Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Thousands in the square, now the army general strike: "We will not use force"

CAIRO - President Hosni Mubarak is increasingly under siege in Egypt, the army also claims to find just the demands of the people, and ensures that it will not use force against the demonstrators. Attempts to appease the revolt does not seem to yield results: the seventh day of demonstrations Tahrir Square, the heart of the protests in Cairo, was once filled with tens of thousands of people, defying the curfew (which has been brought forward to 14, 13 in Italy), calling for the end of the regime.

The protesters have called for a "general strike" indefinitely and a procession of a million people in Cairo and - according to some sources, also in Alexandria, they plan to give the final push to Mubarak. The situation is calm for now, but it is a tense calm. In view of the parade which promises to be impressive the last internet provider Egyptian still active, the Noor Group, has been turned off and now the country is completely offline.

The government has also decided to stop the mobile network. For now, the Egyptian president refuses to resign. In an attempt to stay in the saddle, has announced the new government from which they disappeared the hated Interior Minister Habib el-Hadly, mainly responsible for the bloody crackdown and who controlled the security forces accused of systematic human rights violations : in its place went Mahmud Wagdi, retired police general, former head of the penitentiary institutions.

In an obvious attempt to play the last card, Mubarak has also launched an appeal for dialogue with the opposition, immediately rejected the sender by the Muslim Brotherhood, "Too late." However, the Egyptian Vice-President, Omar Suleiman, announced on television that he was commissioned to open the dialogue with all opposition forces.

Mubarak has sided with the pope of the Coptic Church, Shenouda III, who said he had spoken with the Egyptian president to wish that God give you strength and protect it for the good of Egypt. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamic education, has announced to support without reservation the Egyptians "who fight and resist" against Hosni Mubarak.

While the White House calls for "an orderly transition", calls for "negotiations with the opposition," but assures spokesman Robert Gibbs, "not sided either way for people nor for the government." The EU calls for "free and fair elections," but does not take sides. "In Egypt we must move towards democracy," said the head of Italian diplomacy, Franco Frattini arrived in Brussels for a meeting with EU colleagues, but what the international community is very concerned is "a solution that will bring the 'Radical Islamism in power.

" Cairo meanwhile appears to be under siege in shops and supermarkets are starting to run out bread and bottled water. The Foreign Ministry believes "reckless" to travel in the north African country and Italy has asked the Egyptian authorities to protect citizens and the EU diplomatic missions and has sent a C130 with a group of Police officers to protect the embassy.

One hundred Italians meanwhile landed this evening at the airport of Pratica di Mare Air Force C-130. However, tourists do not seem disheartened by these calls, even where those stories came back today is that should lead to caution: "We had moments of fear as we walked back along the highway from Alexandria, we have seen fire, we do not know if it was' army or police against detainees escaped, who traveled from all sides.

We saw the wounded ", said some tourists returned to Heathrow today (only because the holiday was over, but not for the repeated warnings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). To defend Mubarak are in fact part of the Arab countries - who fear a further contagion of "jasmine revolution" and compete to distinguish their situation from those of Tunis and Cairo - and Israel, which affirms the intention of maintaining the Treaty Peace with Egypt and the specter of another Islamic republic.

At the time, the new government was limited to some decision of public policy, as the daytime curfew - regularly breached by protesters today took to the streets in their thousands without that when you are registered victims - and to the limitation and termination of some services rail and air in an attempt to undermine the mass mobilizations: not much, considering that the country is a state of emergency in force since 1981 and has never been revoked.

As for the opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood have already rejected the legitimacy of the new government, urging the population to continue the demonstrations until the fall of the regime and in the meantime the Nobel Prize Mohamed ElBaradei was in charge of "negotiations" with the government , as "visible leadership" of the protests, but, as noted by the analysts, the first victim of regime change may be just the secular opposition, a minority compared to Muslim organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.

No comments:

Post a Comment