Mubarak Regime Targets And Violently Attacks Western and Arab Journalists Covering the Demonstrations

Sebastian Scheiner/Associated Press
Khalil Hamra, left, of The Associated Press and other photographers took cover on Thursday as they worked to cover the protests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/world/middleeast/04journalists.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22


Gangs Hunt Journalists and Rights Workers
By JEREMY W. PETERS and J. DAVID GOODMAN
February 3, 2011
New York Times

Journalists covering the revolt against President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt have found themselves the targets of widespread anger and suspicion in an apparently coordinated campaign that is intended to stifle the flow of news that could further undermine the government.

No news organization seemed exempt from the rage, which escalated as the week wore on. Whether from Western or Arab media, television networks or wire services, newspapers or photo syndicates, journalists were chased through the streets and had their equipment stolen or smashed. Some were beaten so badly that they required hospital treatment.

ABC News reported that one of its crews was carjacked on Thursday and threatened with beheading. A Reuters journalist said a “gang of thugs” had stormed the news service’s office and started smashing windows. And four journalists from The Washington Post were detained by forces that they suspected were from the Interior Ministry. All four were released by early Friday. But two of them, the paper’s Cairo bureau chief and a photographer, had been ordered not to leave a local hotel.

“It appears that journalists are being targeted by the Egyptian authorities in a deliberate campaign of intimidation aimed at quashing honest, independent reporting of a transformational event,” said The Post’s foreign editor, Douglas Jehl.

If the aim was to suppress coverage, the actions were somewhat effective. Major television networks from around the world were largely unable to broadcast from Tahrir Square, the center of antigovernment protests, on Thursday. The Egyptian state news agency had earlier asked foreign reporters and crews to move out of the hotels near the square.

Live television images were so difficult to transmit that by the afternoon, the Fox News Channel anchor Shepard Smith was showing viewers exactly what his control room in New York was seeing — blank screens from The Associated Press and Reuters television feeds.

Jon Williams of the BBC said via Twitter that Egyptian security forces had seized the news agency’s equipment at the Cairo Hilton “in an attempt to stop us broadcasting.” Both CNN and the BBC relied on taped footage of the square.

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, which have provided some of the most extensive network coverage of the revolt, said their journalists had been hounded from the street and from vantage points above the square where their cameras had been placed. In the absence of live pictures, the networks relied on grainy amateur video taken on the streets.

Another Arab network, Al Hurra, had what it described as one of the only live feeds from the square.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it had received nearly 100 reports of damage to news organization property or of individuals being detained or attacked.

The intimidation tactics were condemned at the highest levels of the United States government. The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, rebuked the Mubarak government and its supporters, calling the harassment “completely and totally unacceptable.” Speaking to reporters traveling with President Obama, he said that “any journalist that has been detained should be released immediately.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the attacks on journalists were an affront to the most basic principles of international law. “It is especially in times of crisis that governments must demonstrate their adherence to these universal values,” she said.

A reporter for Al Arabiya was beaten by a group of pro-Mubarak demonstrators on Wednesday. His injuries were significant enough that he remained in the hospital, though his condition was not critical, said Nakhle el-Hage, the network’s director of news.

The attacks were aimed at other independent observers, too, including representatives of groups like Human Rights Watch. The Egyptian security police also raided the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, detaining as many as 16 people, including some of the country’s most prominent human rights advocates and several foreign researchers.

Al Arabiya broadcast a plea to the Egyptian Army to intervene after the network’s headquarters in Cairo came under sustained attack from pro-Mubarak demonstrators who were wielding sticks and knives. “They destroyed some equipment outside the building, and they said they would come in and destroy everything,” Mr. Hage said in a telephone interview from Dubai.

He said the army initially responded by deploying more soldiers to secure the building, but the troops soon left. “The message we got from the army is that ‘you’re left on your own,’ ” he said.

Al Arabiya’s staff was forced to flee a nearby hotel as the pro-Mubarak mob broke into the network’s office. Four of its journalists stayed at the hotel to report, while others continued to work from their homes or from friends’ homes.

Two employees of Al Jazeera were dragged out of their car on the road from the airport to central Cairo and were detained; in the early evening, the network said that, over all, three of its journalists were still in custody. A spokesman for the network also said that its Web site had faced “security issues.” The site was not available in Egypt or the United States early Thursday, though it appeared to return online later.

