Thousands of protesters marched on the Egyptian interior ministry in Cairo yesterday, amid growing anger over the riot at Wednesday’s football (soccer) match in Port Said between Cairo’s Ahly club and Port Said’s Al-Masry club.
Just as the match ended, hooligans stormed onto the field to attack Ahly players and fans with knives, bottles, clubs, and firecrackers. At least 73 people were killed and 1,000 wounded, with 200 in serious condition. Security forces present at the stadium did nothing to halt the assault.[death toll updated to 79]
Demonstrators in Cairo marched through Tahrir Square, the iconic center of revolutionary working class struggles last year that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. They then marched on the interior ministry, chanting slogans against Egypt’s US-backed military dictatorship, led by Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi: “Down, down with the military” and “Tomorrow we step on the face of the field marshal.”
There were violent clashes last night outside the interior ministry, as security forces faced off against over 10,000 protesters. Police fired heavy volleys of tear gas as protesters cut through barbed wire fences protecting the ministry and toppling concrete barriers that have protected its offices since last November’s protests.
Protesters burned tires and organized crews of motorcycle drivers to ferry wounded protesters to hospitals. Some 100 protesters passed out, reportedly due to heavy use of tear gas.
[Rioting continued and in fact escalated today, 2/3/12, first reports of deaths have come in, while the injured toll has passed 1000]........
A class gulf separates the reactions of the political parties to this incident from those of the population, who responded to the event not by demands to remove various parliamentary figureheads for the junta, but for the overthrow of the US-backed junta.
The fans, or ultras, of the Ahly club issued a statement denouncing the military junta: “They want to punish and execute us for our participation in the revolution against suppression.” The fans called for “new war in defense of the revolution.”
The clashes yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the famous “Battle of the Camels,” when Mubarak tried to defeat the revolution by sending police thugs mounted on camels through army lines to clear protesters off Tahrir square. The protesters defeated the thugs in street fighting, however, and nine days later Mubarak was forced to step down.
Reports suggest that the Al-Masry riot was a political ambush abetted by police on the Ahly fans, who have played an important role in anti-regime protests. Together with fans of the Zamalek White Knights, a rival football club in nearby Giza, they participated in street fighting in Cairo, first against the Mubarak regime and then the military junta that replaced him.
Le Monde cited Sophie Pommier, an Egypt scholar for the Institute of Political Studies in Paris: “During the revolution, they played an important role by contributing their experience of street fighting against the security forces, allowing the revolutionaries to hold Tahrir Square. After Mubarak’s fall, they continued to clash with police and the junta which, in their opinion, have stolen power. They also played a role in other affairs, including the attack on the Israeli embassy and on the Interior Ministry.”........
The police at the Port Said match on Wednesday responded with a total failure to enforce normal security procedures. Port Said’s governor and local security chief unexpectedly did not attend, while Al-Masry fans chanted slogans in support of Tantawi and the junta and threw stones or other projectiles at the Ahly fans. Egyptian police made no attempt to hold fans from the two teams apart from each other as Al-Masry fans stormed the field, climbing onto the Ahly fans’ bleachers, and began to attack.
One Al-Masry fan told the Guardian: “A police officer told supporters to come onto the pitch, the gates to the pitch were opened on purpose by someone before the game started … When the match was over, supporters rushed onto the pitch and then the lights went off. People didn’t know who was with whom. I then saw people throwing the al-Ahly supporters from the stands. The gate at the exit was also closed by someone on purpose.”
According to Twitter reports, many of the Ahly fans were killed or hurt when they found that exits through which they were trying to flee the stadium were locked. Stuck inside narrow corridors blocked by the locked doors, they were crushed by armed gangs of Al-Masry fans.
World-famous Egyptian football players on the Ahly team, barricaded inside their locker room, reported the ongoing massacre by phone, asking for help. Mohamed Abu Trika said, “The security forces left us, they did not protect us. One fan has just died in the dressing room in front of me.”........
Mahmoud Hani, who lost a friend in the clashes, said: “It is clear that the fight was arranged and the security forces participated in this, to take the spotlight away from the revolution. The state needs people to be focused on something else.”
Another Ahly fan said, “The military is working for the old regime. The regime hasn’t changed, only Hosni Mubarak has changed. The military doesn’t want change. They want revenge on the revolution and to keep the country corrupt.”

