Sunday, April 29, 2012

#MOD sit in: Abassiya battle II

Tens of protesters have been injured in clashes with armed assailants at Abassiya area while they were having a sit in at the ministry of defense "MOD" area. The clashes started late night and continued till the early hours of the morning. The armed assailants from hired thugs and angry Abassiya locals used handmade cement bombs, Molotov cocktails, rocks ,live ammunition and birdshots against the peaceful protesters , mostly from the Islamist Salafist powers who were objecting the exclusion of Hazem Abu Ismail from presidential elections.
Blood on the vest of that young man by Nawara Negm
According to the ministry of health not less than 91 have been injured with no death cases.News reports are conflicted when it comes to deaths , there are reports that a Salafist protester has been killed while field doctors say that 4 were killed. There is documented use of live ammunition along with birdshots. There two field hospitals in the sit in , one set up by Tahrir doctors group and the other is set up by the students of Ain Shams university named Alaa Abdel Hady field hospital."Abdel Hady is from the famous martyrs from medical school that were killed during the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes"Despite many activists and tweeps kept saying that all the assailants are not from the locals and they are either hired thugs or even the security forces in disguise according to many eye witness many of the assailants were and are from the locals who are so angry from the sit in like for instance Ahmed Alish. Still as usual there are hired thugs arrested by the protesters who confessed that they participated in every clash with protesters including the famous Camel battle in February 2011 for LE 200.
The four thugs captured by protesters by @AnaTa7riry
Some of these thugs already were found to have the old NDP ids !!
The NDP id of the thug captured last night
By Mohamoud Gamal El Din
The thugs photos captured from video clips taken early morning today began to take the Egyptian social media world by storm with calls for their immediate arrest in major Facebook Page like “Kolena Khaled Said” Page. “1,2”. These guys were shooting from handmade guns.


Here is below video showing the thugs and locals attacking the protesters earlier this morning , it is very close to the level that the one filming was injured.
Al Abassiya : Clashes in Early morning
Not so strangely major Salafist TV channels all night long were calling the Salafists to withdraw from the area and not to fall in to "April 6 Youth trap" !! Provokingly enough Hazem Salah Abu Ismail FB page claimed that "despite his health condition , he was going to the sit in" in hint to his alleged foot injury. Since the announcement of his exclusion and Abu Ismail has not showed up or even thought of paying visit to his followers in Tahrir square.

There is emotional shock among young Salafists especially those at the sit in when they see themselves abandoned by their sheikhs while they find people like Nawara Negm and Alaa Abdel Fatah as well the revolutionary socialists and the anarchists they usually attack them standing besides and ready to die to defend their right for protesting.

Presidential candidates began to react , the first so far is Abdel Moneim Abu El Fotoh who rejected the attack on peaceful sit-in to disperse it. This will gain him more popularity among revolutionary Salafists and former Abu Ismail supporters yet will make him lose the Abassiya vote. It is something expected from Abu El Fotoh who is said to have visited the field hospitals there early today "Unconfirmed".

The protection of the protesters is the duty of the state , being silence on dispersing a peaceful sit in by force is a crime.
MP Essam Sultan of Al Wasat Party also condemned the attacked and presented his condolence to the Hazemoon movement “Salafist Pro-Hazem Abu El Ismail who lost allegedly a member yesterday.
Liberal MP Bassel Adel urged the protesters to head back to the Tahrir square for their safety.
The protesters at the MOD should head back to Tahrir square and the Protesters at Tahrir square should unblock the traffic , we all want to cancel article no.28 from the presidential elections law.
The Freedom and Justice Party has not official commented on the attack

How did it start ??

On Late Friday night , we found out that there was a big march heading to the ministry of defense in Cairo at a very late hour with prior announcement . We knew nothing about the march that headed to the MOD at 1 AM except that it was organized mainly by Abu Ismail supporters. Sooner the march turned in to a sit in at the MOD.

The demands were clear : SCAF has to cancel article n.28 from presidential elections and dismissing the current presidential elections committee.

Despite the online realm the sit in did not gain any public support because of Abu Ismail's association. Some feared it was a trap to create clashes thus chaos enough to postpone the presidential elections and prolong the military rule time at the same time adopting another Algerian scenario in Egypt where security forces clashes once again with Islamist forces.

Many saw that this sit in was a playback for the original "Abassiya Massacre" in mid July 2011 where hundreds were injured and protester "Mohamed Mohsen" was killed after clashes with the residents as well the thugs of Abassiya area while they were heading to protest peacefully at the MOD.

Despite it was actually another Abu Ismail march regardless of how non Islamist activists try to ignore , there were some protesters from outside the Salafist trend participating in the sit in as it was chanting against SCAF at its home !! Among those who were participating : Nawara Nagm and Ahmed Abu Douma.
Here is a photo gallery by Menna aka @Miinz for the sit in before the attack in the morning yesterday.
#MOD sit in at #Abassiya


April 6 Youth movement "The Ahmed Maher front" denied the news reports that it was participating in the sit in so did the Ultras groups after it was rumored their participation as their songs were sang.

We are all against any attack against peaceful protesters and sits in , no one argues about that but I think we should be careful to what we are being dragged to.WE all knew that the clashes will take place and it will be violently yet for some reason unknown revolutionary romantic reason some people wanted to stand in in front of the train because they are addicted to that adrenaline rush. We are still in self denial status that many of the assailants that attacked the protesters were from the locals of Abassiya.

Being a revolutionary does not make you a dreamy fool who only looks for the sky all the Time and does not use his brain carefully to choose his right battles.

1 comment:

Thank You for your comment
Please keep it civilized here, racist and hateful comments are not accepted
The Comments in this blog with exclusion of the blog's owner does not represent the views of the blog's owner.