workers' right to organize," saying the draft Trade Union Law being prepared should guarantee unions’ independence.

In an interview with the state-owned Al-Akhbar newspaper on May 1, Saafan argues that “there is no such thing as independent unions, only parallel organizations. Each one of these organizations has specific objectives, and the last of their concerns are labor rights.”

“Little by little the truth behind this regime’s policies are being exposed,” says Omar, “and workers are realizing that the government and ETUF have no real intention of negotiating with other labor groupings — be they independent unions, federations or independent-minded workers. The regime wants to listen only to its yes-men. It is siding with its own interests and protecting its own privileges.”

As for the May 1 event scheduled to take place at the Journalists’ Syndicate, dubbed “United for Union Freedoms,” it aims to address the grievances of independent unions and discuss their proposed amendments to the extant trade union and labor laws.

“These new laws are unlikely to add any provisions protecting labor rights or freedoms,” says Talal Shokr, an organizer of this event and member of the Independent Pensioners’ Union. “They are likely to maintain the status quo of unbalanced labor relations which existed under Mubarak. Perhaps they will serve to tilt them even further in favor of investors’ interests.”

Concluding his Labor Day speech, Sisi announced he is pledging LE100 million from the publicly-financed Tahya Masr (Long Live Egypt) fund to the Ministry of Manpower’s emergency funds for stalled and faltering industries — particularly the tourism industry. Tourism has been badly affected since the fatal downing of a Russian passenger plane over Sinai in late October, in what is widely believed to be a terrorist act.


*Screenshots courtesy of ONTV

Egypt: Unshackle Workers' Right to Organize!

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Egypt: Unshackle Workers’ Right to Organize 

Draft Law Should Guarantee Unions’ Independence

April 30, 2016

 

 

The Egyptian government should legalize independent trade unions, Human Rights Watch said today, on International Workers’ Day. Egypt should also end the decades-old single official union system and allow free and fair elections to union boards for the first time since the country’s 2011 uprising. 

 

Egypt’s 1976 Trade Union Law does not recognize any trade unions except the official government-controlled unions affiliated with the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF). Independent trade unions proliferated after the 2011 uprising, but the government has not officially recognized them, even though the 2014 constitution guarantees freedom of association.

“Egypt’s government is ignoring the basic right of workers to organize independently,” said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “The government seems intent on stifling the freedom Egypt’s labor movement only gained after years of struggle that culminated in the 2011 uprising.”

The government has announced its intention to propose a new trade union law, but no final draft has been made public. The failure of successive governments to amend the Trade Union Law, as well as recent decisions by the cabinet and Interior Ministry to stop dealing with the de-facto independent unions, have led labor activists to fear that labor rights gains since 2011 are facing erosion.

According to activists, once Manpower Minister Gamal Sorour took office in September 2015, no new independent unions have been able to register. Activists also expressed fears that members of independent unions might face prosecution after an official newspaper on April 17, 2016, said that an investigation is being conducted that could lead to charges against leaders and members of these unions.

On April 8, the director general of the International Labour Organization (ILO,) Guy Ryder, condemned Egypt’s refusal to recognize independent unions and said that its refusal “prohibits collective bargaining and exposes union leaders to the risk of dismissal and arrest.”

Ryder also asked the Egyptian government to “expeditiously clarify all the facts” surrounding the death of Giulio Regeni, an Italian PhD student who researched independent unions and other workers’ issues in Egypt. Regeni was found dead on February 4, 2016, after last being seen in Cairo on January 25, amid a heavy police presence accompanying the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak.

On March 1, 2016, local news websites reported that the Interior Ministry had issued an internal decision to no longer accept documents stamped by independent unions. The ministry stated that the decision came after recommendations from its National Security Agency.

On March 8, lawyers for the General Union for Professionals, Technicians and Artisans filed a lawsuit challenging the decision.

The Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS), one of Egypt’s oldest independent groups advocating workers’ rights, said the prime minister issued a memo in November 2015, ordering ministries to cooperate only with the Egyptian Trade Union Federation. The directive stated that this was meant to help take action “against independent unions and instigators,” the center said.