Two reporters working for The New York Times were released on Thursday after being detained overnight in Cairo.

The attacks started almost as soon as the violent clashes began near Tahrir Square on Wednesday. “It’s clearly a bad situation these last two days — a stark contrast to the days before that,” said David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, which has several journalists in Egypt, including a local translator who was assaulted, detained and later released.

The government has sought to control the information coming out of Egypt since large-scale protests against Mr. Mubarak and his subordinates began in late January. But before Wednesday, the harassment of reporters had been scattered, and attempts to control the gripping images and narratives from Cairo had mostly failed.

“We’ve never witnessed something like this in the Middle East,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, program coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa at the Committee to Protect Journalists. “That is not to say that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya were friendly places for journalists. There were massive amounts of harassment, intimidation and reporters put on trial. But you don’t see this level of physical violence against journalists in this kind of sustained fashion and coordination.”



David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo, and Brian Stelter from Doha, Qatar.

Despite Lethal Violence By the Mubarak Regime the Egyptian People Remain United in Support of Revolution

Ed Ou for The New York Times
Antigovernment protesters clashed with supporters of President Hosni Mubarak near Tahrir Square in Cairo on Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/world/middleeast/04egypt.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2&pagewanted=all


Crackdown in Egypt Widens but Officials Offer Concessions
By ANTHONY SHADID
Published: February 3, 2011

CAIRO — The Egyptian government on Thursday broadened its crackdown on a 10-day uprising that has shaken its rule, arresting journalists and human rights advocates across an edgy city, while offering more concessions in a bid to win support from a population growing frustrated with a devastated economy and scenes of chaos in the streets.

The campaign was a startling blend of the oldest tactics of an authoritarian government — stoking fears of foreigners — with the air of sincerity of a repentant order. Trying to seize the initiative from a revolt that has marked one of the most decisive moments in modern Egyptian history, the government promised that neither President Hosni Mubarak nor his son Gamal, long seen as a contender for power, would run for president and offered dialogue with the banned Muslim Brotherhood, gestures almost unthinkable weeks ago.

As protesters battled crowds rallied by the government for a second day, organizers sought to rally even bigger demonstrations for Friday — dubbed the “Friday of departure” — in hopes of keeping the momentum behind a popular uprising that has demanded that Mr. Mubarak step down after three decades in power.

Voiced often in the tumultuous scenes of defiance and determination in Tahrir Square was a fear that if they lost, the protesters and their organizers would bear the brunt of a withering crackdown.

“If we can’t bring this to an end, we’re going to all be in the slammer by June,” said Murad Mohsen, a doctor treating the wounded at a makeshift clinic near barricades, where thousands fought off droves of government supporters with rocks and firebombs.

Dr. Mohsen’s comments illustrated the changing dynamic of an uprising that has captivated the Arab world, reverberating through Jordan, Sudan and Yemen, where there were peaceful protests on Thursday. New calls for protests went out in Algeria, Bahrain and Libya.

From festive scenes of just days ago, the revolt has become more martial, as exhausted men defend what they describe as the perimeter of a free Egypt around Tahrir Square. Their demands have grown more forceful and the uprising more radical. After pitched clashes of two days that left at least seven dead and hundreds wounded, banners in Tahrir Square declared Mr. Mubarak “a war criminal,” and several in the crowd said that the president should be executed. Major television networks were largely unable to broadcast from the square on Thursday.

The United States joined a chorus of criticism, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton saying, “We condemn in the strongest terms attacks on peaceful demonstrators, human rights activists, foreigners and diplomats.”

The government’s strategy seems motivated at turning broader opinion in the country against the protests and perhaps wearing down the demonstrators themselves, some of whom seemed exhausted by the clashes. Vice President Omar Suleiman, appointed Saturday to a position that Mr. Mubarak had until then refused to fill, appealed to Egypt’s sense of decency in allowing Mr. Mubarak to serve out his term, and he chronicled the mounting losses that, he said, the uprising had inflicted on a crippled Egyptian economy.

“End your sit-in,” he said. “Your demands have been answered.”

Mr. Mubarak said in an interview with ABC that he was eager to step down but if he did, “Egypt would sink into chaos.”

In interviews and statements, the government has increasingly spread an image that foreigners were inciting the uprising, a refrain echoed in the streets. The suggestions are part of a days-long Egyptian media campaign that has portrayed the protesters as troublemakers and ignored the scope of an uprising with diffuse goals and leadership.

