Dec
16
Mahalla el-Kubra Rioters Jailed
Filed Under Egypt
Back when the global food crisis, which is certainly ongoing, was making the front pages of international newspapers, a particular spotlight was shone on Egypt. Not only were there several stories of the bread shortage, to which the government responded by commissioning the military to open more bakeries to avoid both hunger and the inevitable political unrest; the rise of food prices also spawned two days of rioting in the industrial city of Mahalla, home to the region’s largest textile factory. From the L.A Times blog, Babylon and Beyond, April 9th:
The two-day riots this week that rocked the Delta province town of Mahalla, leaving one young man dead and about a hundred injured, exposed the failures of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. The clashes erupted after the police aborted a planned strike by the town’s 25,000 textile workers. Police fired tear gas and rioters threw stones and burned schools and shops.
The workers were angry over low wages and triple-digit inflation that have led to increasing unrest in a country where nearly half the population is poor. The Egyptian economy is growing, but the benefits have not trickled to the middle and lower classes, who blame Mubarak for years of neglect.
“The whole world suffers from inflation. Each state deals with the problem according to its capabilities; however, the Egyptian government failed in dealing with the crisis and let it deteriorate,” wrote columnist Khairy Ramadan in the independent al-masry al-Youm daily. “Aimless anger and aimless siege will only lead to chaos.”
Yesterday, an emergency court sentenced 22 of the rioters to jail-terms ranging from 3 and 5 years:
Among the 22 people convicted was a 58-year-old woman who was sentenced to three years in jail for allegedly carrying a Molotov cocktail.
Only Mubarak can intervene with a presidential pardon in the cases of those convicted, as under the 27-year Emergency Law emergency courts have no appeal process and the verdicts will stand.
Mubarak has kept the country under a state of emergency since President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981 in order to combat terrorism. The powers enacted under the emergency law give the government the right to imprison anyone for any length of time for virtually no reason at all, and it widely and freely uses that prerogative.
“Those sentenced today are scapegoats used by the authorities to hide their inability to adequately handle the Mahalla protests and to cover up for their failure to investigate the killing of three people, including a 15-year-old boy,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy program director in a statement.
At least 20 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people live on less than $2 per day. With the sharply rising cost of living facing the North African nation, the majority of Egyptians are finding it difficult to support their families.
This is a sad reminder of how the Middle East’s authoritarian governments deal with demands for an increased quality of life; they feed oppression with more oppression.
Here’s some insight into the riots of April and their significance. An interview with Saad Eddin Ibrahim AlJazeera English’s program “Frost over the World”, on April 16th:
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