Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Four journalists killed covering Egypt clashes

RT | August 15, 2013

Four journalists have been killed in violent clashes which swept Egypt on Wednesday, with a number of the press core suffering serious injuries in the clashes. At least 238 civilians died in total as security forces brutally broke up pro-Morsi rallies.

Egypt has been swept by horrific street violence, showers of gunfire, blazing fires and tear gas as relentless clashes have shaken cities in government attempts to break up the demonstrations.

Among the 238 protesters killed were children, including the 17-year old daughter of a Muslim Brotherhood official. Police stations were torched or stormed by pro-Morsi groups amid the ruthless government suppression.

The violence also took the lives of Sky News cameraman Mick Deane and Dubai-based XPRESS journalist Habeeba Abdelaziz. Both had been covering the pro-Morsi protests in Egypt’s capital which security forces began to ‘disperse’ earlier in the day.

Deane, 61, was shot as he was documenting the turmoil in Cairo. Despite receiving medical treatment for his injuries he died shortly afterwards, according to a statement from Sky.

“He was an astonishingly good cameraman, took some brilliant pictures,” said John Ryley, head of Sky News.
Habeeba Abdelaziz was a 26 year old Egyptian reporter from Dubai, who worked for XPRESS – a ‘sister’ publication to the country’s Gulf News.

“It’s hard to believe she’s gone. She was passionate about her work and had a promising career ahead,” XPRESS Deputy Editor Mazhar Farooqui told Gulf News, commenting that the entire team was in a state of shock.

Abdelaziz had been covering protests near Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque, which has been the site of one of the largest protests for over a month, and a subsequently heavy-handed crackdown by governmental security forces. They reclaimed the area late on Wednesday.

The third journalist killed was Egyptian Ahmed Abdel Gawad of Al Akhbar newspaper. He died while covering the clashes at Rabaah al-Adawiya. The Egyptian Press Syndicate, a journalist union, confirmed Gawad’s death, but did not provide any details.

The fourth reporter to have been confirmed killed is photojournalist Mosab El-Shami Rassd of the news website (RNN), an alternative pro-Islamist media network, Ahram online reports. The agency wrote that he “was killed by the hand of betrayal while covering the Rabaa massacre at the hands of those who executed the coup,” wrote the network on its Facebook page.

Reuters photojournalist Asmaa Waguih also suffered serious injuries after being shot in the leg during protests. Shortly afterwards, she was moved to the international medical center to receive treatment. The Committee to Protect Journalists has released a statement on the issue, saying that the group condemned the killing of Sky News cameraman Mick Deane, prior to hearing of the second death.

“We call on Egyptian authorities to issue clear orders to security forces to respect the right of journalists to work freely and safely while covering events in Cairo and the rest of the country,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney.

“The killing of Mick Deane underscores the urgent need for such action and for all sides to show restraint and allow the media to do their job. The authorities must investigate all attacks on journalists and hold those responsible to account,” he said.

Other journalist were also treated for wounds. An AP photographer was hit in the back of the neck by two birdshot pellets, while Al Jazeera claims its cameraman Mohammed al-Zaki was shot in the arm. In addition, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders says that Tarek Abbas — a reporter for local Al-Watan newspaper sustained gunshot wounds to his leg and eye; and photographer Ahmad Najjar was wounded in the arm.

Approximately a dozen other journalists were arrested or threatened as they tried to document the mayhem: Reuters’ Tom Finn tweeted his own arrest. Daily Beast reporter Mike Giglio also said on Twitter he was arrested alongside two photographers named Mahmoud Abou Zeid and Louis Jammes, stating they had been beaten too.

A state of emergency was declared on Wednesday after Egyptian security forces violently broke up the sit-in camps of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo. Health Ministry officials say that over 2000 were injured in the nationwide violence, alongside the 278 who were killed including policemen.

“The dead are both from police and civilians,” said the ministry’s spokesman, Hamdi Abdel Karim.

However, Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad claimed that as many as 2,000 people had been killed and 10,000 injured in the police operation.

Security forces succeeded in gaining control of the protest camps by the end of the day after turning the capital into what journalists called “a war zone”. A state of emergency has been declared and curfew imposed in major cities including Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. The curfew is set to last for the next month – or until further notice.

