The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said , today, that the statement of the Egyptian interior ministry issued on Wednesday, April 7, contained many lies and false information, in order to cover up for the shameful crimes committed by security forces unarmed civilians who just marched out to express their refusal of extending the state of emergency enforced on Egypt 29 years ago. against
The interior ministry started its statement with an unashamed lie, saying that the police acted violently only after being hit by stones. No citizen did throw any stones, as there were no stones or hard objects found in Tahrir sq. or Kasr AlAini street. In essence, beating people up and dragging them on the streets started early morning of 6th April in both Cairo and Alexandria.
The statement also falsely stated that violence to break up the peaceful march began after several warnings, which is another official lie. The ministry gave no time or chance for people to assemble and get organized in the first place. As a result, press and media personnel as well as human rights organizations staff were abused by security in a failing attempt to cover up for atrocities committed against Egyptians on that day.
Although the ministry of interior seized the legal right of youth to stage a march and though the ministry responded negatively on staging the march in contrary to the law, youth abided to the law and filed a suit at the state council claiming their right to demonstrate and not one of them was arrested before 6th April.
However, security tried to show in every way , that riots all over Egypt on that day were illegally incited by 6th April movement alone, ignoring the fact that many political forces and parties participated in these demonstrations in as well as many people who are longing for a homeland free of emergency state and repression.
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said “it is quite confusing and hard to tell the difference between state newspapers crawling with lies and the statement of the interior ministry. We can no longer differentiate between a newspaper article written by a police officer and the statement of the interior ministry edited by a journalist belonging to the official bunch. Lying, deception and denial of the right of citizens to express their opinion and their stance has become a common attribute between police press and press police”.
Despite that the prosecutor general has issued a release order for all detainees as of 7/4/2010, yet many are still arbitrarily detained at police stations. The Arabic Network has so far learnt three names and their detention places:
1 – Abdel Rahman Fares, blogger
2 – Ahmad Najib lawyer
Both are at Agouza police station.
3 – Shahab Wagih ,student, at Cairo Security Directorate
Egyptian Police seize video footage, mobile phones to remove all traces of repression
When police used violence to disperse a demonstration by about 100 people outside parliament on 6 April they also targeted journalists covering the event, one of several protests against a 29-year-old state of emergency that were held in the center of Cairo that day in response to a call by the 6 April Movement.
“The violence used by the police in an attempt to suppress any visual record of this demonstration was particularly disturbing,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Journalists were deliberately targeted by the security forces. This is utterly unacceptable. The authorities cannot continue to ignore the 6 April protests.”
The authorities are cracking down harder on democratic demands in the run-up to parliamentary elections scheduled for the end of this year and a presidential election next year.
The appeal to Egyptians to gather on Midan Al-Tahrir, in central Cairo, on 6 April had been issued several days earlier by the 6 April Movement, which is campaigning for a number of constitutional amendments and which gets its name from the date of democratic protests that were organized via Facebook in 2008.
“When I arrived at the Tahrir at midday, I did not see any demonstrators, just security forces,” a journalist told Reporters Without Borders. “So I headed towards parliament, further up Avenue Qasr Al-Ayni. Outside the senate gates, a cordon of anti-riot police surrounded the demonstrators. Policemen in plain-clothes were passing through the cordon in order to extract the demonstrators and journalists by force.”
The police briefly arrested Hisham Omar Abdelhalim of the independent daily Al-Masri Al-Youm, an Al-Karama journalist and a freelance journalist, whose press card and video camera were confiscated. He recovered them half an hour later but the memory card had been removed.
Al Jazeera TV’s Cairo bureau chief, Hussein Abdel Ghani, told Agence France-Presse that his cameramen were searched and their video footage was confiscated. Many demonstrators said the mobile phones they had used to take photos or record video were also confiscated.
Egyptian and international NGOs said about 90 people were detained, including a journalist working for Egyptian Dream TV who was taken to one of the national security buildings in Madinet Nasr before being released.
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