03-02-2011, 09:15 PM
JUAN GONZALEZ: The Egyptian government has launched a violent crackdown on the massive uprising seeking the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. After over a week of unprecedented and peaceful rallies that brought millions into the streets, pro-democracy demonstrators were viciously attacked Wednesday and earlier today in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
Aided by positions overlooking the crowd and the apparent consent of the military, pro-Mubarak supporters unleashed a barrage of automatic gunfire and Molotov cocktails. Protesters responded with homemade bombs, sticks and rocks. At least seven people were killed and over 800 were wounded before dawn broke. The vast majority of the victims appeared to be on the pro-democracy side. There are widespread reports that many pro-Mubarak supporters were either plainclothes police officers or others paid by the regime.
AMY GOODMAN: Shortly after the first gunfire erupted, Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté reached Egyptian activist Mona Seif in Tahrir square.
MONA EL SEIF: They have rifles. They are shooting live ammunition at us. We've alreadywe've had a lot of wounded. I don't know how many. The ambulance keeps on coming and carrying wounded people and speeding away with them. We have had so far four confirmed deaths. One of them was with a shot right through the head. And it justit is still going on. And the army is there, and they are not moving, and nobody's moving. And we keep on sending other of our people to the forefront to try and protect us, and we keep on losing some of them. And that's how it is.
AARON MATÉ: And what is the military doing?
MONA EL SEIF: The military is not doing anything. On the side, where the main clashes are, where we lost already four people and lots of wounded, there are more than six army trucks, and they are not doing anything. And right now there isit seems that there is another clash on another of the entrances to Tahrir Square, but I cannot confirm it, like people are running towards it, but I don't know yet if there is something.
AARON MATÉ: Now, it's almost 6:00 in the morning there, and it's obviously very dangerous. Why are you still there?
MONA EL SEIF: Because we cannot leave. We came here peacefully demanding for Mubarak to leave. We were so numerous yesterday. This is not our demand alone. This is the demand of the majority of Egyptians all over the country. We were here peacefully. Yesterday was such a festive day. If you saw the place, you would think it was a park. We had children playing and people chanting and dancing and singing. And now, all of a sudden, it's this war zone, just because they leashed at us those thugs, with their weapons and their knives and their cocktail Molotovs thrown at us from rooftops. We are here because we've lost a lot of people for a certain demand and a certain cause, and we owe it to them to stick it and stay here.
AARON MATÉ: Now, the corporate media here has described what's happening today as clashes between two sides. What do think of that description?
MONA EL SEIF: It isn't. It isn't. If it was clashes between two sides, then you would assume that the two sides had opposing causes and they were equal. It isn't. Most of thewe have caught a lot of the thugs they have released at us. We have searched them. Most of them were one of two things. Either they had police IDs on themand we have taken photos of this, and we've already sent it out to Twitter and Facebook; you can look for it, the hashtag is jan25or they were unemployed people that were promised either jobs or money. And we've alreadywe have a testimony of one of them on videotape. We are just waiting for a chance to have internet to show the world what this government is capable of. We know this. We know this since every demo we went to. They always plant thugs and pretendlet them pretend to be civilians, so they can start the violence. I just never saw this amount of violence, this publicly displayed, and nobody stopping it.
AMY GOODMAN: Egyptian activist Mona Seif, speaking after the pro-Mubarak forces opened fire on Tahrir Square. Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté also reached another activist there, Selma Tarzi.
SELMA AL-TARZI: The Mubarak thugs were shooting at us with the machine guns. The army shot back at them. Two of them were killed. One of us was killed. And the army was chased them and took their machine guns away. However, more are coming. And we are so tired. People are so tired. We've been fighting for the past 12 hours. And we're just protesters; we're civilians. We're protesters. We're notwe're improvising fighting tactics. All we have is stones and sticks. And we're tired. This is not what we're here to do. This is notthis is not howthis is a crime of war. They're killing us.
AARON MATÉ: Tell us what you're seeing right now.
SELMA AL-TARZI: I'm seeing doctors running left and right, ambulances driving left and right, people carrying wounded people, trying to take them to the place that we set up and made an improvised doctor tent. On the other side, people are sitting on the pavement so exhausted and so tired. And that is us. Some people are trying to lift the morale or encourage people to go and fight. But people are tired. People are tired.
And channels like the BBC are claiming that it's a Muslim Brother movement and that all the people in the square are Muslim Brothers. We are not Muslim Brothers. I'm not the Muslim Brothers. I couldn't care less for the Muslim Brothers. They're everything I work against and I believe against. However, in this fight, we are working together side by side. And there are people from all sorts of ideologies here. It's a people's movement.
AARON MATÉ: Who are these forces that have been shooting at you?