Kamal Abbas, the head of the center and a member of the National Council for Human Rights, told Human Rights Watch that the Interior Ministry’s March 1 decision was unconstitutional. He said that workers need a stamped document from their union to be able to obtain various government documents and that this decision would force workers to belong to an official union.

Egypt’s 2014 constitution states in article 13 that the government “shall protect workers’ rights and strive to build balanced work relationships between both parties to the production process. It shall ensure means for collective negotiations.” Article 76 guarantees the right to form independent syndicates and unions.

Egypt is a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which establishes the right to strike as well as the right to form and join trade unions and national and international confederations.

Egypt is also a member of the ILO and has ratified all of its eight fundamental conventions, including convention 87 of 1948 on freedom of association and convention 98 of 1949 on the right to organize.

Convention 87 states that workers have the right to establish and, subject only to the rules of the organization concerned, to join organizations of their own choosing without previous authorization.

“Protecting workers’ rights to independently organize is a basic right, not a luxury,” Houry said. “Egypt needs economic development for all, but such development doesn’t come with oppressing workers.”

DEVELOPMENTS CONCERNING TRADE UNIONS

Egypt created the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, a government-controlled trade union framework, in the 1950s as an extension of the state. Between 2008 and the 2011 uprising, workers tried to establish independent trade unions, but the Manpower Ministry rejected their articles of association.

Independent unions proliferated after the January 2011 uprising. Ahmed al-Borie, who was appointed as manpower minister in 2011, presented the “Declaration of Union Freedoms” in March 2011, which was meant to pave the way to remove legal restrictions on workers’ right to organize.

After al-Borie’s declaration, the independent unions gained partial government recognition, which allowed them to register. Al-Borie also prepared a draft law that labor activists described as the most progressive of those proposed since January 2011.

Successive governments prepared at least two other draft laws since then but none was adopted.

Human Rights Watch received a copy of the latest available draft trade union law that the government prepared under former Manpower Minister Nahed al-Ashry between 2014 and 2015. The draft law would end the single union system but restrict organizations’ rights in other ways, such as punishing with prison time those who establish unions without approval.

The governments’ and parliaments’ failure to amend restrictive laws made it easy for the authorities to increasingly erode these limited concessions. For example, independent unions that were able to register cannot deduct dues from members’ salaries, and their members have not usually been allowed to serve as workers’ representatives on national councils or in negotiations with business owners.

The 1976 Trade Union Law permits only officially recognized unions to operate. The law established the trade union federation, a single pyramidal government-controlled entity with 24 officially recognized general unions.

The law originally established 21 general unions and gave the government and the federation absolute control over the establishment of new unions. Since its issuance, the federation has approved only three more unions, the most recent of which was the Tax, Customs and Finance General Union in 2010.

According to activists, its establishment was a step to undermine anti-government mobilization, including large sit-ins, organized by workers who had been trying to establish an independent union for Real Estate Tax Authority workers.

The government dissolved the boards of the federation and several official unions in August 2011, following multiple court decisions ruling the previous board elections, in 2006, illegal based on a lack of judicial supervision.

But successive Egyptian governments have not allowed new elections and have kept in place unelected boards appointed by various manpower ministers.

In November 2012, then-President Mohamed Morsy, who was ousted by the military in July 2013, postponed federation and general unions’ elections for six months, ordered the retirement of union leaders over age 60, and gave the manpower minister the authority to choose new leaders for the vacated or otherwise unoccupied seats.

On May 30, 2013, Morsy decreed a one-year extension of the appointed leadership. In May 2015, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi postponed the union board elections again and extended the current boards’ term for one year.

Following Morsy’s removal by the military, the authorities found themselves with more leeway to crack down on independent unions amid a broader stifling of dissent, said a workers’ rights researcher at the Egyptian Center for Social and Economic Rights, an independent group.

On February 4, 2016, Gamal Sorour, who was appointed manpower minister after al-Ashry, said in an interview with the privately owned newspaper al-Masry al-Youm that he would draft a new trade union law that would not recognize independent unions.

Sorour was replaced by Mohamed Safaan, a federation board member, in a cabinet reshuffle on March 23. Safaan then declined to meet with a delegation representing independent unions, said Abbas, the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services head. Safaan said that he could “only meet with them as individual workers but not as representatives of entities that he did not acknowledge,” Abbas told Human Rights Watch.

