Angry Egyptians defy protest banAt least two people killed as thousands take to the streets in second day of anti-government demonstrations.http://www.youtube.com/v/IaxTGZtM3L0" ></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param></object>" />
A protester and a police officer were killed in central Cairo as anti-government demonstrators pelted security forces with rocks and firebombs for a second day, according to witnesses.
Activists had called on people to rally again on Wednesday after a "Day of Wrath" the previous day had seen thousands of people take to the streets across Egypt to complain of poverty, unemployment, corruption and repression.
A total of six people, four protesters and two policemen, have been killed so far in the largely unprecedented mass anger at the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president.
"The people want the regime to fall," protesters chanted.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said that the protests represent an opportunity for the administration to implement "political, economic and social reforms to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people".
In the unusually blunt remarks regarding the longtime US ally, Clinton also said that the Mubarak government should not prevent peaceful protests or block social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook, which have helped Egyptians plan and spread news about the unrest.
'Cat-and-mouse game'
However, protesters faced tear gas, water cannon and beatings from the heavy police presence on the streets of Cairo. Witnesses said that live ammunition was also fired into the air."Despite the best efforts of the government security forces to crack down on these protests, to ban them and stop them from spreading anywhere around the streets of Cairo, they have really failed," Al Jazeera's Dan Nolan, reporting from the capital, said.
"What we've seen play out over the night is what can be best described as a very dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, where groups of demonstrators would gather somewhere and very quickly a very large security prescence would come in an fire a volley of tear gas to disperse them."
A protester in the centre of Cairo told the Reuters news agency: "The main tactic now is we turn up suddenly and quickly without a warning or an announcement. That way we gain ground."
Many gathered on Gelaa Street, near central Tahrir Square - the site of a violent early morning confrontation between security forces and protesters who had been planning to sleep the night in defiance of the government.
Police fired tear gas and broke up concrete to use as rocks to throw at protesters and "egg them on," Al Jazeera's Adam Makary reported.
At least 860 protesters have been arrested since Tuesday's "day of anger", according to the interior ministry.
In Suez, where the other four deaths had taken place the previous day, severe fighting was reported between police and protesters.
A crowd used petrol bombs to set fire to a government building and attempted unsuccessfully to do the same to a local office of the ruling National Democratic Party.
Medical personnel in Suez reported on Wednesday night that 55 protesters and 15 police officers had been injured.
"Protesters throwing burning bottle bomb into one armored police car, setting it ablaze," read one tweet sent by Gamal Eid, the executive director of the Arab Network for Human Rights, who was in Suez.
"Police descends onto the streets and [are] not remaining impartial. [They have] injured about 30 protesters so far," he wrote in another.
'Very aggressive'
In Mansoura, a working-class town north of Cairo in the Nile Delta, blogger Mohamed Hamama said the police had been "very aggressive" during protests."Major arrests have occurred, they are now being interrogated, a lot of people have either been injured, beaten up or exposed to tear gas," he said.
"I think more and more protests will be staged. Many refuse to stop till they receive a good standard of living."
PJ Crowley, the US state department spokesman,
says the US wants to see 'peaceful change' in Egypt http://www.youtube.com/v/pmEcQMwprIo" ></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param></object>" />Twitter confirmed that its services had been blocked in Egypt beginning at 6 pm local time (1600 GMT) on Tuesday.
Jillian York, who oversees the Herdict web monitoring service at Harvard University, said that Egyptian Facebook users confirmed to her that the website was blocked.
Facebook, however, said it had not recorded "major changes" in traffic from Egypt.
The White House said it was monitoring the situation in Egypt "quite closely," but unlike Clinton did not call for reform.Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for President Barack Obama, told reporters on Wednesday that the government should "demonstrate its responsiveness to the people of Egypt" by recognising their "universal rights."
Asked whether the United States still "backed" Mubarak, Gibbs said only that "Egypt is a strong ally."
Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, said that he believes "the Arab citizen is angry, is frustrated."
"That is the point," he said. "The name of the game is reform."
With just eight months to go before a presidential election that could see the ailing Mubarak run for re-election or attempt to hand power to a successor, protesters in Egypt were demanding solutions to the country's grinding poverty and an end to onerous emergency national security laws in place since the 1981 assassination of Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat.
"Down with Hosni Mubarak, down with the tyrant," chanted the crowds. "We don't want you!"
Mubarak, 82, has not appointed a deputy since he became president and is widely thought to be grooming his son Gamal to succeed him.
Source:Al Jazeera and agencies
Egyptian Bloggers Report on New Unrest
By ROBERT MACKEYUpdated | 7:11 p.m. Despite restrictions placed on the Internet and a ban on protests, Egyptians who oppose the continued rule of President Hosni Mubarak managed to post accounts and images of fresh demonstrations on the streets of Cairo online on Wednesday.