SELMA AL-TARZI: These are thugs. These are thugs that are trying to attack the square from all the entrances. Our people are trying to secure the entrances of the square. But these are the Mubarak thugs, and not only Mubarak. And it has to be very clear to everyone that when we say that we want Mubarak out, we mean his whole government, his whole regime, including Habib El Adly, including Omar Suleiman, the chief of intelligence, including the parliament, including the parliament heads that are hiring these thugs to kill us, basically.
There has been live shooting all day. I was helping with the wounded. And I have, myself, seen to a couple of cases of gunshots in their legs, because they're below. They're shooting their legs below. They're not showing the guns. At the beginning, they weren't. Now that they're using machine guns, apparently they're being obvious about it, but at the beginning they were shooting below thethey were shooting the legs. They weren't showing their weapons. And we did not know where the shot is coming from.
JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Selma Tarzi, speaking from Tahrir Square in the midst of pro-government forces opening fire on the pro-democracy demonstrators.
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AMY GOODMAN: And we just got this message, as messages are coming into us right and left. This is a message from our guest yesterday on Democracy Now!, Noha Radwan. She's a professor at UC Davis, University of California, Davis, Egyptian American. She's been in Tahrir Square for days now, part of the protests. We had her on the show. She was in a studio with Sharif, who joined us yesterday from the studio. By the way, they won't be able to join us from studio today, because the studio is shut down as a result of security concerns. But Noha Radwan was attacked. She said, "I wanted your show to know that as I left the studio to go back to Tahrir, I got attacked by the mob and beaten half to death by the Mubarak thugs, who were happy to snatch my necklaces off my neck and to rip my shirt open. I am now fine, but the big thug must go. Wish us the best. Our Internet comes and goes." Again, that was Professor Noha Radwan after she left the studio yesterday.
We are going right now to Sharif Abdel Kouddous, our senior producer, Democracy Now! senior producer, on the ground. He was supposed to be in the studio in Cairo. That studio has been shut down.
Sharif, describe the whole scene in Tahrir Square right now.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I'm talking to youI'm standing on a rooftop near the 6 of October Bridge, just a few hundred yards from where the studio is. It's impossible to get across. I'm standing basically on the frontlines of the battle between the pro-democracy uprising and the Mubarak regime. There is a lot of rock throwing that is happening back and forth. There are army tanks that are stationed on the bridge. And there's the crackle of gunfire, and it's unclear who is firing.
The people in Tahrir that I met throughout the day today were very proud of the fact that they held the square, that theydespite this brutal assault that they came under, that they managed to hold Tahrir. You know, "Tahrir" means "liberation." And what the people say now is that they're going to stay in Liberation Square until liberation.
And I'm speaking to you right nowthe pro-democracy forces seem to have pushed back and keep on pushing back the Mubarak thugs. We were here earlier, and the border was further near Tahrir. And now they seem to be pushing back the Mubarak forces.
Right now, it's unclear what is going to happen in the evening. Tomorrow, Friday, is going to be a decisive day. Of course, Friday is the day for Muslim prayer, and they expect hundreds of thousands to come to Tahrir. And they want the ouster of the Mubarak regime, and they demand nothing less.
We were walking around Tahrir yesterday. They held the square, but they suffered terribly. There are peoplemany, many hundreds wounded. I've seen broken legs and arms. I've seen many people bandaged. They've shown me bullets that were fired. There's a man right now trying to give me bread. We went to a makeshift hospital, where people have beenthe doctors have been up for more than 48 hours, tending to the wounded. The numbers of the dead vary, but there's somewhere between five and 10 people, they say, were shot in the head, people hit by rocks, who died. They said they weren't allowed to leave the square yesterday and that they were trapped inside.
Another thing is that the armypeople are very angry at the army, because they say they were complicit in all of this. You know, in my earlier reports, I said that the Egyptian armypeople were convinced that the army wouldn't harm them. But what they didn't imagine was that they would just stand by and allow these pro-Mubarak thugs to come in hordes, on horseback and camel, to attack them with rocks and Molotov cocktails and to lay siege to Tahrir to try and make them leave.