August 15, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Egyptian Army: State Within A State

By Barry Lando | July 4, 2013

In ousting Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohammed Morsi, the Egyptian military have certainly not acted to preserve democracy. They’ve never shown much interest in that. They’re determined to put a break on the mounting political and economic chaos that is ripping the country apart. That turbulence was threatening not just the survival of Egypt, but, more to the point, it was menacing the vast state within a state that Egypt’s military presides over.

Of course, the Egyptian Army is not monolithic. Its lower ranks are very much of the people: filled with hundreds of thousands of conscripts, drawn from the most humble ranks of society—and has a strong identity with the Egyptian people.

It has traditionally been the most important means of socializing and educating the lower classes, in theory, inculcating them with a sense of pride and patriotism.

Indeed the 1971 Constitution says that the Egyptian Army shall “belong to the people”

Thus, as I have previously blogged, in 1977 when the army was called in to quell riots after President Sadat announced cuts in basic food subsidies, the generals refused to intervene unless the subsidies were reestablished. Sadat restored the subsidies.

The top ranks of the army, however, have other concerns—beginning with personal survival. They certainly will never forget the lurid spectacle of Iranian generals being publicly executed in the aftermath of Khomeini’s revolution in Iran. Iran also demonstrated that a radical revolution also means a radically transformed military. (Egypt’s generals have a constant reminder of that lesson nearby: The Shah is buried in a Cairo mosque.).

But since the fall of Mubarak, the military have feared not just a takeover by radical Muslims. There is also the fact that real civilian rule could spell an end to the system of massive military corruption and patronage that has gone on for decades in Egypt, a system that has given the military unimpeded control over an estimated 40% of the Egyptian economy–“a state within a state” as a well-informed Egyptian friend of mine puts it.

For years, Egypt’s top military ranks have enjoyed a pampered existence in sprawling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City, where officers are housed in spacious, subsidized condominiums. They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, bonuses, new cars, schools and military consumer cooperatives featuring domestic and imported products at discount prices. In other areas, top officers are able to buy luxurious apartments on generous credit for 10 percent of what those apartments are actually worth.

But we’re not just talking about sensational official perks. Many of Egypt’s brass are notoriously corrupt. Vast swathes of military land, for instance, were sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo — with little if any accounting.

Other choice military property ran on the Nile Delta and Red Sea coast boasted idyllic beaches, and exquisite coral reefs. In return for turning the land over to private developers, military officers became key shareholders in a slew of gleaming new tourist developments.

The generals also preside over 16 enormous factories that turn out not just weapons, but an array of domestic products from dishwashers to heaters, clothing, doors, stationary pharmaceutical products, and microscopes. Most of these products are sold to military personnel through discount military stores, but a large amount are also sold commercially.

The military also builds highways, housing developments, hotels, power lines, sewers, bridges, schools, telephone exchanges, often in murky arrangements with civilian companies.

The military are also Egypt’s largest farmers, running a vast network of dairy farms, milk processing facilities, cattle feed lots, poultry farms, fish farms. They’ve plenty left from their huge output to sell to civilians through a sprawling distribution network.

The justification for all this non-military activity is that the military are just naturally more efficient than civilians. Hard not to be “more efficient” when you are able to employ thousands of poorly paid military recruits for labor.

Many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia. And upon retiring, top military officers are often rewarded with plum positions running everything from factories and industries to charities.

Whatever the number, Robert Springborg, who has written extensively on Egypt, says officers in the Egyptian military are making “billions and billions and billions” of dollars.

But there’s no way to know how efficient or inefficient the military are, nor how much money their vast enterprises make, nor how many millions or billions get skimmed off since the military’s operations are off the nation’s books. No real published accountings.

No oversight. Even Mohammed Morsi when he became president, was obliged to agree to the military’s demand that there would be no civilian oversight of the military budget.

Of course none of the above is a surprise to U.S. officials who dole out some 1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid to the Egyptian Army, and hope that sum and the neat weapons it provides will keep the army in line. [One of the most detailed studies of the military’s non-military activities was done by a U.S. military researcher at Fort Leavenworth.]

The U.S. also has a 1.3 billion dollar carrot dangling in front of the Egyptian Army. That annual American military aid to Egypt has allowed the Egyptian officers to get their hands on some of the most sophisticated of modern weapons—as we’ve seen over the past couple of years in downtown Cairo.

