Renewed Violence hits Cairo’s Tahrir Square
Major clashes broke out late last evening in Tahrir Square following several arrests and the beating of relatives of protesters killed during the January and February uprising that led to the ouster of Egyptian President Husni Mubarak.
These clashes signify a major escalation in the confrontation between Egyptians, who are growing tired at the slow pace of political reform and the prosecution of former regime officials, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has been ruling the country since February 11th, when Mubarak stepped down.
Jack Shenker at the Guardian describes last night’s melee and juxtaposes the clashes with the dissolution of municipal councils throughout Egypt earlier in the day.
One person I spoke with this morning, with decades of experience in Egyptian social movements, thought that the relationship between the clashes and the dissolution of these councils is more than coincidental. They were the institutions from which the power of Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party emanated on the local level. That these local bosses were out of a job — and officially out of power — could very well have been the proximate cause of the attack on the martyrs’ families.
Here’s a video of the Tahrir clashes and a Nation piece that provides background on the grievances of the martyrs’ families. Egyptian blogger Gigi Ibrahim relates how the clashes began last night.
This morning, nearly fourteen hours after the riot broke out, tear gas continued to fill the air in Tahrir Square. Battles between police and demonstrators remained confined, for the most part, to a several block area southeast of Tahrir Square, where the American University of Cairo is located as well as the Interior Ministry.
As the front line of the battle ebbed and flowed from one block to the next, a steady stream of motorcycles and mopeds carried wounded protesters to ambulances parked in Tahrir.
I spoke with Dr. Mohammad Suttar, head of the ambulances services, who said that since the violence broke out last evening 95 people had been sent to the hospital with injuries. Another 600 were treated by ambulance crews and released. Injuries were primarily head wounds and suffocation from the use of tear gas. Dr. Suttar said that 23 ambulances were mobilized and parked at three locations around Tahrir. A staff of 59 was on hand to treat the injured.
Over the course of an hour and a half that I observed the ambulance and moped crews another two dozen injured were carried in, most of them arriving looking fatigued and overcome by gas. Several others though were bleeding from hands or heads, possibly from rocks or other projectiles.
Ninety-eight percent of those arriving at the ambulances were youths, most no more than in their late teens, several of them looking to be much younger. Most of them wore only crude, loose-fitting sandals, were shirtless and covered in dust from head to foot.
I spoke with one of the moped drivers, also covered in dust and looking fatigued, he told me that he’d been shuttling the injured to ambulances since 10:30 last night. I asked him how many injured had he transported. “A lot, a lot,” he responded and sped off, back toward the front line.
Several protesters retreating from the frontline carried remnants of the fight: tear gas canisters — clearly marked “MADE IN U.S.A.” — and shotgun shells. One youth displayed a metal pellet that looked to be from a shotgun slug.
Although the attire of the youths — meager foot-ware and tattered clothes — doesn’t necessary signify poverty, that the youth of lower classes might be the ones holding the streets and continuing to confront the security forces mirrors a larger dilemma of the Egyptian uprising. That is, that beyond electoral and constitutional reforms, many people — particularly among the poor and working classes— seek other, more substantial, forms of justice: economic and atonement for the past crimes of Mubarak’s regime, such as for the deaths of loved-ones during the January and February protests.
Major mobilizations are scheduled for next week on Tuesday and Friday. There’s a good chance that one will be able to look back on the past 14 hours and view them as mearly the opening salvo in a renewal of violent, mass confrontation in the streets of Cairo and perhaps other cities. But if the ouster of Mubarak demonstrated anything it is that one shouldn’t make predictions about the future of Egypt.