As my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Mona El-Naggar report, “In front of Cairo’s press and lawyers’ syndicate buildings, more than 100 people shouted slogans, outnumbered by a force of security officers.”
From outside the press syndicate, an Egyptian blogger who writes as Sandmonkey posted text accounts on Twitter and photographs on Yfrog.
The blogger confirmed to The Lede via Twitter that these images were taken on Wednesday, despite the somewhat confusing decision by Egyptian bloggers to use the hashtag #25Jan to refer to all demonstrations following the mass unrest that started on that date.
Sandmonkey/YfrogProtesters are seen breaking through police barriers in Cairo on Wednesday.
Another Egyptian blogger, Mostafa Mourad, posted a link on his Twitter feedto an Associated Press photograph of a man he identified as a senior figure in the journalists’ syndicate being dragged away by the authorities.
Sandmonkey also posted a link to photographs that appeared to show a large police presence on a street near Egypt’s high court and tear gas being used against protesters.
Later in the day, a video blogger uploaded several clips to YouTube which appeared to show protests outside the lawyers’ syndicate and tear gas being used against protesters near the city’s high court on Wednesday:
(It is difficult to verify when this video was shot, but if any reader has more information about these clips, please contact us by writing in the comment thread below.)
Later on Wednesday, this video of clashes on the streets of Cairo, posted online by the independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, appeared to show some of the same scene near the high court:
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This clip, also uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday, comes with a title that says it was shot at the Tahrir bus station in Cairo:
Video uploaded to a YouTube channel called MrPeopleNews — which features dozens of clips of the far larger protests on Tuesday — shows what the video blogger describes as protesters on Abd al-Khaliq, a Cairo street, on Wednesday:
Later on Wednesday, Sandmonkey reported on Twitter that the authorities were slowly letting demonstrators out of a confined space outside the press syndicate (perhaps using the British police tactic known as “kettling”) and he intended to make his way to Tahrir Square, the site of the largest protest on Tuesday.
On Wednesday evening, an Egyptian-American blogger and activist, Gigi Ibrahim — who had used her phone to post several eyewitness photographs of Tuesday’s protests online — texted this report to Twitter:
Tahrir square has unbelievable amount of security I am worried to take out my phone to take a picture I would get arrested.
Ms. Ibrahim later uploaded this photograph of protesters at another location, outside the lawyers’ syndicate:
Standing in Tahrir Square, though, the blogger had good reason to fear a violent reaction from Egypt’s security forces. Minutes earlier, she reported “beating and shootings on Ramses street” as police officers tried to enforce the ban on protests.
The night before, police had used tear gas and beatings to clear Tahrir (Liberation) Square of thousands of demonstrators, as seen in a YouTube clip and a video report from Egypt’s English-language Daily News shot late on Tuesday:
As Egyptian bloggers struggle with Internet restrictions, some video clips of Tuesday’s demonstrations outside Cairo continue to be posted online. Thanks to the reader who drew our attention to this video, said to show a march through the streets of Alexandria on Tuesday:
Another reader pointed to this clip, apparently showing security forces in Alexandria on Wednesday:
This clip is said to show protesters on the streets of Suez late on Tuesday night:
This video appears to have been filmed outide the morgue in Suez, where protesters, including relatives of a man reportedly killed by the police, attempted to retrieve his body. Reuters, citing medical sources, reported that the man, Gharib Abdelaziz Abdellatif, “died of internal bleeding after police shot him in the stomach on Wednesday.”
On Wednesday morning, Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that the Egyptian government had planned ahead of time to disrupt the Internet communications of its opponents:
Egyptian security authorities on Tuesday carried out a pre-planned block of Twitter, a social networking website, to impede wide-scale anti-regime protests across the country on 25 January, sources say.
A Facebook invitation earlier this month called for major protests during Egypt’s Police Day over rising prices, unemployment and reform, under the slogan “Day of Anger.”
Twitter users said they were unable to access their personal pages until Wednesday morning.
Late on Tuesday, Twitter posted a message on an official feed confirming that the service had been blocked from reaching at least some users in Egypt. The company wrote:
We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com & applications.
Re Egypt block: We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect w/ their people.
Twitter also posted a link to a Web site that showed reports from Egyptdocumenting and complaining about the disruption to the service, which seemed to indicate that the problem continued for some users on Wednesday.
The Egyptian newspaper also reported:
Months ago, Al-Masry Al-Youm published the details of a meeting between security officials, [the government's National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority] and internet providers to lay down plans to block those websites which activists use extensively to coordinate their efforts.
Participants at the meeting also discussed ways to make page failures appear unintentional. These plans, however, were not implemented before the 25 January protests.
