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Police, Protesters Clash In Egypt For A Second Day As Hundreds Arrested

Last updated (GMT/UTC): 26.01.2011 18:16
By RFE/RL

Thousands of Egyptians defied a government warning and took to the streets again today, clashing with security forces for a second day in a row.

Several protests took place in the capital, Cairo. In one area, riot police drove trucks into a crowd of about 3,000 people to force them to disperse.

Groups of mostly young protesters demanding the dissolution of parliament, democracy and higher wages, and the ouster of veteran Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held brief protests in the center of the capital.

In Suez, where three demonstrators died on January 25, police used batons to disperse some 2,000 protesters. Smaller protests were reported in several other cities.

Egyptian security officials said 860 protesters have been arrested over the past two days.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged all sides to show "restraint" and called on the government to allow freedom of expression, including by lifting restrictions on social media.

The Egyptian government today denied earlier reports that social networking services Facebook and Twitter had been blocked. Facebook and Twitter have been used by protesters to share information and coordinate activities.

Second Day

Today's demonstrations followed protests on January 25, during which tens of thousands of people took to the streets. They were the largest protests against Mubarak since his authoritarian regime came to power three decades ago.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon on crowds in Cairo as demonstrators pelted them with stones and threw tear-gas canisters back at security forces.

Two protesters were killed in Suez, to the east of Cairo, when police fired rubber bullets at close range on demonstrators. A third protester wounded by a rubber bullet there died today from his injuries. A police officer was killed in Cairo when he was hit in the head by a rock.

Toward the end of the day on January 25, demonstrators across Cairo converged on Tahrir Square in the city center, vowing they would stage a sit-in demonstration there until Mubarak's government collapses.

But shortly after midnight, riot police used tear gas and water cannon -- charging at the crowd and dispersing the protesters there.

April 6 Movement

Calm had returned to Cairo by early morning today. But the pro-democracy youth group that launched the call for the January 25 protests, known as the April 6 Movement, was using its Facebook page again to urge people to reassemble in central Cairo.

Ehab el-Zelaky, managing editor of the Cairo-based "Al-Masry al-Youm" newspaper, says the use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter to organize demonstrations has changed the dynamics of the opposition in Egypt, empowering a younger generation of political activism.

Some 80,000 Egyptians had vowed on Internet petitions that they would take part in the January 25 protests. Far fewer -- some 20,000 -- actually turned out, but political analysts were surprised that the organizers were able to translate their cyberprotest into such large street actions.

Indeed, even protest organizers appeared to be taken aback by the number of demonstrators who took to the streets. Before those rallies began, they had said they would consider their effort a success if there were just a few thousand demonstrators.

Most of the protesters appeared to be under the age of 30. But the rallies did draw Egyptians from all age groups and walks of life -- young and old, Muslims and Christians -- united behind the call for Mubarak's resignation.

New Political Opposition?

Conspicuous by its relative absence was Egypt's biggest organized opposition bloc. The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood did not formally support the January 25 rallies, even though it said some of its members were taking part on their own initiative.

That has Egyptian activists like Gameela Ismail wondering whether a new organized political opposition may emerge in her country as a result of events that unfold in the days and weeks ahead.

"Where will it lead? That is the question. Will our demands be met? We have a lot of demands, starting from Mubarak leaving all the way down to other social, economic, and political demands," she says. "Which will come true and which will wipe away the tears and which will continue to be a problem are all questions we don't know the answer to now. We can just say we are going through trial and error. If, for example, a child is born, what will happen to him? We don't know yet."

written by Ron Synovitz, with contributions from RFE/RL's Radio Farda

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/egypt_opposition_protests_mubarak/2287865.html

Copyright (c) 2011. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.