Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Election Day


I have changed my mind and decided to vote. I'm not happy about it, I think the elections are a sham, but since I stated publicly on Al Jazeera that I wasn't going to vote, I feel I have to put my thoughts down for the record. 

There are three main reasons:

1. The elections have been designed as a weapon against us. 

They have been designed to give SCAF supporters and the MB as big a slice of parliament as possible. For a long time I wasn't convinced that the MB and SCAF were co-ordinating. But having seen them build the wall to contain the revolution last Thursday I finally accepted it. 

The hierarchical, patriarchal, nationalist-but-self-interested nature of the two organisations makes them perfect partners. It was the Military's dependence on American aid and America's supposed trepidation about Islamist parties that gave cause for doubt. Friends of SCAF Generals would anecdotally report that they had received direct instructions from Washington not to allow the MB to take more than 30% of parliament. 

We'll see how things turn out, but it certainly seems now that the power triangle of the Military, the MB and SCAF may have found a balance that satisfies all of them. 

And so, if by voting, I have a 0.0001% chance of disrupting their goals for parliament, and by not voting I clearly have a 0% chance, then I will take the 0.0001% and vote.


2. Voting is not a vote on SCAF's legitimacy

I think that what we saw on Tuesday and Friday, on those two millioneyas, was a public declaration of SCAF's illegitimacy. There was no hesitation about the chants - everyone was unified in calling for an end to military rule and for the removal of the Field Marshall. Now that same declaration is being made through voting, that same resistance to the designs of those who have been preparing for these days is being shown. 


3. Voting and Tahrir are not mutually exclusive

This is the most important point of the three, and I think those of us in Tahrir need to make sure that people who aren't in the Square every day do not feel alienated from Tahrir, or less revolutionary for having voted. 

No one is expecting voting to achieve the aims of the revolution. I don't think anyone even wants to vote. The elections are  a sham. But they are one of the battles that are being forced on us so I think we should engage.

The revolution will rise or fall on how widespread it is. Tahrir was most effective when it was the physical representation of a national will; when the country was shut down because of it and the wave of union actions behind it. It can be that again, but we have to make sure it keeps feeling like everyone's home.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

The Death of Ahmed Sorour

Yesterday, at 7.30am, seven Central Security Forces trucks pulled up at the entrance to Parliament St. The latest part of the administrative centre of Cairo to be occupied by revolutionaries.

As they arrived everyone quickly sprung from under their blankets and ran to stand in the road in front of them, chanting at them, waving them away.

After a few minutes of uncertainty, the trucks began to turn, slowly, to head away.

The seven trucks chaotically U-Turned, gently bumping into each other as they went.

They turned the corner and drove away. We had won, they had been driven away. Then, one minute later, a group of men are running towards us carrying  a body on their shoulders. The 19 year old body of Ahmed al Sayed Sorour.

When I saw him his lower half was covered in blood and he was unconscious. Later, we would re-trace the little puddles to find the spot he was injured in.

He was raced to an ambulance in Tahrir and taken to hospital. Two hours later it was confirmed that he had died.

Vlogger and activist @sarrahsworld was with his family at the hospital and then the morgue. She reported that the coroner announced he had died of a 'shattered pelvis.'

State TV / SCAF began broadcasting their version of events from around 9am, stating that the trucks had taken a wrong turn and, in their panicked retread, had run Surour over, and he had died of a shattered pelvis.

This is being pushed as the narrative, but based on what I saw on the day and research done since, I believe it is a lie.

There are two main component to the State narrative:

1. The trucks had taken a wrong turn.

Apart from the clear absurdity of this statement, which implies that several units of the police were unaware that there was a revolution going on in the centre of Cairo, we can see from the video below that seven trucks arrived and parked simultaneously. And they arrived in rows of two which, for trucks in transit, is irregular.



2. Ahmed Surour was killed by being run over

There are several reasons to believe this is untrue:

- The trucks are not moving very quickly at all. Though it was chaotic it hardly seems chaotic enough for an able-bodied young man to be run over.