On Friday protests against the Egyptian military junta spread all over the country. The protests are a response to the pro-regime football riots in Port Said on Wednesday, when 74 supporters of Egypt’s most famous football club El-Ahly were killed and several hundred injured.
In downtown Cairo thousands of workers and youth tore down the wall erected by the army in Mohamed Mahmoud Street during the last clashes in November and surrounded the Ministry of Interior. They called for the downfall of the regime and the execution of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the leader of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) junta.
Fierce clashes between heavily armed Central Security Forces (CSF) and protesters continued during all of Thursday night and continued on Friday. The CSF attacked protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets to prevent them from storming the ministry. Reportedly one protester was killed by a pellet and over 1,400 were injured.
In the port city of Suez, security forces fired live rounds into crowds of protesters attacking a police station. Reportedly at least two were killed and many others injured. Protesters also attacked shops and destroyed the façade of the Suez Canal Bank. Police forces cordoned off the Suez state security headquarters and a compound of the justice ministry with razor wire.
In Alexandria, the funeral of 23-year-old Mahmoud El-Ghandour, the founder of the El-Ahly Ultras fan club in that city, turned into a demonstration against the junta. Protesters marched towards the military’s North District Command and chanted against the SCAF.
In Port Said, where the deadly massacre took place, thousands of protesters gathered in front of the governor’s headquarters chanting, “Port Said is innocent, this is the truth.” This slogan means that it was not the regular fans of Al-Masry who were responsible for the violence, but infiltrators working for the security forces.
A protester told the Egyptian Independent: “The Ahly supporters were predominantly from Port Said. My brother was one of them. Port Said is sad today, all residents of the city are sad and feel as if their own relatives have died.”
There is strong evidence that the deadly riot was an orchestrated act of violence.[See previous postings].....
Prosecutors arriving at the stadium on Friday found that a janitor had already washed the floor and walls of the visiting team’s locker room and removed any potential traces of blood. According to Ahly players, several wounded Ahly supporters died in the dressing room from their injuries. Inside the stadium itself, a forensic team found empty bullet casings in the seats in which Ahly fans sat.
The massacre is reminiscent of the events that happened exactly one year ago, when hired pro-government thugs attacked protesters with horses and camels on Tahrir Square in an attempt to crush the revolution..........
The director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, Gamal Eid, told Al Masry Al Youm that the SCAF aims to sow division in Egypt and that the junta would be the main beneficiary of the events.........
Frightened by a renewed explosion of the masses, the junta obviously aims to instigate thuggery and violence as a pretext to justify further security crackdowns.
This plan is supported by the whole Egyptian ruling elite. The right-wing Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement calling “for firmness in applying the law to everyone” in order to end “the state of security chaos and disorder in all parts of the country”............
When angry protesters climbed the tax office building in order to attack security forces with stones and Molotov cocktails, the petty bourgeois left forces intervened to stop them. Amr Hamed, the spokesman of the Revolution Youth Union, stated that his group managed to convince the demonstrators not to occupy the building. “The building was not stormed. No damage has taken place inside the building. We persuaded the protesters to climb down to avoid blemishing their image. We don’t want anyone to accuse our peaceful demonstrations of damaging public property.”..........
In a statement issued on Thursday, the petty bourgeois alliance calls on the new parliament—which is dominated by right-wing Islamists and was elected on a low turnout under military rule—to assume political responsibility and undertake measures to counter “the recent deliberate and systematic acts of killing and instigating chaos for the aim of sabotaging and aborting the revolution,” demanding that the military council should hand over power to a civilian authority immediately.
This amounts to nothing more than changing the parliamentary façade behind which the junta rules, even though the masses themselves have made clear they demand the overthrow of the US-backed junta itself.

U.S. warns Egypt over detained NGO workers
February 6, 2012 7:09 AM

(CBS News) As the chaos and protests continue in Egypt, there are now threats to the safety and security of 19 Americans working there, including the son of a member of President Obama's own cabinet.

Sam LaHood, the son of transportation secretary Ray LaHood, heads the Egypt office for the International Republican Institute.

