Hundreds Of Thousands Gather In Cairo For 'March Of A Million'

[ rfe/rl banner ]

Hundreds Of Thousands Gather In Cairo For 'March Of A Million'

01.02.2011 13:58

By RFE/RL

Protest organizers in Cairo say up to 2 million people have gathered in and around Cairo's Tahrir Square to call for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and his regime.

Even by the most conservative estimates, there were hundreds of thousands of people on the square, with many more on nearby side streets.

Opposition leaders said the protest -- planned as a "march of a million" -- had reached the critical mass needed to show that Mubarak no longer has political legitimacy and must step down from power.

In a joint statement, the opposition groups -- including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood -- called for the rewriting of Egypt's constitution and the creation of a coalition transitional government to replace Mubarak.

Reformist leader and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei told Al-Arabiyah television that it was time for negotiations to begin on a transitional government.

"The first demand of the Egyptian people is that President Mubarak should leave in order for them to start a new phase and to begin a new Egypt based on security, freedom, and democracy," ElBaradei said.

The Muslim Brotherhood initially had backed ElBaradei as part of a negotiating committee that would meet with Egyptian military leaders. But it issued a separate statement today saying it refused to negotiate a political transition with Mubarak or any members of his government.

The original plan was for demonstrators to march past the Foreign Ministry and state television headquarters to arrive at a massive rally in front of Mubarak's presidential palace.

But with army tanks and troops positioned along the planned protest route, the demonstrators had not yet started the planned march by the time a night curfew went into effect at 3 p.m.

Opposition leaders, speaking to the crowd through a public address system, said they would not begin to march until their numbers were so large that the square can no longer contain more people.

Some protest organizers -- who also called a national strike that began on January 31 -- said they would try to keep as many people as possible on Tahrir Square until at least February 6 if Mubarak continued to cling to power.

Meanwhile, Egyptian demonstrators received a boost of confidence from news that weeks of opposition protests in Jordan had led King Abdullah today to sack the government there.

Jordan's Royal Palace said Abdullah appointed his former national security chief, Marouf Bakhit, to be the new prime minister, and gave him orders to form a new cabinet and carry out "true political reforms."

Fears Of Violence

Spirits also have been riding high among Cairo's demonstrators after Egyptian military spokesman Ismail Etman announced that army troops would not use force against peaceful and lawful demonstrators.

Etman said that because "your armed forces acknowledge the legitimacy of your demands and is concerned about your safety, we emphasize the following: First, the right to protest peacefully is guaranteed for everyone. Second, do not take any actions that aim to destabilize the safety and security of the nation or damage public or private property."

Still, it remains unclear what the posture will be for riot police if the mass protest continues for days. Those police are blamed for most of the deaths during the past week because of their use of live ammunition, tear gas, truncheons, and heavy-handed tactics.

Concerned about the prospects of more police violence, more than 50 Egyptian human rights groups today called on Mubarak "to step down" in order to "avoid bloodshed."

Cairo-based Alhurra TV correspondent Tarek el-Shamy says there are concerns that Mubarak's supporters will try to infiltrate today's protest in order to provoke violence.

"Hundreds of demonstrators backing President Mubarak gathered last night in different places in Cairo," el-Shamy says.

"Some people say that they are carrying knives and other tools and that they could go to the main demonstration on Tahrir Square to provoke clashes with those who oppose President Mubarak."

Gathering On Tahrir Square

Neither soldiers nor police were preventing people from entering Tahrir Square today, and the crowd quickly grew to become the largest seen there since the demonstrations started.

Still, at the entrances of Tahrir Square, soldiers were searching people for weapons as they joined the swelling crowd. A second series of checks for weapons was being carried out on the square itself by civilian activists.

Elsewhere, there have been signs that authorities were trying to limit the number of protesters joining today's protest.

Correspondents reported groups of "thugs" in some parts of Cairo stopping cars and trying to prevent people from converging on the city center.

RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq correspondent Ahmed Ragab reports from Cairo that the government cut city-to-city rail services late on January 31 in an attempt to prevent demonstrators from across the country gathering in the capital.

Railroad traffic and all connections between Cairo and all provinces have been stopped, Ragab reports. "After the local people returned to Giza, the province neighboring Cairo and separated from it by the Nile River, all bridges to Cairo have been closed down. Giza and the other provinces have been virtually isolated."

Instead, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators held their own rally in the port city of Alexandria, and another 250,000 people were rallying in the Sinai Peninsula.

Designed Disorder?

Meanwhile, Egypt's much-hated police are increasingly being blamed for the looting, prison breaks, and chaos that erupted across Egypt during the weekend after they suddenly vanished from the streets -- a move seen as a ploy to create a sense of insecurity.

Sahar al-Mougy, a Cairo-based activist who is taking part in today's march, says that many Egyptians suspect government provocateurs have been directly involved in the lawlessness in an attempt to dampen the appetite of demonstrators to continue their protests.

"We will stay in the street till this corrupt system ends -- the system which unleashed [Mubarak's] thugs against us -- the thugs of the Interior Ministry looting in the streets, vandalizing public property, burning and firing in air to frighten Egyptians from freedom," al-Mougy says. "But we are not afraid."

written by Ron Synovitz and Claire Bigg, with contributions by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan and Radio Free Iraq

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/egypt_1_million_march_rally_opposition/2293555.html

NEWSLETTER

Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list

Military

Hundreds Of Thousands Gather In Cairo For 'March Of A Million'