“Millions turn out to support Mubarak,” read the banner headline on Thursday on the front page of Al Ahram, the leading government newspaper.

The propaganda has been so pronounced that an announcer on Nile Television, Shahira Amin, quit. “I cleared my conscience and walked out,” she said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it had 100 reports of attacks on journalists. Al Jazeera, the influential Arabic channel, said government supporters stormed the Hilton Hotel in Cairo, searching for journalists, and two of its reporters were attacked. A Greek journalist was stabbed with a screwdriver and others were beaten and harassed.

Police also raided the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a headquarters for many of the international human rights organizations working in Egypt. The human rights workers were told to lie on the floor and the chips were removed from the telephones, someone present in the building said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

As the day wore on, tension descended across parts of the city, which is still guarded by popular committees that banded together after the police withdrew Saturday. Government supporters roamed parts of the downtown, itching for a fight, and looters set fire to a shopping mall along the Nile that was already looted and burned Friday.

The menace was a counterpoint to Tahrir Square, where the literati and well-off demonstrators mixed with the poorest of rough-and-tumble neighborhoods in scenes of camaraderie and determination that have made the square an emblem of the revolt. Protesters flashed V-for-victory signs at dawn, celebrating their success in holding the square and even pushing the barricades forward in clashes that dragged through the night.

Protesters accused government supporters of trying to block them from delivering supplies to the square, but boxes of water, bananas, yogurt and medicine still made it in. The Internet was working. Volunteers swept the streets, pushing piles of rocks to the curb that looked like bluffs of snow. Doctors staffed first-aid clinics, near graffiti that read, “We are writing the history of a free Egypt,” and men frisked people entering for weapons.

“Don’t incite them!” shouted Mahmoud Haqiqi, holding aloft a sign that read, “No to shedding of blood.” But even those who lamented the turn to violence blamed Mr. Mubarak’s supporters for provoking them and vowed not to relinquish the square. “Right now, it’s all here, protecting Tahrir Square,” said Hisham Kassem, a veteran activist and publisher, who kept a wary eye on barricades built with corrugated tin, wrecked cars and trucks, barrels, buckets filed with sand and metal railing torn from the curb. “We keep it tonight, and tomorrow the whole country is going to come out.”

He surveyed the crowd and shook his head. “I can’t face the idea of this failing.”

For days, the government seemed to stagger at the scale of an uprising that overwhelmed Egypt’s once ubiquitous security forces on Friday. The concessions on Thursday marked its most concerted attempt to address at least some of the longstanding demands in a country that many believe has stagnated under Mr. Mubarak’s rule. The newly appointed prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, apologized for the violence and vowed to investigate who instigated it. Mr. Suleiman followed with a lengthy television interview in which he recognized what he described as “the revolution of the youth.”

Mr. Suleiman sought to project an image of good will, offering dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains banned, even though it is the country’s most influential opposition group. In a sign of the new landscape, Mr. Suleiman referred to it by name rather than the government’s usual coded language, though he and Mr. Mubarak have both suggested it was behind the revolt. Its followers have played a forceful role in the protests, but its leaders have, so far, tried to remain in the background.

“We have contacted the Muslim Brotherhood and invited them, but they are still hesitant about the dialogue,” he said. “I think that their interest is to attend the dialogue.”

Other concessions came from Egypt’s public prosecutor, who issued a travel ban on former government ministers and an official of the ruling National Democratic Party on suspicion of theft of public money, profiteering and fraud, state television reported. Among the four was the hated former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, who commanded a police force that was widely despised for its corruption and routine use of torture.

So far, the government’s concessions have done little to diminish the protests, but the relentless message of officials that Egypt faced chaos seemed, at least anecdotally, to be finding an audience.

“This is enough,” said Ahmed Mohamed, a 22-year-old broker at the National Bank of Kuwait, hanging out at a rarity in Cairo, a coffee shop doing business. “I want life to go back to normal. We want to go back to work. And what we have done in 72 hours we couldn’t achieve in 30 years. It’s only a few months until Mubarak leaves.”





David D. Kirkpatrick, Kareem Fahim, and Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo.

Despotism, Dependence, and Revolution in the Arab World Today

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-04/egypt-chaos-defines-bleeding-in-despot-arab-world-commentary-by-tariq-ali.html


Egypt Chaos Defines Bleeding in Despot Arab World
By Tariq Ali
Feb 3, 2011
Bloomberg Opinion


Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, talks about protests against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. She speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)

“Freedom lies behind a door closed shut,” the great Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqi wrote in the last century. “It can only be knocked down with a bleeding fist.” More than that is bleeding in the Arab world at the moment.