He and at least four of his colleagues in Egypt have been banned from leaving the country, and are among 40 workers from non-governmental organizations an Egyptian judge plans to charge.

The Obama administration has said they are "deeply concerned" about these reports and are urging the Egyptian government to change course or risk billions in American aid.

The situation is so serious that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Munich this weekend, warned Egyptian officials that the U.S. could cut off more than a billion dollars in financial assistance put in place over the past year.

Over 40 NGO workers in Egypt face trial
Monday, February 06, 2012 05:59 +0900 (JST)

In Egypt, more than 40 pro-democracy aid workers, including US citizens, will face trial for allegedly using illegal foreign funds to foment unrest.

Egyptian authorities said on Sunday that they will refer 43 people to trial, including US citizens, Germans, and local Egyptians.

In a separate development, a non-partisan group of US lawmakers warned in a letter to Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that they are ready to consider suspending 1.3 billion dollars of US military aid to the country.

Thousands marched in Cairo, Alexandria, and other cities against the US-backed Egyptian military junta yesterday, in the lead-up to today’s one-day protest strike called to mark the one-year anniversary of the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The anniversary comes amid rising conflict between the junta and the working class. The state security forces’ role in a deadly assault on Ahly football fans, 74 of whom were killed at a match in Port Said on February 1, provoked bitter clashes last week outside state ministries. (See, “Mass protests in Egypt against pro-junta football riot”.) At least fifteen protesters have been killed in demonstrations over the last week.
Protesters in Cairo marched yesterday to the Defense Ministry in Cairo’s Abbasiya District, in a “Friday of Determination” protest called by youth groups and affiliated political parties to call for the junta to hand over power to a civilian administration. They chanted slogans demanding the downfall of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) government, and the execution of SCAF leader Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi.
In front of the Defense Ministry, they faced units of the army, which deployed extra tanks and infantrymen around ministries and state buildings. On an exterior wall of the Defense Ministry, repainted by soldiers to hide graffiti, protesters wrote: “Congratulations on the new paint, down with military rule.”
This graffiti highlights the enormous change in popular consciousness that has taken place over the past year. One year ago, millions of workers who had protested in Cairo and throughout Egypt applauded the army for not joining the police force in murderous attacks against the protesters. A popular chant was “The army and the people—one hand.”.........
After a year of mass protests and political oppression at the hands of the SCAF, the working class is turning against the army and is increasingly disillusioned with the petty-bourgeois “left” groups. During last week’s clashes with security forces after the Port Said soccer match, a popular chant was “The army, the police—one filthy hand.”
With the political atmosphere dominated by the one-year anniversary of the mass revolutionary struggles against Mubarak, there is a broad sense that Egypt stands on the verge of a renewed wave of revolutionary struggles.
This prospect inspires increasing dread and hostility in the Egyptian bourgeoisie. Writing in Egypt Independent, Khalil al-Anani labeled protesters a “mob,” noting that they have “lost confidence in the newly elected Parliament,” concluding: “Clearly, the mob has lost faith and trust in the state’s institutions, e.g. the judiciary, the government, and Parliament. … This skepticism could push the country to the edge of complete failure and disorder.”.........
Political officials and parties campaigned against protest actions during today’s strike, hoping to limit the impact of the event. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party ludicrously announced in Cairo that today’s protest should be a “clean-up day,” during which protesters should clean streets and public squares.
Religious officials denounced the strike. Al-Azhar University’s Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb and Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa urged the public to abstain from civil disobedience actions. Al-Tayeb asked Egyptians “not to delay work even for an hour,” claiming that “the Egyptian economy is facing a temporary challenge.”
Pope Shenouda III of Egypt’s Coptic Christian church reminded his listeners, according to Daily News Egypt, that “a lot of verses in the Bible urge us to obey the ruler.”..........
As it enters into renewed struggle against the junta, the working class will come directly into conflict not only with the army and its Islamist allies, but petty-bourgeois “left” groups who are seeking to emasculate the political struggles of the working class against the ruling elite.