Egypt protests: Anti-Mubarak demonstrators arrested
Click to play
The BBC's Jon Leyne: "Anybody gathering here in Cairo, the police have swooped on them"
About 700 people have been arrested throughout Egypt in a crackdown against anti-government protests, security officials say.
The arrests came as police clashed with protesters in two cities following Tuesday's unprecedented protests.
One protester and one policeman were killed as police broke up rallies in Cairo, and in Suez a government building was reportedly set on fire.
Public gatherings would no longer be tolerated, the interior ministry said.
Anyone taking to the streets against the government would be prosecuted, it added.
The BBC's John Leyne in Cairo says the authorities are responding in familiar fashion, treating a political crisis as a security threat.
Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif was quoted as saying the government was committed to "freedom of expression by legitimate means", state news agency Mena reported. Police had acted with restraint, he said.
However, Washington has called on the Egyptian government to lift its ban on demonstrations.
“Start Quote
Mostapha al-ShafeyProtesterI want to see an end to this dictatorship, 30 years of Mubarak is enough - we've had enough of the state of emergency, prices are going up and up”
Protesters have been inspired by the recent uprising in Tunisia, vowing to stay on the streets until the government falls.
They have been using social networking sites to call for fresh demonstrations, but both Facebook and microblogging site Twitter appear to have been periodically blocked inside Egypt.
The government denied it was blocking the sites.
Cabinet spokesman Magdy Rady said it respected freedom of expression and "would not resort to such methods", Reuters news agency reported.
In other developments:
- Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid cancels his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
- Activists have called on protesters to observe "Anger Friday", by going to rallies after praying in mosques and churches
- In the northern city of Machala, police have cordoned off the headquarters of the Democratic Front opposition party, which is threatening a hunger strike
- Hundreds have been arrested in Alexandria, activists say, as police prevent organised rallies
Following a "day of revolt" across Egypt on Tuesday, in which four people died, protesters attempted to stage new demonstrations in Cairo on Wednesday.
Police moved to break up demonstrations as they happened
There were scuffles outside the journalists' union building in central Cairo as hundreds of people gathered to protest.
Police beat some with batons and fired tear gas when they tried to break through a cordon.
Protesters burned tyres and threw stones at police.
Reuters news agency reported more clashes outside a central court complex in the city.
Witnesses said riot police had been charging demonstrators throughout the day wherever in Cairo they happened to gather.
Doctors said a policeman and a protester were killed in the clashes, apparently during stone-throwing in a poor neighbourhood of the city.
However, security officials said the deaths were unrelated to the protests.
Meanwhile, in the eastern city of Suez, protesters threw petrol bombs at a government building, setting parts of it on fire, witnesses said.
The headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party in the city was also attacked.
Earlier, protests were held outside the morgue where the body of a victim of Tuesday's protests was being kept. At least 55 people were injured in the city.
One of Tuesday's demonstrators, Mostapha al-Shafey, told the BBC he planned to join protests again on Wednesday.
"I want to see an end to this dictatorship. Thirty years of Mubarak is enough. We've had enough of the state of emergency. Prices are going up and up," he said.
Demonstrations are illegal in Egypt, which has been ruled by President Mubarak since 1981. The government tolerates little dissent and opposition demonstrations are routinely outlawed.
Social media's roleTuesday's protests were co-ordinated through a Facebook page, where organisers say they are taking a stand against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment. One page called for protesters all over Egypt to gather after prayers on Friday.
However, Wednesday brought reports that Facebook was being blocked inside Egypt.
Twitter also played a key part, with supporters inside and outside Egypt using the search term #jan25 to post news on Tuesday, but it was blocked later in the day.
BBC technology correspondent Mark Gregory said that while this clampdown had undoubtedly restricted access to information, technically minded protesters had found ways of evading the restrictions.
Many have stayed in touch by routing their messages through proxy servers - web facilities based in other countries.
The government blamed the violence on the banned Islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood, although this group was reported to have been ambivalent about the protests.
One opposition leader, Mohamed ElBaradei, had called on Egyptians to take part in the protests.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: "We urge the Egyptian authorities not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications including on social media sites.
"We believe strongly that the Egyptian government has an important opportunity at this moment in time to implement political, economic and social reforms to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people."
Tunisia's President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted from power and fled the country earlier this month, after weeks of protests in which dozens of people were killed.
Egypt has many of the same social and political problems that brought about the unrest in Tunisia - rising food prices, high unemployment and anger at official corruption.
However, the population of Egypt has a much lower level of education than Tunisia. Illiteracy is high and internet penetration is low.
There are deep frustrations in Egyptian society, our Cairo correspondent says, adding that Egypt is widely seen to have lost power, status and prestige in the three decades of President Mubarak's rule.