The uprisings we are witnessing in Egypt have been a rude awakening for all those who imagined that the despots of the Arab world could be kept in place provided they continued to serve the needs of the West and their harsh methods weren’t aired on CNN and BBC World. But while Western establishments lull themselves to sleep with fairy tales, ordinary citizens, who are defeated and demoralized, mull their revenge.

The French government seriously considered sending its paratroopers to save former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pleading with officials in Washington to delay Hosni Mubarak’s departure from Egypt so that Israel has time to prepare for the likely outcome. Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair is even describing the Egyptian dictator as a “force for good.”

The almost 200 pro-democracy citizens who have been killed don’t bother him too much. That’s small beer compared with the tens of thousands dead in Iraq. And a desperate Palestine Liberation Organization is backing Mubarak and repressing solidarity demonstrations in Ramallah on the West Bank.

Hated Figures

In Yemen, another strongman in power for 30 years is beginning to totter. President Ali Abdullah Saleh is a hated figure, again backed by the West, as I discovered when I visited the country last year.

If Tunisia was a tremor, the Egyptian uprising has become an earthquake that is spreading throughout the region. The generals in Cairo are still refusing to disperse the crowds with tanks and bullets. A full-scale Tiananmen Square option, which Mubarak and his friends would have appreciated, becomes difficult in these conditions.

So what will they do? As the crisis moves a step further, Vice President Omar Suleiman, not trusted by many people as the former director of intelligence, is hoping to divide the opposition, clear the streets and negotiate a deal, offering Amr Moussa, the toothless head of the Arab League, the interim presidency. They want someone who will retain the remnants of the old institutions and, in particular, the apparatuses of the secret state that have been so useful in helping the West’s policy of renditions in the war on terror, which has so far only succeeded in engendering more terror.

Total Overhaul

The millions of people in the streets of Egypt are demanding a total overhaul. They want, as in Tunisia, a new constitution that guarantees political and social rights. They want an independent foreign policy that is decided in Cairo, not Tel Aviv or Washington. They want to lift the blockade of Gaza so that its people can live as normally as possible.

This week, the Egyptian regime, shaken by the mass mobilizations, threatened counter-revolution. Pro-Mubarak forces, a combination of the security cops out of uniform and gangsters released from prison, attacked protesters, creating mayhem in Tahrir Square. The military, which pledged to defend public safety, failed to do so.

In Alexandria, there were clashes between Mubarak’s desperate supporters and the anti-government protesters. The coming weekend is decisive. The planned march by several hundred thousand people on the presidential palace might drive Mubarak to get a helicopter to the airport. One assumes the Saudis are preparing a palace for him as is their wont.

Plan B

A post-Mubarak Egypt is difficult to predict with exactitude. What we can say is that it won’t be a repeat of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The iron will of the Ayatollah doesn’t exist in Cairo. Instead there is a decent, amiable technocrat, Mohamed El Baradei, more known abroad than at home, as a possible Plan B for the White House.

Lurking behind El Baradei is the Muslim Brotherhood. It, too, is divided, with a dominant wing composed of young, modernist Muslims who want to mimic Turkey. If the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s favorite Islamists in Istanbul can do business with Washington, why not their Egyptian equivalents? They have been engaged in private discussions with informal emissaries from the U.S. for more than a decade.

Nonetheless, a regime propelled into office via an uprising from below can’t be as cavalier in disregarding public opinion, and nor is this a time for the U.S. to start preaching the virtues of liberal capitalism: The recent fate of Iceland, Ireland and Greece should be enough on that score.

Internally, what is required is to rebuild the abandoned social safety net, providing elementary health, education and housing for the poor.

Externally, Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. and Israel will have to be modified, regardless of who succeeds Mubarak. A peace treaty that benefits Israel alone was never accepted by the Egyptian people.

Only then will Egypt be able to stop the bleeding.

(Tariq Ali is a London-based writer, filmmaker and author of the 2010 book “The Obama Syndrome.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Tariq Ali at tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

The Barbarity of Counterrevolution in Egypt led by the Mubarak Regime and U.S. Imperialism

Hosni Mubarak supporters ride horses during a clash between pro- and anti-Mubarak protesters. Photograph: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/02/egypt-protests-mubarak

All,

The real nature of counter revolution, what it really means in Egypt today, and the ominous complicity of the United States and the Obama administration in its lethal perpetuation--both violently and non-violently.