The generals realize there is no way the U.S. will continue paying for those goodies if a new regime more hostile to Israel takes power in Cairo.

A perceptive look into all this came via a 2008 U.S.diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. The writer in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo ticked off the various businesses the military was involved in, and considered how the military might react if Egypt’s then president, Hosni Mubarak, were to lose power.

The military would almost certainly go along with a successor, the cable’s author wrote, as long as that successor didn’t interfere in the military’s business arrangements.

But, the cable continued, “in a messier succession scenario, it becomes more difficult to predict the military’s actions.”

No scenario could be “messier” than the mounting chaos in Egypt over the past few months.

The military acted.

July 5, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Egypt: Clashes continue near US embassy, Copts and priests join protests

Al-Masry Al-Youm | September 14, 2012

Late Friday afternoon the Muslim Brotherhood organized a massive demonstration in front of the Mostafa Mahmoud Mosque that brought together members of the Salafi and Jama’a al-Islamiya groups, as well as three delegations from the Diocese of Giza, which includes the Virgin Mary Church in Imbaba, the Abu Seven Church in Mohandiseen and the Saint Anthony Church in Ard al-Lewa.

Demonstrators chanted “Muslims and Christians are one hand,” and said that the current conflict over the recently released anti-Islam film, “Innocence of Muslims,” will only serve to strengthen the relationship between Muslims and Christians in Egypt.

The local media has widely blamed expatriate Copts residing in the United States for involvement in production of the film. Archbishop Silwanus Fekry of Virgin Mary Church told Al-Masry Al-Youm that if that is true, they had acted against true Christianity.

Fekry stressed that Coptic Christians enjoy full rights in their country, noting that Bishop Thodisius of Giza has sent a delegation of priests to demonstrate against insults to the Prophet Mohamed.

Meanwhile, dozens of worshippers staged a protest on the stairs of Fatah Mosque in Ramses Square to denounce the film. The protesters used three loudspeakers on a vehicle. Some of them headed to Tahrir Square to join protesters there.

Earlier in the afternoon, hundreds of protesters marched from Al-Azhar Mosque to Tahrir Square after Friday prayers in a continuation of the ongoing protests against the film.

Mohamed Ahmed, a protester, told Al-Masry Al-Youm that “The march is heading to Tahrir Square. Islam’s enemies should know that Muslims’ anger is strong, and [we must] stop these repeated violations against what we hold sacred.”

Elsewhere in Cairo dozens of protesters staged a march outside Al-Istiqama Mosque in Giza after Friday prayers.

Also after this morning’s prayers, a march of hundreds from Omar Makram Mosque headed by Sheikh Mazhar Shahien failed to stop the ongoing clashes between demonstrators and the security forces near the US Embassy in nearby Garden City.

The clashes, which have been ongoing since Wednesday, continued near the embassy this afternoon when some protesters attempted to climb the concrete barrier erected this morning by security forces and pelted rocks at them. The police responded by throwing tear gas and also used water cannons to disperse the demonstrators.

In Tahrir Square, the demonstrators expelled the CBC privately-owned channel’s crew and a foreign reporter after assaulting them, claiming that the reporters were biased. Some protesters attempted to intervene on the behalf of the journalists.

Protesters had begun gathering in Tahrir early this morning following a night of battling with CSF forces in the US embassy area.

The demonstrators chanted slogans “God is greatest” and “There is no God but God, and Mohamed is his Prophet” while holding banners condemning the film.

The number of demonstrators in front of the embassy declined on Thursday night, but have now increased again on Friday afternoon.

Al-Masry Al-Youm reported Friday morning that a number of protesters blocked had Qasr al-Nil bridge, which leads to Tahrir Square, in order to keep the square free of traffic and use it as a refuge from potential tear gas bombs.

The Egyptian Ministry of Health announced early Friday morning that 224 have been injured in the ongoing clashes so far. Most of the cases have been of minor wounds and bruises, as well as fainting.

The Interior Ministry said that the CSF arrested 37 protesters on Thursday on charges of assaulting the police and damaging public and private property. The defendants were immediately referred to the public prosecutor for interrogation, the ministry added.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

Related articles

September 15, 2012 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment