Smoke and Mirrors in Pursuit of Suez’s Striking Workers
July 25, 20011
My visit to Suez, where I planned to interview striking Suez Canal workers, began as expected: One of the workers slipped me a USB drive of video footage taken the night before of protesters clashing with the military; two cops rolled up, radiating good cheer, and asked what me and my three colleagues were doing in Suez, while a company security flack confiscated the worker’s computer, strode off, and disappeared behind the company gates. Then, we got back into our car and hightailed it out of there before being detained any longer by the cops, the company, the military, or a combination of the three.
We drove off looking for 200 strikers that we were told had been picketing down the street in a public park adjacent to the Suez Canal. But all we found were armored military vehicles, the scruffy park surrounded by coils of barbed wire but empty of protesters, dozen of soldiers, and three men standing across the street from the park, who said one shouldn’t negotiate with “stupid people,” meaning the striking workers. All the while, our local contact, a striking worker, insisted, while speaking with one of my companions over the phone, that the rest of his comrades were there.
We agreed to meet with our contact later in the day, when things “cooled off.” Until then, we decided, we should check out a sit-in that had been underway for several days in Arbaeen Square in the city center—Suez’s version of the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo. And then things got really strange.