The privately owned newspaper el-Watan reported on February 11, that the head of the federation, Gebaly al-Maraghy, who is also a member of parliament, said that a federation “legislative committee” had prepared a new draft law that would dissolve all independent unions and sent it to the government, which would send it to parliament in “a matter of weeks.” On April 23, al- Maraghy was elected head of parliament’s Manpower Committee.

Federation board members, including al-Maraghy, have spoken publicly against independent unions and opposed legalizing them, saying it would harm the economy and foster instability. Recently, the head of the official Union of Tax, Finance and Customs Workers, an affiliate of the federation, filed suit before the Administrative Court, which rules on the legality of government actions, demanding the dissolution of independent unions. The court said it would issue its verdict on June 26.

Abbas said he believes the government’s escalation might include arrests and prosecutions. The government-owned newspaper al-Ahram reported on April 17, that the Social Solidarity and Manpower Ministries were looking into the funds of independent unions after “monitoring communications between theses unions and foreign international organizations aiming at instigating workers’ protests.”



*Photo courtesy of Hossam el-Hamalawy

1,277 detained in protests against Sisi's handover of islands to KSA

Mada Masr
Front states over 1,000 detained in recent demonstrations in Egypt

Friday, April 29, 2016

The Front to Defend Egyptian Protesters published a report on Thursday, documenting 1,277 arrests and detentions between April 15 and 27, the period coinciding with popular mobilizations against Egyptian authorities prompted by the transfer of Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia.

The list issued by the front documents cases spanning across 22 Egyptian cities wherein 577 individuals have been referred to the prosecution and 619 have been released. The legal status of 81 cases is unclear, according to the front's lawyers.

Those arrested are predominately men and include 52 minors.

Yasser Azzam, who was arrested in Dokki on April 25, was released on Thursday from a Central Security Forces camp. He told Mada Masr that he was kept in a 12-square-meter cell with another 40 inmates. The men were forced to sleep on the floor, as the camp authorities did not provide beds or mattresses.

"We demanded to go to the bathroom, so Central Security Forces came to our cells trying to scare us. But we continued protesting until they let us use the bathroom," Azzam said.

While in detention, Azzam states he was asked about his opinion on "the January 25 revolution, the June 30 events, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the government’s performance."

Fatemah Serag, a lawyer and member of the front, notes that wide ranging suspicion led to the high number of arbitrary arrests from places far from demonstration sites and the subsequent release of 60 percent of those arrested.

Other lawyers have criticized the prosecution’s handling of arrests and referrals to investigation.

Lawyer Yasmine Hossam Eddin told Mada Masr that the prosecution issued "false visit permits" to family members of those arrested on April 15 and that are currently being detained in the Tora prison.

"In the Agouza Police Station [where some protesters have been detained], I saw how prosecutors were screaming at arrested youth as though they were policemen and not investigators," Hossam Eddin said.

Lawyer Ahmad Othman told Mada Masr that prosecutors present at the Agouza Police Station and the Dokki Police Station did not intervene when police officers prevented defense lawyers from attending detainee’s interrogation sessions.

"The prosecution also refused to record how those arrested were held longer than the 24-hour legal period between their arrests and referral to investigation. It also refused to record how arrest warrants were issued after the detainees were in fact arrested...[and] to record the fact that National Security Agency members interrogated those arrested before they were referred to prosecution," Othman stated.

The prosecution has also refused lawyer’s requests to record incidents of torture that occurred in detention centers, lawyer Sameh Samir told Mada Masr. "We don't want the prosecutors to do anything beyond recording these facts in the cases files," he said.

Prosecutors have also often interrogated detainees inside police stations where they have faced torture, a practice contested by lawyers. While it is not illegal to conduct interrogations there, lawyers state that the non-neutral setting is inappropriate for the legal process.

"There is almost an agreement that the prosecution is not a neutral player in human rights cases," says Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression lawyer Hassan al-Azhari.

Azhari called for lawyers to protest the prosecution’s actions by boycotting interrogations in an attempt to showcase the process’s lack of credibility.