Last week high-ranking US officials made clear that, despite the Egyptian military junta’s criticism of US-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Egypt, no cut-off of US military aid to Egypt is being considered. Washington thus reaffirmed its long-time support for the Egyptian army.
At the beginning of the week, US President Barack Obama called on the US Congress not to touch the US aid package to Egypt.
On Thursday the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, told Congress that cutting off aid would be against US interests, declaring: “We do have a very close partnership with them [the Egyptian junta]. They grant us great overflight rights, they grant us priority passage through the Suez Canal. I mean, we get things for our aid that truly we need.”
These comments come after a months-long standoff between Washington and the Egyptian junta, after the junta raided US government organizations that fund Egyptian NGOs last December. These include the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House. Heavily armed security forces arrested NGO workers and confiscated laptops and documents.
On Saturday Egyptian state media reported that the trial of 43 people, including at least 16 Americans, would begin on February 26. The American defendants face a travel ban, and some are currently staying in the American embassy in Cairo. The highest-profile defendant is Sam LaHood, the director of the IRI in Egypt and son of US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
Egyptian authorities charge the accused persons and groups with conducting illegal political work in Egypt and receiving illegal funding.
In recent weeks commentators often spoke about an emerging “crisis” in Egypt-US relations over the NGO dispute. Whatever these tensions, the comments of Obama and Dempsey make clear that these tensions are subordinate to the counter-revolutionary collaboration of US imperialism with the Egyptian military junta.
Since the beginning of the Egyptian revolution the US worked closely with the Egyptian military....
To hide this reactionary alliance, the Egyptian junta has tried to disorient opposition in the Egyptian working class to its collaboration with US imperialism by staging a limited conflict with Washington over the NGOs and appealing to anti-American sentiment.......
The Obama administration.... [has] increased funding [to NGOs] with an aim to gain back its control over Egypt. On Thursday Abouelnaga revealed before the parliamentary committee on human rights that not officially registered civil society organizations have received some $175 million between March and June 2011........
While the reports are still somewhat murky, the US government is clearly using its NGOs to work closely with petty-bourgeois “left” groups and “independent” trade unions to promote the interests of US imperialism and suppress political opposition in the Egyptian working class.
The arrest of Ahmed Ali during the crackdown on NGOs exemplifies this close connection. Ali is a member of the petty-bourgeois “left” Revolutionary Socialists working as a researcher in the Budgetary and Human Rights Observatory (BAHRO). The BAHRO receives funding of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization directly funded by the US government.

In the wake of a brutal massacre in Cairo, Egypt’s ruling military junta issued a public warning Thursday against further protests over the exclusion of candidates from the upcoming May 23 presidential election, threatening further violence against planned demonstrations outside the Ministry of Defense.
At a press conference called by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Major General Mokhtar al-Mulla warned that any further protests in Cairo’s Abbasseya Square, where the Ministry of Defense is located, would be suppressed by force.[Indeed, a demo there today was suppressed by force, at least one dead, many injured]......
Another SCAF leader, Major General Mohammed al-Assar, demanded that all political parties direct protesters away from Abbasseya Square. They should tell youth to “go to Tahrir Square,” he said, and “to stay away from the defense ministry because we don’t want to use any violence against our youths.”
Such statements make it clear that the military junta is behind the violence unleashed against protesters in Abbasseya Square Wednesday, when more than a dozen were killed and several hundred were wounded in a series of assaults by heavily armed thugs.........
When the thugs attacked Wednesday morning, they took their toll among supporters of all the different political tendencies in the square, carrying out an indiscriminate bloodbath. At least five youth were brought to the emergency room with fatal gunshot wounds to the head, while others had been stabbed and beaten, others injured by teargas grenades—a weapon that could only have been supplied to the thugs by the police or military.
Eyewitnesses cited in press reports said that in some cases protesters were attacked and murdered as they were leaving the sit-in to go to work or take the subway. One protester said, “I saw seven people gunned down in front of me by a machine gun.”
Another protester described the scene as follows: “dozens of military men dressed in plain clothes started pelting with stones, cement blocks, and fired tear gas from rifles, so they were obviously security officers under cover.”
Protesters told McClatchy News Service that the attack resembled the assault last year on anti-Mubarak demonstrators in Tahrir Square by thugs riding camels, another case where the security forces orchestrated the violence and then stood aside and let it happen........
The carnage provoked widespread anger throughout Egypt, and most of the presidential candidates announced a temporary halt to their campaigns, to honor the dead and allow for unified protest demonstrations against the attack, set to begin Friday in Tahrir Square. One candidate suggested that further clashes outside the Ministry of Defense could lead the army “to announce a military coup in defense of themselves and their position.”.......
The Presidential Elections Commission, in a decision that further exacerbates the crisis, announced Thursday that it was referring three candidates, Abouel Fotouh, Mohammed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood and former foreign minister Amr Moussa, to the public prosecutor on charges of violating election regulations by campaigning “illegally” at universities.

