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Blogging the strike: activists remain behind bars
By Philip Rizk First Published: May 4, 2008
CAIRO: The last entry on Kareem Al-Beheiri’s blog, http://www.egyworkers.blogspot.com reads, “It is now 7 am on April 6 and I am on my way to the Mahalla textile factory to cover the events of the strikes. I wish success to all seeking to expose the failing Egyptian political system.”
It is unlikely that in those early hours of the morning Kareem expected that a month later his blog would still post the very same entry. Kareem was among the hundreds of protesters, journalists, activists and bloggers arrested around Egypt on April 6 and 7.
Although workers had organized a strike planned for April 6 inside the Spinning and Weaving factory in Mahalla Al-Kubra, State Security forces prevented the workers’ strike from ever coming off the ground. Yet, protesting masses on the streets could not be halted.
Leading up to May 4, Mahalla streets are crowded with State Security vehicles causing Hamdy Hussein, Director of the Afaq Socialist Center to describe the town as being under “military occupation.”
Prior to the protests on April 6, in an attempt to quell the uprising, minister of investment Mahmoud Mohieddin raised worker’s food allowance from LE 43 to LE 90. Days following the April 6 strikes Mahalla workers received a 30-day bonus, while other workers across the country were given a 15-day bonus. In an attempt to placate the masses on Labor Day, President Hosni Mubarak announced a 30 percent raise for public sector workers.
Worker and activist Hamdy Hussein explained that this raise, though played up in the government press was nothing out of the ordinary. “The 30 percent income raise is part of established worker rights,” Hussein told Daily News Egypt.
Hussein stresses that various grassroots factions — not the worker leadership — organized the protests that took place in the city of Mahalla Al-Kubra and across Egypt on April 6 and 7. The people assembled in the streets because of a deep frustration and anger at the political system in Egypt, he added.
Kareem does not belong to a political party and vehemently opposes joining one. No single party represents the demands he and his fellow workers make, Kareem had previously told Daily News Egypt. In that aspect Kareem is no different from a growing trend among youths in Egypt who no longer believe the political establishment represents them or is providing much of an alternative to what Egypt’s regime has to offer.
As his blog states, Kareem was covering the events of the April 6 strikes, rather than participating in them as a worker of Mahalla Al-Kubra like he often does. For this purpose he had taken off half a days work. At the time of his arrest he was meeting with a group of foreigners at a local coffee shop. The claims brought against Kareem included that he had taken time off work in order to participate in the strike and host foreigners in the effort to do the same.
Although a local prosecutor deemed Kareem innocent on April 20, the Minister of Interior issued an order to arrest the blogger along with Mahalla Al-Kubra Workers’ League activists Tarek Amin and Kamal El-Fayoumi.
After being detained by State Security the three workers were transferred to Burg Al-Arab prison in Alexandria.
During Daily News Egypt’s last meeting with the blogger he was limping. His leg had been injured during the latest protest he had participated in. In the Burg Al-Arab prison Kareem informed fellow detainee journalist Rami Mitshawi, who has since been released, that he had been tortured by methods of electric shock.
In the cell that Rami shared with Kareem and the other workers they would sing songs by Sheikh Imam to pass the time, Rami told Daily News Egypt.
“The main concern on Kareem’s mind was the wellbeing of his pregnant sister,” the journalist said. Kareem had no means of communicating with his family.
On April 28 while a political prisoner in Burg Al-Arab jail in Alexandria, Kareem became an uncle. His sister named her baby girl “Haneen” meaning “longing,” because the whole family is longing for his release, according to Hussein.
Kareem had been detained in the past on numerous occasions for short periods of time; this is his first prison detainment. According to Egyptian law the blogger can be held for 30 days without trial, at which time his detention can be renewed for an additional 30 days.
Kareem had previously told Daily News Egypt that Egyptian blogger Hossam El-Hamalawy had encouraged him to start a blog to report on the ongoing events of Mahalla factory as well as workers around the country. Kareem’s mother told Al-Ahali journalist Seham Shawada that she had been troubled when Kareem first began his political activity. After he was imprisoned she realized that he was an activist and began to support him in his cause. Hussein is confident that due to political pressure Kareem and his fellow detained workers would be released in the coming days. “Their release is expected but our demands are that they not be transferred to other factories or be fired completely, because with this government either is imaginable,” Hussein told Daily News Egypt.
The government frequently uses such methods to weaken worker unity.
Independent worker unions, which would uphold worker rights, are banned in Egypt.
In 2003, Egypt passed a new labor law, which enables employers to fire workers with simple justifications. Furthermore, if workers are absent from their workplace for 10 days the administration is permitted to fire them. If they would attempt to fire any of them the government would be provoking the workers to “take a stand,” Hamdy Hussein said with a certain air of confidence.
Release of 11 of April 6 Detainees, Including Al-Ashqar
By Ahmed Shalabi, Farouq al-Gamal 13/5/2008
Ministry of Interior released yesterday 11 citizens of April 6 detainees from Al-Marg and Borg el-Arab prisons.
They are: Mohammed Hafiz al-Ashqar (Giza), Walid Salah Saeed (Cairo), Usama Ezel Arab (Cairo) who were detained in Marg Prison, in addition to 8 detainees from Borg el-Arab prison. With the release of the detainees, there remain in Borg el-Arab prison 3 workers of Ghazl Mahala Co.
These are: Karim al-Beheiry, Kamal al-Fayoumi and Tareq Abdel Hamid, in addition to 46 remanded and 24 criminal detainees from Mahalla....
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Karim went with the two others on hunger strike - and he's not doing well.
