Samira Ibrahim, The Women Who Brought The Case Against An Army Doctor Accused of Conducting Forced “Virginity Tests”, Is Acquitted
For Samira Ibrahim, and many other Egyptians, the struggle to remake their country didn’t end with the ouster last year of Hosni Mubarak.
Ibrahim, a 25-year-old from southern Egypt, was arrested by the military during a protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in March of last year, a month after Mubarak was overthrown.
While in custody, Ibrahim said that she and six other young women were subjected to a co-called “virginity check” — a forced penetration to check for hymen blood. Amnesty International has called the procedure as a form of torture.
After her release, Ibrahim filed suit against the military in a closely watched case as the country’s military rulers come under increasing scrutiny.
Earlier this month, a military tribunal ruled against Ibrahim, who stepped out of the courtroom sobbing. But the verdict only seemed to strengthen the resolve of Egyptian activists who want to put an end to military trials of civilians.
U.S. Approves $1.3 Billion Dollars In Military Aid To Egypt’s Military Dictatorship
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the green light Friday for U.S. military aid to Egypt despite concerns that Cairo was not meeting goals in its democratic transition.
Clinton waived conditions placed by Congress on the 1.3 billion dollars of aid - requiring Egypt to meet certain democratic reforms before being granted the funds - saying the move was in the United States’ national interest.
“Egypt’s transition to democracy is not yet complete, and more work remains to protect universal rights and freedoms. The Egyptian people themselves have made this clear to their own leaders,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
Congress passed a law late last year that required Egypt’s military rulers to support a transition to civilian rule, hold elections and protect religious freedom in order to get the longstanding U.S. aid.
Senator Patrick Leahy, who had been among the policy’s strongest proponents after U.S. non-governmental organizations and their workers in Egypt were harassed by authorities, expressed disappointment in the State Department decision.
“Waiving the new conditions on democracy and human rights is regrettable, and handing over the entire 1.3 billion dollars at once to the Egyptian military compounds the mistake by dissipating our future leverage.Using this waiver authority, at this time, sends a contradictory message. The Egyptian military should be defending fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, not harassing and arresting those who are working for democracy.” he said.
Congress had acted to step up pressure on Cairo after the offices of the U.S. NGOs and other international groups were raided and workers were temporarily kept from leaving the country. A trial in the case is set to resume next month.
Egypt has just been plunged into a new cycle of violence. Thirteen people have been killed in five days of protests around the country sparked by anger at the authorities’ inability to prevent a riot at a soccer match last week that left 74 people dead.
Protesters charged that police did nothing to stop the violence at a soccer stadium in Port Said on Thursday. Some say the nation’s military rulers deliberately caused it, to take revenge against soccer fans (known as Ultras) who joined protests, and to show the military must remain in power.
Starting at dawn, armored vehicles with police swept through streets near the downtown Cairo Interior Ministry, shooting at protesters with birdshot and tear gas, said Dr. Malek el-Assal at a field hospital.
One protester was killed early Monday in Cairo, said el-Assal.
Among those injured Monday was Salma Said (above), a prominent pro-democracy blogger who was reportedly wounded by bird shot in the face fired by a police officer.
She reportedly received three pellets in her face, and 26 in one leg.
Family members said she was recovering at a hospital.
At least four people have been killed in the latest unrest in Egypt, amid anger over 74 deaths after a football match in Port Said on Wednesday.
Most of the dead were believed to be al-Ahly supporters. Hardcore fans - known as “ultras” - have accused the authorities of allowing the killings to happen.
They say the authorities wanted revenge because the ultras were among those battling the police during last year’s revolution that ousted strongman leader Hosni Mubarak.
Protesters intensified their assault on Egyptian police in a second day of clashes that have killed at least 7* people and exposed the growing frustration with authorities expected to manage the country’s transition to democracy.
Demonstrators flooded the area around Egypt’s Interior Ministry for a second day to protest what many said was the police’s intentional inaction during a deadly soccer riot in the Mediterranean port town of Port Said on Wednesday that killed 74 people.
Police fired tear-gas canisters to beat back the surge of mostly young male protesters. Ambulances rushed in and out of the crowd as demonstrators broke sidewalk pavement to use as rocks to lob at the police.
The anger at the Egyptian security forces was bolstered by the kidnapping and release of two American women and their Egyptian guide as they returned from a pilgrimage site on the remote, sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula, where a diminished police presence has allowed for a surge of violent crime.
In response to the crisis, the ruling military council issued a statement late Friday saying the country is passing through “the most dangerous and most important phase in Egypt’s history,” and calling on Egyptians to unite in the face of discord.
Egyptians have criticized the military for passing two recent laws without seeking parliamentary approval—one governing presidential elections and the other reorganizing the leadership of Al Azhar, a pre-eminent Islamic university controlled by the Egyptian state.
Caught in mayhem: RT crew tear-gassed in Egypt 2/03/12
A crew from RT’s Arabic-language channel Rusiya al-Yaum got under fire from tear gas in Egyptian capital during clashes between protesters and police on Thursday night.
Mass unrest erupted in Egypt after Wednesday’s fatal stampede at a football match in Port Said. Many Egyptians accuse the military authorities of deliberately provoking the violence to create instability and prevent a peaceful transfer of power.
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians gather at Tahrir Square to celebrate the one year anniversary of the uprising that led to the topple of President Hosni Mubarak.
Thousands of women massed in Tahrir Square here on Tuesday afternoon and marched to a journalists’ syndicate and back in a demonstration that grew by the minute into an extraordinary expression of anger at the treatment of women by the military police as they protested against continued military rule.