But the people here are defiant, and they refuse to leave. And there's more coming into Tahrir, as I speak. But right now, I'm on the very edge of it, and the battle continues to rage. I can see more Mubarak forces continuing to gather at the foot of one of the bridges. It's unclear what will happen next. There are rocks absolutely everywhere on the ground, rocks that were thrown from both sides, mostly from the baltaguia, from the thugs. The people in Tahrir point to the square that they were so proud of, that they had cleaned up the garbage and tended to it so well, and now there is trash, there are rocks everywhere, because they had to defend themselves. They say they are forced to throw back, that they don't want, but they were forced to throw back to defend themselves. And they appear to be holding their ground.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Sharif, you mentioned the role of the military. We did get some reports that when the pro-Mubarak forces started shooting machine guns, that the army did intervene and tried to confiscate those. Are you getting any sense that there's an increase in the military presence, or does this represent basically conflicting orders that are coming in to the military about what to do in this situation?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Juan, they certainly did let in the pro-Mubarak thugs to come in on horseback and camel, which people are very shocked at. You know, they say, "What are we living in? Barbarian times?" I have heard the same reports, that when machine gun fire started, that the army did come in and pushed back Mubarak's forces. So, it appears that at a certain point they intervened, but people don't understand why they let it come to that point. Many were wounded here, hundreds were wounded, and some were killed. And they want the army to do more to protect Tahrir. Tahrir has become the epicenter in all of Egypt for this struggle for democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, we're going to break, and we're going to come right back. We're speaking to Democracy Now! senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is in Tahrir Square. We also finally got Noha Radwan on the line, who was with Sharif yesterday in the studio, who was beaten badly when she left the studio after her interview with Democracy Now!. This is Democracy Now! We're covering the uprising in Egypt, live on the ground. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: We're live on the ground in Cairo in Tahrir Square with our senior producer, Democracy Now!'s Sharif Abdel Kouddous. We're also joined by Noha Radwan, assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis, who is currently taking part in the protests in Tahrir Square. She joined us yesterday with Sharif in studio.
Noha, describe what happened when you left the studio.
NOHA RADWAN: Hi, Amy. What happened is I left the studio with Sharif and your cameraperson Jacquie, and they were stopped at the Ramsis Hilton and had to stay inside the hotel. I actually moved towards the square. And as I approached, I could see the thugs, the Mubarak mob, but I totally underestimated what they're capable of doing.
They asked me why I was trying to get into the square. I said I had friends and relatives who are injured, and I'm just checking on them. But then the big question came: "Are you pro-Mubarak or anti-Mubarak?" And I didn't want to answer the question. I just left the person who was asking the question and tried to get in.
Two, three meters later, somebody caught on to the fact that I was trying to get in anyway, and then they yelled to the mob, "She's with them! She's with them! Get her!" And I found two big guys who came and held onto my arms and took me out, and they kind of handed me on to a mob that started beating me and pulling my hair. They ripped my shirt off. They ripped a gold necklace. If you see the recording from yesterday, you'll see that I was wearing a very close-to-the-neck kind of big necklace. So, in ripping this, they actually injured the neck. And through all the beating, I had to get a couple of stitches to the head yesterday.
I'm fine now, and I actually really wanted to give this report as a minor, you know, firsthand testimony to what is happening. What has happened to others is a lot more. We have seen people get hit by the stones thrown in by the mobs, and they have lost their eyes. There are people with concussions. I was taken in an ambulance much, much later to a hospital, where I had to spend most of the night, because there was no way of getting out. The mob is really singling us out.
The worst part of it is that the Egyptian media has been broadcasting nonstop that we are infiltrators, that we are foreign-paid, that most of the people in Tahrir are not actually real Egyptians, they are, you know, paid by foreigners outside. There have been reports about a Belgian who was caught and turned out to be a spy, Israelis who were caught in the demonstration, and so on and so forth.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of being caught, Sharif, the reports of the number of pro-Mubarak forces that have been captured by anti-Mubarak forces, the protesters in the square, The Guardian has something like 120 IDs of police. What do you know about this? And as you were reporting, Juan, the busloads of these pro-Mubarak forces being shippedshipping them in.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, the New York Times, Sharif, is reporting that they were bused in systematically throughout the day, apparently, obviously by the government. Who else would pay for all those buses?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: That's right. I mean, there's no question who these people were who attacked last night. I have seen, myself, at least four police IDs. People say they grabbedas you know, on the ground, it's difficult to get numbers. I get between dozens and hundreds of them. And they say that 90 percent of them had some sort of ID that linked them to the police or state and Central Security forces. They say many of them are baltaguias, just these kind ofthese thugs that the Mubarak regime has used for many years.
And let me just say also that I watched as they arrested a policeman in uniform today, two policemen in uniform. And in stark contrast to the way that they beat the members of the popular uprising here, like Noha Radwan and others, they arrested this man very peacefully. You know, they had just held him stiffly and put him into an army tank. And so, the difference is very clear.
And let me just add, I was devastated to hear that Professor Radwan came under attack. We left the hotel maybe 20 minutes after her. We tried to re-enter Tahrir Square. These mobs are very intimidating. They're very hostile. They're men, mostly, that range from about 20 to 45 years old. They wear sweaters and thick leather jackets. And they were basically holding a mini riot at every entrance into Tahrir, preventing anyone from going in. We tried to force our way in, Hany, Jacquie and I. We held each other and tried to go through. But we were on the verge of being beaten ourselves, and we backed off and then had to go home, and we were unable to go inside. It was a very dark day in this struggle, but the people are very proud here in Tahrir that they held their ground under this brutal assault. And to this day they remain defiant. And it remains to be seen what will happen tomorrow, but I think it will be a decisive day in this struggle.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Noha Radwan, I'd like to ask you about what I asked Sharif, the role of the military, because obviously many of the protesters at first felt that the military was on their side. Your assessment now, after what happened in the past 24 hours?
