Pictures from last week

A busy week here. I realised that I took a helluva lot of photos, so here’s some of them from the week that Egypt marked its anniversary.

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Friday of anger turns irritable

Jan. 25 is the date that the revolution began, and hundreds of thousands of Egyptians marked its anniversary this week. But ask anyone who participated in the uprising and they will likely tell you than Jan. 28 was when Egypt changed irrevocably. It was a violent and damaging day, but one full of significant and tangible gains for the revolutionaries.

Today was again dubbed the Friday of Rage, and saw protestors convene in their thousands in Tahrir and outside Maspero after coordinating several marches across Cairo.

I mentioned in my Jan. 25 post that the various motivations of the million or so people in Tahrir had produced tension, and today I saw a continuation – indeed, an escalation – of that.

“This is a revolution, not a party”

One of the most frequently stressed aspects of Egypt’s fractious and flawed transition to democracy is that Islamist parties have gained the most from the revolution. With two-thirds of the People’s Assembly vote going their way, governments and commentators from the  Western Hemisphere have been vocal in the need for administrations across the world to support a Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Noor led parliament. We will support the Islamists, the caveat always runs, as long as their power is representative of public opinion. It has been an awkward shift for major players such as the US to undertake, with the realisation that Islamism is not diametrically opposed to democracy. Islamists love democracy in Egypt; they win.

The Revolution Continues

It has been a year since the revolution. 365 days have passed since civilians across Egypt took advantage of a national holiday (Police Day, ironically) to take to the streets with a simple, triple-pronged demand: Bread, Freedom, Social Justice.

I went down to Tahrir Square – the spiritual home of the revolution – twice, once in the morning for Fagr prayers and once as part of a mass march from Mustafa Mahmoud mosque in Mohandaseen, accompanied by (@austingmackell) and (@aliyaalwi). I will post a longer piece soon, but for now, here are some shots of today.

Mad graffiti week: Azooz in Heliopolis

Heading in to the first anniversary of #Jan25, artists in Cairo have called for a “Mad Graffiti Week”. The idea is to intensify the graffiti work that has been daubed in downtown Cairo for the past year, and to spread the images outside of Tahrir. It is partly display of solidarity with protestors who have been killed or wounded in the ongoing unrest, and partly a riposte to the security services for painting over large swathes of stencilling that had appeared in the areas surrounding the square. Mad Graffiti Week is so mad, in fact, that it lasts a whole 10 days.

I went to meet an artist participating in MGW, in Heliopolis, close to Cairo Airport. He is a student at a nearby university, but since the revolution has taken up graffiti. The surrounding area is lit up with stencils of everything from Jim Morrison to lizards. Most are the work of Azooz.

Most of his work is light-hearted; he mainly focusses on music, but his pieces, somewhat unavoidably, have a political frisson. The work above, which he allowed me to film being painted, reads “We need tear gas with flavours,” a reference to the use by security forces on protestors at recent clashes in Tahrir.

Azooz doesn’t class himself in the same league as other artist/activist hybrids, some of whom have received stiff jail sentence for inflammatory or subversive work. He and his flatmate, Mahmoud, operate happily in broad daylight, without so much as look over the shoulder at nearby police officers.

The pair claim they are going to intensify their work over the coming few days, and hope to make it into town proper to graffiti close to Tahrir Square. There are many others like Azooz, and I will try and document some of their works leading up to the anniversary.

Some of Azooz's handiwork. The Arabic reads: "The people need tear gas in flavours"

Tahrir Square, Jan 13, 2012 (video and images)

With just two more Fridays left before Egypt marks the one year anniversary of its Jan 25 revolution, I headed down to Tahrir Square, where supporters of imprisoned army officers were demonstrating, demanding their release. Far more people there than this time last week. I’m still following up on their cases.

Some pics from today:

Kazeboon in Sphinx Square, Cairo (photos)

You’ve probably all heard about Kazeboon, an initiative aimed at getting activism operative outside of Tahrir Square. The organisers display films of army violence against protestors in the past year. Here are some pictures I took at the one held this evening, in Sphinx Square, Mohandaseen.

For more photos go to: http://www.flickr.com/people/patrickgaley/

For more on Kazeboon go to: www.facebook.com/pages/Kazeboon-كاذبون/249589071773470

Jimmy Carter comes to Shubra

Former US President Jimmy Carter at voting station in Shubra

Former US President and long-time monitor of elections in fledgling democracies Jimmy Carter is in town for a couple of days to take a look at voting for the People’s Assembly run offs. His group, the Carter Centre, has had 40 election monitors in Egypt since the first round of voting in November.

The Carter Centre organised press access to a voting station today at an all girls school in Shubra. Carter himself looked a little exasperated at the media scrum, even telling one reporter that all he’d been able so see so far were “cameras in my face.”

Carter has an obvious tie with Egypt, given his mediation between Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that led to the signing of the Camp David Accords and the eventual peace treaty between the states.

I asked him about the peace treaty. He responded:

I believe the treaty will be observed no matter who gets elected.

Which is probably true – it at least seems like the majority won by the FJP is unlikely to renege.

Carter will unveil his official findings on the PA elections on Friday.

Amnesty’s MENA year of rebellion

This morning saw the release of Amnesty International’s MENA Year of Rebellion report, which gave a run down of alleged human rights violations in each country hit by Arab Spring uprisings.

Its take on Egypt doesn’t offer much that was not already known in terms of violence against protestors by security forces. It even praises SCAF’s decision to disband the fearsome SSI, a police security wing renowned for human rights abuses.

What it does do is summarise the contradictory behaviour of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the de facto rulers of Egypt since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, highlighting the apparently paradoxical manner in which the ruling military has taken about the complicated task of running a country in the throes of change.

First Time in Tahrir

A woman protests against armed thugs, a group of which wounded her eye and leg during a recent Tahrir protest (Photo: Austin Gerassimos Mackell)

Readers and twitter followers of mine with a keen eye may have picked up on the fact that I have moved to Cairo, and today I headed to Tahrir Square the focal point of Egypt’s January 25 revolution, that saw former President Hosni Mubarak toppled after 18 unprecedented days of protest and violence.

I’ll spare the cliched ‘first impressions,’ because you all know by now what the place looks like and what the people who gather there varyingly stand for.

I met a young man who made and designed banners and signs for a living. He was present during the initial unrest last year and makes his way down to the square every Friday after prayers. His piece de resistance for foreigners is a gleefully unveiled scar, running for three inches down his navel, which he claims was the result of a knife attack by the baltagiya - gangs of state-paid thugs – during the protests.

I also encountered relatives of army members who had either deserted or refused to use violence against demonstrators and have since been imprisoned. The trials of three high-profile army members is due to take place next week, and I shall be following up on how it goes. Stay tuned.