Many held posters of the most sensational image of violence over the last weekend: a group of soldiers pulling the abaya off a prone woman to reveal her blue bra as one raises a boot to kick her. The picture, circulated around the world, has become a rallying point for activists opposed to military rule, though cameras also captured soldiers pulling the clothes off other women.
The march, guarded by a cordon of male protesters, was a surprising turn. In Egypt, as in other countries swept by the revolts of the Arab Spring, women played important roles, raising hopes that broader social and political rights would emerge along with more accountable governments. But with the main popular focus on preparing for elections and protesting the military’s continued hold on power, women here had grown less politically visible.
The women’s protest came on the fifth day of violent clashes between Egyptian soldiers and protesters. The severity of the military’s defense of its hold on power, even as the newly elected Parliament begins to take shape, has restored a degree of unity that had been missing among the civilian political factions, liberal and Islamist, since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February.
(Photo: Asmaa Waguih / Reuters via the New York Times)
Egypt’s ruling generals are coming under mounting criticism at home and abroad for the military’s use of excessive force against unarmed protesters, including women, as they try to crush the pro-democracy movement calling for their ouster.
At least 14 people have been killed in five days of clashes as troops used guns, tear gas and batons to try to break up protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and around it, where a number of important government buildings are located. Troops and riot police raided Tahrir again early Tuesday in their latest attempt to evict protesters, a field hospital doctor who witnessed the crackdown said.
Social-media-savvy protesters have widely circulated some of the most brutal images of the crackdown. In one, soldiers drag a young woman on the ground, stripped half naked and stomp on her.
Those images drew the ire of the U.N. rights chief and unusually harsh words from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Addressing students at Georgetown University on Monday, Mrs. Clinton said the events in Egypt in recent days were shocking, and she accused the Egyptian security forces and extremists of specifically targeting women.
“And now, women are being attacked, stripped, and beaten in the streets,” she said. “This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people.”
BREAKING: Protesters are being shot with live rounds in Tahrir.
**Daily Update**
Egypt Braces For Fresh Clashes After Protester’s Death
The killing of an unarmed demonstrator by the police on Saturday threatened to stir up new protests here as Egypt’s military rulers and political parties braced for potential chaos surrounding the parliamentary elections scheduled to start on Monday.
An outpouring of anger over the episode, in which a protester was run over by a police truck, added to fears that continued protests and violence would undermine the integrity of the vote, the first since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak nine months ago.
The death recalled the event that set off the recent uprising, when the heavy-handed eviction of a small protest camp in Tahrir Square galvanized public anger against the military’s power grab.
That eviction set off five days of clashes with the security police that left more than 40 dead and 2,000 injured, and it drew hundreds of thousands back to the square in recreations of the two-week sit-in that ousted Mr. Mubarak in February.
Although it was widely reported here on Friday that a contingent of demonstrators had moved to the cabinet building from the sit-in in Tahrir Square, the police in the trucks were surprised to see them, the Interior Ministry said in a statement on Saturday. In the confusion, the police fired tear gas into the crowd and ran over one of the demonstrators, Ahmed Sayed El Soroor, 19, killing him.
By midday Saturday, outraged protesters were talking about carrying the 19-year-old’s coffin to Tahrir Square for a public funeral.
“I wish youth in Tahrir wouldn’t leave the square before their demands are met because I see Ahmed, my son, in all of them,” his mother, Zeinab Ali Abdel Salam, told the state newspaper, Al Ahram.
“We are in the midst of a decisive battle in the face of a potentially terminal crackdown. Over the past 72 hours the army has launched a ceaseless assault on revolutionaries in Tahrir Square and squares across Egypt. Over 2000 of us have been injured. More than 30 of us have been murdered. Just in Cairo alone. In the last 48 hours.”
But the revolutionaries keep coming. Hundreds of thousands are in Tahrir and in other squares across the country. We are facing down their gas, cudgels, shotguns and machine-gun fire. The army and police attack again and again, but we are holding the lines, holding them back. The dead and wounded are carried away on foot or motorbikes and others take their place.
The violence will escalate – for WE WILL NOT MOVE. The junta does not want to give up its power. We want the junta gone.
The future of the revolution hangs in the balance; those of us in the square are ready to die for freedom and social justice. The butchers attacking us are willing to kill us to stay in control.
I am crying my eyes out because the people of Egypt are pleading for help. They are DYING. Right this second, and this second and this second. And nobody is helping. Why? Why?
People are dying for their rights, for their freedom, and they are getting no help. It’s not right. My God, what has the world come to? Why is there so much hate?
*Update from Egypt* - Nerve Gas Used On Protesters
A banned chemical agent has reportedly been used by the Egyptian military as the brutal crackdown against tens of thousands of protesters has overshadowed prospects of a democratic transfer in the country.
Rashes, epileptic-type convulsions, temporary blindness and coughing up blood are among the symptoms being reported by Egyptian protesters who have fallen victim to a potentially lethal form of neuro-toxic nerve gas reportedly being deployed by security forces.
After almost a week of protests against the ruling military junta left some 41 people dead, several sources claim scores have died from gas asphyxiation, while thousands more have received medical treatment after possibly being exposed to an agent known as CR gas.
CR gas, which is up to 10 times more powerful than tear gas which is commonly used today, is no longer used by the United States due to its carcinogenic properties. The US military has categorized it as a combat-class chemical agent.
This should be taken very seriously. Nerve Gas is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the UN. Nerve Gas can lead to death by asphyxiation as control is lost over respiratory muscles. The deadly gas is banned in most countries INCLUDING EGYPT.
At least 37 people have been killed in five days of protest and clashes with Egyptian security forces. Thousands more have been injured. Some protesters are reporting use of live ammunition by Egyptian military. The clashes are the longest spate of uninterrupted violence since the 18-day uprising that toppled the former regime in February.
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