Democratic Status Report VI


Bitter harvest of the events of sectarian violence  .. ..The rumor of dissolving the parliament and …. The parties’ problematic funding aspects ….. The development of protests and sit-ins  .. .. These were the most important topics covered in the report for the period from 1 to July 31, issued by the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement  in its efforts "towards the building of new democratic spaces" . the report called last month, "the month of sectarian violence", where the monitoring of a number of incidents of sectarian violence in seven provinces, the losses amounted to killing one person and injuring 22 others, a number of fires of the property of some citizens, the seriousness of these incidents is that it extended to provinces that did not witness any sectarian incidents in the past. These incidents were characterized by frequent violence between, Muslims and Copts citizens. Also the report monitored the reactions to the giving of the Ministry of Culture, Dr. Sayed Elkamny the State’s Appreciatory award, which amounted to his Heresy and the waste of his blood by some hard-line Islamic groups and, most seriously, a fatwa had been issued by Dr. Nasr Farid Wasel, the former Mufti of the Republic, that he may not be awarded and of the need to prosecute those who had given him that award and the insistence on its withdrawal, and the lawsuits filed in the matter.
The report addressed in the framework of freedom of opinion and expression, security practices against journalists and bloggers as the arrest of the blogger Wael Abbas at the Cairo airport, and the re-arrest of Mus'ad Abu Fagr the blogger and the Coptic blogger Hany Aziz, and the organized campaign by some police officers against Ala-ElJamal the journalist of the weekly Sawt Elomma from one side, and from the other side; the imprisonment sentences of the journalists in the dissemination decisions of crimes against the press as the rule against Yasser Barakat. The Correctional Court acquitted the appellant of ElAdwa center of the innocence of Munir Said Hanna the teacher who was accused of insulting the President of the Republic. In addition the report mentioned the crude intervention by the ruling National Democratic Party in the affairs of trade unions, in particular by Ahmed Ezz, Secretary of the National Democratic Party organization , in the lawyers’ and engineers syndicates.
  The report also monitored the paradigm shift in strikes, sit-ins by the Egyptian citizens because of the deteriorating economic and social conditions in addition to the absence of genuine trade unions to defend their interests and negotiate in their names with the executive bodies. The total number of strikes in this  month 42 strikes in seven counties and communities, including several of the workers and staff, fishermen and professionals, but the shift quality was that the strikes have involved staff in the State such as employees of the Central Agency for Statistics, and experts from the Ministry of Justice and the staff of the Academy of scientific research and their professions might give the impression that its employees enjoy certain advantages which improve the conditions better than  the rest of the staff of the State, however, those strikes had revealed the mismanagement of the state of those facilities and the low economic and social conditions of its staff and strange insistence by officials in the executive branch to provoke the feelings of the citizens comments and strange behavior.


Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement
Monday, July 3, 2009