Cairo's Tahrir square is once again tonight the scene of ordinary people making extraordinary efforts to free themselves from the militarist rentier regime still in power since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February.
Earlier today in Tahrir began a protest by families of "martyrs," which in this case refers to those who've died at the hands of Egyptian security forces during the ongoing uprising. Families are still waiting for justice as there have been no substantial prosecutions or trials of those responsible for the deaths and torture of hundreds if not thousands since the year began.
Media reports are beginning to trickle in, however the twitter stream and blogosphere of the region are alight. While all credit for what has been achieved in Tunisia and Egypt belongs to the people who have bravely faced torture and death, many have credited social media as a major factor and primary tool in these events. Following are several Twitter postings by people who are in the streets of Cairo and Tahrir at this moment; fighting for ownership of their country against the CSF (Central Security Forces). While non of these can be verified, the volume of similar reports is substantiating and cannot be understated:
As the battle kicked off, descriptions and pictures of the violence poured in:
Inevitably injuries begin to be reported:
During the chaos people communicated and discussed logistical issues:
Commentary of various sorts was ongoing:
Sometime well after midnight, it seemed that the protesters had won round one and a moment of reprieve:
The situation is ongoing, it is currently early morning in Cairo. Information continues to stream in on social media outlets and in the press. Many tweets reported on the crowd chanting "The people want the fall of Mosheer," referring to Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the de facto head of state since Mubarak's ouster in February. It remains to be seen if the ongoing unrest, including tonight's clashes, can carry the momentum which ousted Hosni Mubarak and effect real change.
Reports and video footage of violent demonstration and criminality by ultra-nationalist and racist organisations in Russia this week are forming an interesting juxtaposition to recent political protests in the West.
If one is interested in what ‘violent thuggery’ actually looks like, witness this week’s outburst of unrest in Moscow: Rampaging gangs seeking racist revenge against non-Slavic Russians after Moscow police failed to hold in custody four suspects in the murder of a Moscow Spartak football hooligan, who died in a post-match brawl with immigrants from the North Caucasus region. These ‘thugs’- in the true sense of the word- are affiliated with nationalist ‘football firms’ and are quite used to attacking police at football games as a matter of sport. The firms collectively have thousands of members across the country and are loosely organised and armed: mostly with edge weapons; sticks and truncheons; in some cases tazers. They have over the past many days readily engaged police en-masse in Moscow and attacked bystanders who were of Central Asian or similar ethnic extraction. An ethnic-Kyrgiz man has been stabbed to death in revenge, and dozens of innocent ethnic minorities were ruthlessly beaten by the crowds, videos showing police attempting to protect bystanders, not incriminate them by kettling them with demonstrators for hours until they are provoked into active resistance by hunger, exhaustion, confusion, claustrophobia and police taunts, as has been seen in Pittsburgh, Toronto, and very recently London.
The scenes in Moscow reveal what it looks like when police attempt to contain and quell throngs of actually violent citizens, not the notional ‘thugs’ of Western political description. Pale in comparison are the so-called ‘violent protests’ in the West; rather the recent demonstrations in London and Toronto set next to the type of violence in Moscow (as seen in the video embedded below- watch from 0:40) seemingly depict Western police as aggressive, well-trained and highly equipped paramilitary forces acting on marching orders to illegally suppress freedom of movement, expression and peaceful demonstration.
The ‘football firms’ of Russia that brought the fight to Moscow this week are largely populated by unemployed or otherwise economically marginalised ex-soldiers steeped in a culture of racism and violence; while the demonstrators jailed and humiliated in Toronto were a mish-mash of peace and anti-poverty activists, political agitators, trade unionists, students, professionals and public employees. There are virtually no women in the ranks of the Moscow rioters; perhaps the fairer sex in Russia refuses to take part in such sinister activities. In contrast, thousands of peaceful female demonstrators hit the streets of London and Toronto, scores of whom were illegally detained, strip searched and sexually humiliated; in some cases by female police indoctrinates. So much for feminism.
Western leaders have taken to characterizing political demonstrations in their countries as ‘violent thuggery’. In light of the actual ‘violent thuggery’ witnessed in Moscow this week, this terminology seems a crude semantic deception for media consumption, considering there is virtually never intent of violence on the part of Western demonstrators, only occasional acts of vandalism by ideologically motivated dissenters and the occasional dilettante or working class person feeling at odds with the system. There is a well established legal differentiation in the West between breaking heads and breaking windows, a distinction which should never be blurred.
The BBC reports: “Simon Hardy, of the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts, said police "kettled" and beat some protesters and then accused anyone who tried to resist of being violent,” while the police justified such tactics, saying that “officers acted with professionalism and selflessness and that, if they had not, the consequences would have been ‘unthinkable’.” (Watch kettling at the Toronto G20 Protests in the video embedded below) Apparently within the realm of ‘thinkability’ is the provocation of thousands of demonstrators by truncheon beatings, mounted police charges and overturning disabled protesters in their wheelchairs. In Russia, there is no organised statement of purpose or ethic among the perpetrators of the violence beyond confused bigotry, while interestingly Vladimir Putin is on record admonishing both the criminality in Moscow as well as the negligence of the police in letting the murder suspects go free; the event that sparked the violence. While the politics of relations between the government and the right-wing football firms-cum-street militias is fraught with allegations of corruption and social subterfuge, there is a clear distinction between the government’s recognition of racism and social problems in Russia and Western governments’ us vs them attitude; their blind support for and unwillingness to inquire into police abuses, and their complete denial of any validity in the concerns of its citizens who are willing to put their personal safety at risk to make their voices heard.
All arguments and justifications of belligerents aside, there is clear and immense contrast between the hemorrhaging violence in Russia and the demonstrations typical of Western protest movements, in spite of the similar language that media and government outlets use to characterize them; ie. 'criminal' 'violent' 'hard-core', etc. Furthermore, Russian police appear decidedly less confrontational set next to Western police forces, who appear increasingly prepared, trained, armed and willing to employ violence against non-violent demonstrators and witnesses, for no other obvious reason than to discourage corroborators and media onlookers, to silence public opposition to government policies and to quash expressions of democratic freedom which manifest at peaceful anti-war, anti-globalisation, anti-privatisation and anti-austerity demonstrations.
The first embedded video above depicts at 0:40 Russian police corralling minorities at a van who have been beaten by the mobs, who eventually chase them down and continue to attack the bewildered and defenceless victims even while they are in protective custody. Also depicted is a pitched battle between the rioters and police. The video was obtained from youtube, and can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8wj_69OkHo, where links to other videos can be located. The second video depicts 'kettling' by Canadian Police of hundreds of peaceful demonstrators in a large square and the tightening of a kettle around a few dozen others. This video is also hosted on youtube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=280hrwKUqKg&feature=related