Kofi


Egypt protests: Mubarak shows his dark side
by Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday 2 February 2011

The counter-revolutionary message to the people from an unvanquished, still vicious regime is: it's over – go home, or else

Hosni Mubarak launched his counter-revolution today, sending waves of armed thugs to do battle with pro-democracy demonstrators in Cairo and other cities. The attacks, reportedly involving plainclothes police and vigilantes as well as pro-regime citizens, appeared to be carefully co-ordinated and timed. And the army, which only days earlier had sworn to protect "legitimate" rights of protesters, stood back and watched as the blood flowed.

This ugly turn of events should come as no surprise. What is unusual is that the regime tolerated such levels of unrest for nearly a week.

Mubarak was never quite a dictator in the Saddam Hussein or Robert Mugabe mould. His rule was more akin to the semi-enlightened despotism of an 18th-century European monarch. But at bottom, it always depended on coercion and force. Today, the pretence of reasonableness was torn away. His dark side showed for all to see.

Mubarak's speech to the nation on Tuesday night was widely misinterpreted. The president was, by turns, angry, defiant and unrepentant. He offered no apologies, proposed no new initiatives, gave no promise that his son Gamal would not succeed him, and instead lectured Egyptians on the importance of order and stability (which he alone could assure).

He appeared not to have learned anything from the past week. And his one "concession" – that he would not seek re-election – was no concession at all. After all, he had never said he would.

This was not the performance of a defeated man. Mubarak may be down but he's not out. And judging by today's events in Tahrir Square, he and the military-dominated clique around him clearly feel they have done enough, for now, to get the Americans off their backs, flex their still considerable muscle, and reclaim the streets for the regime. All the talk about reform and elections and negotiations can wait, whatever Barack Obama says.

Today's immediate message to the people from an unvanquished, still vicious regime: it's over – go home, or else.

There's a good to middling chance the counter-revolution strategy will work, given time. "Imagine yourself as Hosni Mubarak, master of Egypt for nearly 30 years. You're old, unwell, detested and addicted to power," wrote Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens.

"You could have orchestrated a graceful exit by promising to preside over free and fair presidential elections later this year – elections in which the Mubarak name would not be on the ballot. Instead you gambled that you could ride out the protests and hold on. It's a pretty good gamble ..."

Reasons for believing Mubarak can not only survive the next eight months but also exert decisive, possibly fatally obstructive influence over Egypt's new direction are plentiful. As matters stand now, the regime is unreconstructed, the opposition is split, and the Americans are undecided. Despite his insistence on a swift, orderly transition, Obama has not withdrawn his personal support. In Brussels today, the EU also declined to demand Mubarak's immediate resignation. David Cameron said reforms must be implemented faster.

All of them got a dusty brush-off. In an official statement, the Egyptian foreign ministry, still led by an old Mubarak crony, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, rejected US and European calls for the transition to start now. Calls from "foreign parties" were "aimed to incite the internal situation," it said. In other words: get lost.

Mubarak and his close confidant and deputy, Omar Suleiman, have more cards to play as they foment a backlash and seek to regain control. As in the past, they can play on Israeli and American fears of an Islamist takeover. They can point out just how disastrous it might be if a new government tore up Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

The opposition leader, Mohamed ElBaradei can easily be portrayed as untrustworthy. In fact, such a campaign is already under way. The Americans, for example, suspected him of pro-Iranian bias when he headed the UN's nuclear watchdog – and believe, too, that he is far too cosy with Turkey's neo-Islamist leaders.

As he tries to reassert his primacy, Mubarak can rely on the conservative Arab states of the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Algeria, and on any number of African governments that have no wish to encourage popular revolution. Even old enemy Iran is privately ambivalent on this score.

He can offer negotiations to the opposition and hope to gain advantage from their refusal, so far, to participate. And if all this fails, the regime can always let loose its thugs and hooligans, just to emphasise that without state-imposed order, only chaos, not democracy, reigns.

Mubarak's counter-revolution is still a long shot. Too much has changed in Egypt for it ever to go back the way things were. But today saw the beginning of a new stage in a complex internal struggle whose ultimate outcome remains deeply uncertain.