Apparently, April 6 momentum is not over yet. The young activists who were physically assaulted during 6 April anniversary demonstrations couple of days ago, went to the Public Prosecutor’s office this morning to file a claim against the security men who violently harassed them. As shown in the video above, security forces surrounded activists and accordingly they started shouting “down with Mubarak,” “Freedom… Freedom!”
This afternoon, the 20 Egyptian members of Elbaradei campaign and their families returned back to Cairo. They were arrested and deported by Kuwaiti authorities after they rallied the day before to show solidarity to their fellow protestors inside Egypt. The deported Egyptians lost their jobs for their political stance. It is totally a strange situation from Kuwait, especially that Palestinians and Lebanese natives living in Kuwait protested in larger number for “non-Kuwaiti” causes before. But the Kuwaiti security forces never stopped them. Egyptian dissidents have big doubts that there is some kind of hidden consent or coordination between Egypt and other Arab regimes to suppress any street action (i.e. protest, demonstration, rally, etc.) against the Egyptian regime.
Yesterday, Washington Post editorial discussed the horrible violent intervention of security forces against young 6 April protesters in Egypt. The article referred to the letter released and signed by bipartisan "working group on Egypt" to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which proposes ideas for the urgent intervention of the American administration to support pro-democracy activists in Egypt against their powerful authoritarian regime.
Ironically, Egyptian state-owned media and semi-official newspapers and popular TV shows criticized the potential US intervention into Egypt’s internal affairs. It was clear that the Washington Post editorial turned them mad. Some of them accused the young Egyptian blogger of being not loyal to their homeland by transferring the news on internal problems to the international audience.
Ambassador Hosam Zaki, the spokesman of Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the US State Department statement on April 6 attacks on nonviolent protesters is “misinformed intervention into Egypt’s internal affairs.” He said that the statement did not portray the real image which included the release of arrested protesters. Zaki also asserted that the statement “did not mention the acts of violence which requested the security forces to intervene in this way!” I think this is over-exaggerating response. The protesters did not commit any act of violence of any kind. They were rallying peacefully. Video footages and photos taken from the demonstrations can prove this.
The urgent question now is: how would the Ministry of Foreign Affairs react to the deportation of Egyptians by Kuwaiti authorities for merely showing solidarity to their fellows inside Egypt? Will the Ministry’s spokesman release a similar statement about the Kuwaiti intervention in Egyptian matters? Will the returning Egyptians face some indirect repression or harassment as a punishment to their courageous stand in Kuwait?
We will see!