The Egyptian military junta has intensified its violent crackdown on protesters before the presidential elections scheduled for May 23. On Friday afternoon, military police and security police working with armed thugs brutally attacked protesters in front of the Ministry of Defense at Abbasseya Square in Cairo.
The protesters called for the fall of the US-backed military junta and the execution of its leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.
Military and police forces started their attacks Friday afternoon, claiming that demonstrators had tried to storm the Ministry of Defense. They used water cannons, tear gas and live ammunition against the protesters, who defended themselves with stones. At least two protesters and one soldier were killed and hundreds injured. The military enforced a curfew in the area. According to the “No To Military Trials” activist group, 311 male and 18 female protesters have been arrested and threatened with military trials.
The demonstrations in front of the ministry were called by various liberal and middle-class groups such as Kefaya (Enough), the April 6 Youth Movement, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and the Revolutionary Socialists to put pressure on the military junta. Simultaneously, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood (MB) called for protests on Tahrir Square in Cairo in solidarity with the protests in front of the ministry.
These groups demand a swift transfer of power to civilians and the cancellation of Article 28 of the Constitutional Declaration. This article holds that the decisions of the Supreme Presidential Elections Commission (SPEC), which oversees the presidential poll, cannot be challenged in court. To prevent election rigging, the groups demand independent judges to monitor the elections. They also denounced the recent violent attack on a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Interior. The protest was initially organized by supporters of the disqualified Salafist presidential candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail.
Eyewitnesses recounted that the protests were peaceful until a group of thugs infiltrated them and started provocations. There are indications that the military rulers orchestrated the incident. The day before, Major General Mokhtar al-Mulla warned that any further protests in Abbasseya Square would be forcibly suppressed. At a press conference called by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), he warned that anyone who approaches the Defense Ministry “should hold themselves responsible,” and that “the forces deployed around the Ministry of Defense intend to stop anyone from trying to reach the ministry.”
The crackdown comes amidst deepening conflicts inside the Egyptian ruling elite. Tensions between SCAF and the MB and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), have risen in recent weeks........
The MB controls large portions of the Egyptian economy, and its policies favor attracting foreign investment and privatization. The military, which itself controls large parts of economy, sees the MB as a threat to its own business interests and has warned that it would “fight to defend our projects.”
In a step to contain the Islamists, the SPEC, which is appointed by the junta, disqualified Kheirat al-Shater and the Salafist candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail on April 17. The MB accused SCAF of “attempts to recreate the old regime,” and vowed to continue fighting. It fielded a second candidate and called for protests against SCAF to pressure the generals to hand over power.
With the recent crackdown, tensions seem likely to grow. The MB released a statement accusing SCAF of bearing “responsibility for these dead and wounded,” stating that it is not capable of “managing the affairs of the country” and of protecting its citizens. It called on the “nationalist parties, forces and stakeholders [to] unite and close ranks” to protect the revolution “from any counter-coup.”.......
Islamist candidate Mohamed Selim El-Awa described protesters in front of the ministry of interior as “conspirators” following orders from ousted President Hosni Mubarak. He stated that the protests were “an attempt to prove that mayhem rules” and denounced insults against the Egyptian army. “Everyone must now focus on the transition of power from the Supreme Council to an elected president,” he declared on TV.
The protests were also opposed by the Nasserist Karama Party and the liberal Free Egyptians Party, founded by business tycoon Naguib Sawiris. In a statement issued on Saturday, the party condemned “attempts to push the country towards bloody confrontations” and “political selfishness that might lead to chaos.”