During the reign of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, police officers and state security officers were often hired as prosecutors. The practice is widely contended to be the reason for the prosecutor’s lack of independence from the executive branch.

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READ ALSO: 

43 Egyptian & foreign journalists detained/arrested while covering Tiran & Sanafir protests 

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*Photo courtesy of El5abar.com

Egypt falls again in 'World Press Freedom Index' - Now ranked 159 / 180

REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS/RSF
Egypt falls again in World Press Freedom Index, now ranked 159th

April 20, 2016

Amid growing hostility to media criticism of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government, Egypt has fallen one place in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index that Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published today.

 

The Egyptian media environment is dynamic and the media reflect the country’s polarization between support for Sisi and opposition, but the authoritarian regime has used the fraught security situation to crack down on critical journalists in the name of stability and national security.

Now ranked 159th out of 180 countries, Egypt had fallen steadily in the Index since the end of the Mubarak era, when it was ranked 127th out of 173 countries. Under President Mohammed Morsi, Egypt was ranked 158th of 178 countries in 2012 and 2013.

With more than 20 journalists currently detained on trumped-up charges, Egypt is now one of the world’s biggest prisons for media personnel although, in an interview for CNN last September, President Sisi claimed that his country’s journalists enjoyed “unprecedented” freedom of expression.

A few days before the interview, Sisi pardoned two Al-Jazeera journalists who had been sentenced to three years in prison in August 2015 after being convicted, at the end of a second trial, of supporting terrorism, spreading false news and working without permission.

Some journalists have been held provisionally for extremely long periods without seeing a judge.

They include Mahmoud Abou Zeid, a photographer also known as Shawkan, who was arrested while covering the eviction of deposed President Morsi’s supporters from Cairo’s Rabaa Al-Adawiya Square in August 2013.

He was due to go on trial along with more than 700 other defendants in December 2015, but the start of the trial was postponed until March. According to the relatives of detained journalists, some have been badly tortured in prison while others have been denied adequate medical care although very ill.

Journalists who criticize Sisi or his government are liable to be harassed, fired or even jailed. And in response to Jihadi violence in the Sinai Peninsula, the government has imposed “correct” media coverage of armed attacks and bombings.

After creating a “Fact check Egypt” unit in June 2015 to verify media reports and point out (alleged) mistakes, the government went one step further in the anti-terrorism law adopted in August. Under article 33, the media are now obliged to limit themselves to the government’s version of terrorist attacks. Reporters who fail to comply can be fined the equivalent of more than a year’s salary.

Published annually by RSF since 2002, the World Press Freedom Index measures the level of freedom available to journalists in 180 countries using the following criteria – pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative environment, transparency, infrastructure, and abuses.



*Photo of journalists' protest courtesy of Shbabbek.com

 

100s protest as policeman shoots dead tea vendor & injures 2 others

BBC NEWS
Egypt protest after tea vendor 'killed by police'

19 April, 2016

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Egypt's capital, Cairo, to protest after a tea vendor was allegedly shot dead by police.

The unrest erupted after a policeman allegedly killed the man and wounded two others during an argument over the price of a cup of tea.

The policeman has been arrested and the case referred to prosecutors.

Video footage showed angry protesters overturning a police vehicle while chanting "the police are thugs."


Egypt has seen a series of allegations of police brutality in recent months, stoking public anger.

The interior ministry said that Tuesday's incident in the eastern suburb of Rehab began with an argument over the price of a cup of tea between several policeman and a street vendor.

One policeman opened fire, killing the vendor and wounding two passersby, it added.

Photographs showed what appeared to be a man lying still on the floor, covered in blood, surrounded by angry onlookers.

Witnesses said the protest began shortly after the incident.

"Security forces brought in two riot police vehicles and an armoured truck and the victim's family is here and pelting them with rocks," one witness told the Reuters news agency.

"Security forces are retreating and promising justice but the crowd is demanding police hand over the killer."

In February, there was a protest outside the Cairo security directorate after a policeman reportedly shot dead a driver in a street in an argument over a fare.

There were also riots in Ismailia and the southern city of Luxor after at least three people died in police custody in a single week in November.

The government has also been forced to repeatedly deny allegations that security services were responsible for the killing of Italian academic Giulio Regeni in Cairo earlier this year.