Letter from Egyptian blogger in hunger strike after detention and torture
posted by Sami Ben Gharbia on May 19, 2008 categories: Advocacy, Egypt, News
Below is a translation by Amnesiac of a letter handed out at a Journalists’ Syndicate protest about the individuals still being detained in connection with the April 6th strike, among them blogger Kareem El Beheiry:
We, three political detainees, address the letter below to the Judges’ Club and its head Zakareya Abdel Aziz from the Borg el-Arab Prison in Alexandria…
Dear Sir,
A week has passed on our hunger strike and we are extremely weak. We are appealing to you as the last and only resort for all who have suffered injustice in Egypt.
We would like in the beginning to correct certain information which has reached the press about our (the three of us) having been transferred to the prison hospital as a result of our hunger strike.
The truth is that we are still in prison after the administration refused to call an ambulance to take us to hospital, and as a result of the inability of Karim el-Beheiry and Tareq Amin to stand on their feet - as a result of their extreme weakness. Instead, a “nurse” was summoned to examine Karim, whose condition has seriously deteriorated.
We would like to know the reason why we remain in detention. We will continue the hunger strike until we either die or receive this information.
We were tortured in the state security headquarters in Mahalla on the 6th, 7th and 8th April. Officers tortured Karim using electricity while Tareq Amin and Kamal el-Fayyoumy were insulted verbally and physically assaulted. We then spent eleven days in Borg el-Arab prison in a cell with individuals with criminal convictions. When the Tanta court ordered that we be released we were held for four days in the El-Salam police station [noqtat shorta] situated between Mahalla and Tanta before we were taken to Borg el-Arab prison were we began our hunger strike.
From our detention cell, we call on you and all political currents to take action and apply pressure in order to secure the release of all those detained in connection with the events of Mahalla.
Signed Kamal El-Fayyoumy, Tareq Amin, Karim El-Beheiry Detained workers from Mahalla Borg el-Arab Prison Wing 22, Cell 5
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EGYPT: Released labor activist vows to pursue the battle
He was grabbing a cup of coffee at the factory cafeteria less than two years ago when he heard the call for a strike. “I wondered then what the term strike meant,” recalls Karim El-Beheiry. On his way out of the factory, he heard a fellow tell the press: “I don’t have enough money to satisfy the needs of my son.”
“I cried when I heard that,” remembers El-Beheiry, “and eventually decided to join the strike.”
The words stuck with El-Beheiry until they turned him from a disengaged lay worker into a prominent blogger and labor activist. But he did not know that his dedication to workers’ rights would cost him more than 50 days of imprisonment and torture for allegedly instigating a riot in April, at Mahalla town, the site of Egypt’s biggest spinning and textile factory and the stronghold of the nation’s labor force.
Upon his release, El-Beheiry affirmed to The Times that his experience behind bars, though painful, made him more determined about his cause. “Jail never changes ideas. Coercion and torture makes the person stronger. I love this country and I refuse to give up my rights,” El-Beheiry told The Times over the phone from Mahalla, about 75 miles north of Cairo.
The Mahallah factory has been the scene of several strikes over wages for the last two years. The first erupted in December 2006, when El-Beheiry was first introduced to the notion of labor advocacy. Since then, the 23-year-old worker has been mentored by leftist labor leaders until he eventually embraced a socialist ethos. His devotion was translated into the launching of two blogs (Egyworkers and Watch out You are Now in Egypt) to promote a labor-oriented agenda.
However, his concern with workers’ demands drew his attention to Egypt’s different malaises, he says. “All I had in mind was the labor question and how to retrieve my rights as a worker. However, my concern became broader and expanded from just asking for my rights to asking for civil liberties and freedom of expression,” he explains.
The unrest at the Mahalla factory culminated in a riot April 6 in which two people were killed and more than 100 wounded after police clashed with demonstrators, shooting rubber bullets and throwing tear gas bombs. Holding his camera, El-Beheiry recorded the violence and filed updates over the phone to local and international news organizations until he was caught off guard by police, who kept him in custody until Saturday.
“The first three days in custody were the worst three days in my life. They were days of torture, oppression and coercion,” says El-Beheiry, adding that he had his hands and legs cuffed and was kept blindfolded without food or water for three days.
“They wanted me to let on to other people and to make certain confessions. They tried everything with me but they did not get anything,” he recounts.
El-Beheiry declines to provide details on the way he was allegedly tortured. “I don’t want to remember those days. When I recall those moments, I cry not out of weakness but out of my inability to believe that a human being can get audacious enough to do that to another human being and that Egypt has become this police state.”
However, earlier, El-Beheiry told Agence France-Presse that he was subjected to beatings and electric shocks. “They would give you improper food. They would put their fingers in your food or throw it with their feet to you,” he recounts.
Egypt has recently witnessed several protests over inflation, which has raised the specter of public unrest, putting President Hosni Mubarak’s regime under unprecedented pressure. Young bloggers and Facebook activists have recently come to the fore as the main mobilizers of anti-Mubarak protests.
“Egypt is shaking and the people started to feel pressured. At one point they will explode out of hunger and their explosion will be catastrophic,” warns El-Beheiry.
Despite state retaliation, El-Beheiry vows to pursue the battle on the blogosphere. “I will never stop blogging; I will keep blogging about the labor moment even if it costs my life,” he affirms. “Facebook activists and bloggers carry Egypt’s hopes and they are the ones who retrieve freedom for Egyptians.”
But the future of El-Beheiry’s activism remains to be seen as he may stand trial soon on a package of allegations that include instigating a strike and damaging public property.
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