a million people on the street is a pretty good crowd!
from Democracy now
AMY GOODMAN: We begin our coverage of Egypt with Democracy Now! senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous in Tahrir Square in Cairo. He’s been on the ground in Egypt reporting on events as they unfold. In the last few days he has been interviewed on independent radio stations in the United States, on Al Jazeera, last night on two programs on MSNBC and other news outlets. We go right now to Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is in Tahrir Square.
Sharif, what is it like on the ground? What are you seeing right now?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS:
Amy, today is the one-week anniversary of this popular uprising in Egypt, this unprecedented revolt where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets. I am in the middle of Tahrir Square. I am in the middle of a sea of people, an ocean. They have come from everywhere across Cairo, from across Egypt, with one voice, for the president, Mubarak, to step down. I’ve spoken to Egyptians from all walks of life, to journalists, to lawyers, doctors, laborers, peasants, men, women, young, old, rich, poor, and they’ve all come here to speak with one voice and have a full-throated call for democracy. They want Mubarak out, and they will not stop coming until he does.
If today is not the day, then the next big decider will be Friday. Friday is the day when Muslims go to the mosques for communal prayer, and everyone will be on the street at 1:00 p.m. after the noon prayer, and they will flood again the streets. They will continue to do this until, they say, Mubarak leaves.
And the solutions that they see after—these people are very politically aware. They have lots of varied and interesting ideas about what can come next. The one thing that they all agree on is that they want the right to choose. And this has been denied them for the last 30 years. They’re also very politically aware about the United States’ role in all of this. Many of them say they respect President Obama. They respected his speech, that he gave it here in Cairo in 2009 to the Muslim world. But they are very disappointed in his response to this popular uprising, that he has not given an outright call for Mubarak to step down.
Robert Fisk interview :
Mohamed ElBaradei: The man who would be President
Man of the moment? Of course Mohamed ElBaradei is. But man of the people, I have my doubts. He doesn't claim to be, of course, and sitting in his garden easy chair near an impossibly blue but rather small swimming pool, he sometimes appears – even wearing his baseball hat – like a very friendly, shrewd and bespectacled mouse. He will not like that description, but this is a mouse, I suspect, with very sharp teeth.It's almost a delight to dissect the bigger mice who work in the White House and the State Department. "Do you remember how on the second day, all we heard was that they were 'monitoring the situation'. On the second day, Secretary Clinton said: 'We assess the situation as stable'; it was funny yesterday, too, to hear Clinton say that 'we have been urging the Egyptian Mubarak for 30 years to move on this – and he moved backward – how on earth can you still ask him to introduce democratic reform? Then Clinton talks about 'the legitimate aspirations of the Egyptian people' and now they are talking about 'the smooth transition of
power'... I think they know that Mubarak's days are numbered."
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, what are the numbers that are being expected today? We’re speaking to you as a military curfew descends on Cairo. What does that even mean?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, the curfew has been in place since Saturday. Every—each day, people come out in defiance of the military curfew. In fact, they come to Tahrir. On Saturday, it was 4:00. On Sunday, it was 3:00. Today, it’s—yesterday, it was 2:00. And today, it’s 1:00, the curfew. People come in defiance of the curfew at the time of the curfew to show that they are not afraid. They’re not afraid of the military that encircles this square. They are convinced they will not harm them. In fact, the military chief of staff yesterday said that he will not open fire. And they are convinced of that.
It’s hard to tell the numbers here, Amy, but this is the biggest, by far, that I have seen since I have been there. Some put the numbers at 250,000. A friend of mine, an activist here, showed me a photo that she had taken from atop a hotel. It is just an ocean of people. And it’s really an amazing, an amazing expression of political dissent. And when I came here on Saturday, people were—were just doing chants and marches, but—and you have to understand that people in Egypt have not had an opportunity to voice their opposition for so many years, so many decades. And they’re evolving now [inaudible] street theater. You see now political art. It’s a blossoming of political expression that is happening here. Egyptians are finding themselves.
And what I hear over and over again is that people were being strangled so much by the Mubarak regime, by crushing poverty, by crushing unemployment, by repression of the despised state police forces, by imprisonment and torture, they were turning on one another. And now that they have come to the streets with one voice asking for Mubarak to go, they have become a community again. They are picking up the trash here. They’re even recycling the trash. It’s unbelievable. They have set up a small makeshift medical center. They’re handing out food and water. People have spent the night here for a week now, and there’s tents and a whole communal space that is set up. It really is an inspiring popular movement, the likes of which I don’t think much of the world has ever seen.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, there’s been descriptions of the military facilitating the protests. yesterday the head of the military announcing they will not open fire on protesters, that they have legitimate grievances. Is that an accurate description of the military’s role today?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: The military has had a small role here. They have—they do have tanks at every entrance to the square. They are checking the IDs of everyone who comes in. Every Egyptian has to have a national identity card. And the reason they’re doing it is because they look at the back of the card, and that on that back they see whether—what your job is. They are checking to see whether state security forces are coming in, or police. These are the only Egyptians that are not allowed here. Everyone else is allowed here. And when I came in, there was three checkpoints by the military and five citizen checkpoints. They were also frisking people, and they were telling people, "Be peaceful. If someone antagonizes you, be peaceful. Don’t throw trash on the floor." They want to own this popular uprising, and they have.
And these two disturbing report s ~
Media Blackout in Egypt and the U.S.: Al Jazeera Forced Off the Air by Mubarak, Telecommunications Companies Block Its Expansion in the United States
A nd Al JaZeera Live stream link