Officials have blamed a criminal gang for his abduction and torture.




*Video Courtesy of Euronews

Largest demonstration since 2013 Coup, protesters demand fall of Sisi for handover of islands to KSA

REUTERS
Protesters demand fall of Egypt's government over islands deal
 
Fri Apr 15, 2016

CAIRO | By Ahmed Aboulenein and Eric Knecht

 

Thousands of Egyptians angered by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's decision to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia called on Friday for the government to fall, chanting a slogan from the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.

Their protests signaled that the former general, who is also under mounting criticism over the struggling economy, no longer enjoys the broad public support that let him round up thousands of opponents after he seized power in 2013.

In the evening, riot police who had surrounded the site of the biggest demonstration, in the heart of downtown Cairo, dispersed the crowd with tear gas, Reuters witnesses said.

Egyptian security forces detained a total of 119 protesters at several demonstrations, according to security officials.

Sisi's government prompted an outcry in Egyptian newspapers and on social media last week when it announced an accord that put the uninhabited Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir in Saudi waters.

"The people want the downfall of the regime!" protesters cried outside the Cairo press syndicate, using the signature chant of the 2011 revolt against then-president Hosni Mubarak, who later stepped down.

They also chanted: "Sisi - Mubarak", "We don't want you, leave" and "We own the land and you are agents who sold our land." In other parts of Cairo, police fired tear gas at protesters, security sources said.

The U.S. government, which sees Cairo as a critical Middle East ally, will continue to watch carefully the situation in Egypt, the White House said.

Saudi and Egyptian officials say the islands belong to the kingdom across the Red Sea and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them.

Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf Arab states showered Egypt with billions of dollars in aid and grants after Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, following mass protests against him.

But a sharp drop in oil prices and differences with Cairo over such regional issues as the war in Yemen have raised questions over whether strong Gulf Arab support can be sustained.

MISHANDLED CRISES

Egyptians are eager for an economic revival after years of political upheaval. But the islands issue seems to have hurt their national pride, prompting thousands to return to the streets to confront their leader.

There are no signs that Sisi's rule is under immediate threat. However, even local media, which once suggested he could do no wrong, have been attacking the president.

Critics say the government has mishandled a series of crises, from an investigation into the killing of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, 28, in Cairo, to a bomb that brought down a Russian airliner in the Sinai Peninsula last October.

Torture marks on Regini's body prompted human rights groups to conclude he died at the hands of security forces, which Egypt denies. That revived complaints of police brutality, one of the issues that led Egyptians to challenge Mubarak's 30-year rule.

Sisi has made fighting corruption a top priority. But he drew fire last month after sacking Hesham Geneina, Egypt's top auditor, who had stirred controversy by publicly concluding that state corruption had cost the country billions of dollars.

In a tweet, Geneina described the protests as the "purest, bravest and most noble demonstration of Egyptians" in decades.

Many Egyptians enthusiastically welcomed Sisi when he took over. They turned a blind eye as Islamists and other opponents were rounded up, swelling the number of political prisoners to about 40,000, according to estimates by human rights groups.

PATIENCE WITH SISI FADING

A growing number are now losing patience over corruption, poverty and unemployment, the same issues that led to Mubarak's downfall, while Sisi has appeared increasingly authoritarian in televised speeches.

"We want the downfall of the regime," said Abdelrahman Abdellatif, 29, an air conditioning engineer, at the Cairo protest. "The youth of the revolution are still here ... We are experiencing unprecedented fascism and dictatorship."

There were also Sisi supporters, including a woman wearing a shirt with an image of the former military intelligence chief.

In Alexandria, around 500 people gathered near a railway station. Meanwhile, 300 Sisi supporters holding up photographs of him demonstrated outside a mosque in the port city.

Calls for protests have gathered thousands of supporters on Facebook, including from the outlawed Brotherhood, which accused Sisi of staging a coup when it was ousted and rolling back freedoms won after hundreds of thousands of Egyptians protested five years ago in Cairo's Tahrir Square against Mubarak.


*Photos courtesy of Reuters
**Additional reporting by Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, Ola Noureldin, Ali Abdelaty and Omar Fahmy in Cairo and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Larry King