- The nature of the wound does not look like it resulted from impact with a vehicle. Look at this still image from the video. It clearly looks like a single bullet hole to his lower back.



- The cause of death at the morgue was stated to be a "shattered pelvis," which made room for SCAF to declare he was run over. But, according to the actor, Khalid Abdalla, a bullet to the pelvis can cause massive shattering of the bone, leading to a fatal internal haemorrhage. He knows this through conversations with an American sniper, who was working as a technical advisor on his last film Green Zone. The sniper told him that they are, in fact, trained to aim for the pelvis with their first shot because it is lethal shot, though it doesn't appear so at first. Then, when people gather around the victim to find out what has happened, they are picked off one by one with head shots.

I am not implying that he was killed by a sniper, but this piece of information tells us that it is possible to die from one bullet wound to the lower back. Which leads me to believe that SCAF are lying about Sorour's cause of death and that he was shot by a policeman.

Friday, November 25, 2011

When Tahrir is in Action, Tahrir is Democarcy

This comment piece first appeared in the Guardian on Friday November 25th.




For five days a battle has raged across downtown Cairo between the Central Security Forces (CSF) and unarmed protestors. At least forty people are dead. Thousands are injured. There are seven field hospitals and hundreds of doctors at work in Tahrir Square. 




It has centred on Mohamed Mahmoud St., the road leading from Tahrir Square in the direction of the hated Ministry of the Interior, whose jurisdiction the police forces fall under. For 110 hours revolutionaries and the CSF have fought for its control. The revolutionaries aiming for the Ministry. The CSF aiming for Tahrir. The revolutionaries armed with rocks ripped up from the pavements. The CSF armed with shotguns, rifles and CS gas acquired from around the world. I have seen shotgun shells and bullet casings from Italy, China, USA, Libya and the Czech Republic; tear gas canisters from CTS in Pennsylvania and Chemring in Hampshire. And their supply is seemingly unlimited. Egypt bought 32,000 units of tear gas from the US in 2009 alone.

At least three people have died from asphyxia.

This violence has sparked part two of our revolution, and the pressure on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to step aside to democracy is intense. For every body carried away from the front line to the field hospital, another twenty arrive the next day. Monday's proposed elections have lost any glimmer of legitimacy they had. While Tahrir is in action, Tahrir is democracy. 

But there are key parties with a deep investment in these elections: SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood. And yesterday they set about working to strangle our renewed revolutionary vigour. 

Though the Brotherhood have repeatedly declared themselves to be part of the Revolutionary forces, they explicitly refused to join this renewed wave of protest when the call went out for a millioneyya (million-person protest) on Tuesday. And when the Square pulsed with Mubarak-level numbers they were left looking irrelevant, self-interested and disconnected from the will of the people. 

So yesterday the Army and the Brotherhood joined forces to build a wall across the battle lines. The Army enforced a ceasefire, moved in with a bulldozer, a crane and cement blocks. The Brotherhood dispatched dozens of mid-level members and sheikhs from al-Azhar to cheer them on and push people - against their will - away and into the square. When it became clear that violence wasn't scaring people away, that it was only emboldening them, they decided it had to end. 




The elections must go on. 

So now there is a Wall. For the second time since taking charge, SCAF have taken their cue from our neighbour to the East. This is how they end violence. Not by controlling the police. Not by listening to people's demands. Not by stepping aside to democracy. But by trying to strangle their will. For as much as this Revolution believes in peace, it hates the police. The police who beat people to death on the streets, the police who fire shotguns into crowds of civilians, the police who torture people before asking them a single question. 

But this fake peace will not be enough. The Army and the Brotherhood continue to think simplistically. When they find violence wont keep people away, they try peace instead. They think that if we stop seeing people's bloodied bodies on television people will go back to being herded towards these elections. 

But, as usual, they are wrong. Today is going to be huge. There will be tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people out across the country unified, once again, in their demands. For the SCAF to step down, for a civilian transitional council to take full legislative power to take us to real elections and for us to begin to live in the freedom that over 1,000 people have died fighting for.