NOHA RADWAN: Can I answer that question?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes.
NOHA RADWAN: I was actually saved by the military. I was going to practically die on the street, had it not been for the fact that some very low-ranking army officerand I cannot give any more details than thatactually asked his soldiers to pick me up and put me inside the tank, and where I stayed until it got dark. And then they called an ambulance for me to get out in the ambulance and go straight to a hospital. The mob outside were really calling for my head, as a traitor, an American-paid Baradei supporter.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I had just ducked into a stairwell to talk to you. I'm back on the roof right now. There's some kind of fire bombs thrown back and forth. You can hearI don't know if you can hear them exploding in the background. There's smoke coming. They are coming in the air, and there's just tons ofJesus, tons of rocks on the ground. It's unclear where they are coming from, but they seem to be coming largely from the pro-Mubarak forces.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, where are you in relationin Tahrir Square, what area are you looking on it from? And be very careful. Don't be on the phone if you're in any danger.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I'm on a rooftop. I'm on a rooftop that is near the museum, that is overlooking near the Hilton hotel and where we were staying, near the studio. And I can seeit's right on the 6 of October Bridge. Clashes are breaking out right on the 6 of October Bridge. There's a lot of rock throwing. People are advancing forward now. This is really the frontline of the struggle between the pro-democracy movement and the Mubarak regime. And it remains to be seen what will happen next, but right now the battle is raging.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, we have unconfirmed reports, but tweeted by various journalists on Twitter, that Shahira Amin resigned from Nile TV, citing her inability to lie any longer. Nile TV is state TV. The significance? And describe what you're seeing now. Just tell us what's happening.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I don't know about her resignation. I know a lot of people have come up to me, and any time we kind of were filming, they say, "Make sure you film the reality of this." They're very aware of the propaganda of the state TV. And the state TV is filming Tahrir Square, just filming these empty spaces, to try and show that there's hardly anyone there, when in fact there are tens of thousands there, that they do not show the brutal assault that they came under. And so, they know the state TV and the bias that it has. If someone resignedand I've heard of other resignations, not sure if it's from Nile TV.
But right now, again, I'm standing on this roof, and basically what it is is, from the main square, there's a big street that runs next to the museum. And the people have created three lines of barricades, with burnt-up trucks to form barriers. They've also torn corrugated iron from a construction site, and they're using that to barricade themselves, as well, and use it as shields under the shower of rocks that keep flying over. And so, they have fortified themselves here after the assault yesterday, and they're ready to defend Tahrir Square, Liberation Square, they say, until liberation.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Sharif, I know it's difficult with the events you're seeing right now unfold before you, but I'd like to ask you a little bit in terms ofhave you seen any evidence of involvement of the Egyptian labor movement in any of these protests? I'm not talking about the official labor organizations that the government basically sponsors. But there has been, over the last few years, a very strong laborindependent labor movement in Egypt. And one report that I saw recently said that there have been over 3,000 actions by Egyptian workers since 2004, involving more than two million people. One historian called it the largest social movement in the Arab world, and it's gone largely unreported. Do you have any sense of whether the masses of Egyptian workers, in one way or another, are poised maybe to act on Friday or in the coming days in any kind of organized form?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Juan, I would say that the labor movement has been extremely important in this struggle. I think this popular uprising really started to gain strength a few years ago during the strike in Mahalla, which is the site of the biggest textile factory in the Middle East. I think it's something like 30,000 to 40,000 workers. They held a strike, and they were brutally cracked down upon by the Mubarak regime. And after that, the uprisingmany believe that's when it started. Demonstrations started in bigger, bigger and bigger numbers. And, you know, what isthis uprising that started a week ago was really led by the youth movement, and one of the youth movements that helped organize it on Facebook calls itself the April 6 Youth Movement. That is the date of that strike. And so, the labor movement is very important to this. It's hard to say how many of them are here in Tahrir, but, you know, many of themmany of the people here are the youth. And sobut labor, indeed, has been very important in this uprising.
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AMY GOODMAN: We're live on the ground in Cairo in Tahrir Square with our senior producer, Democracy Now!'s Sharif Abdel Kouddous. We're also joined by Noha Radwan, assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis, who is currently taking part in the protests in Tahrir Square. She joined us yesterday with Sharif in studio.
Noha, describe what happened when you left the studio.
NOHA RADWAN: Hi, Amy. What happened is I left the studio with Sharif and your cameraperson Jacquie, and they were stopped at the Ramsis Hilton and had to stay inside the hotel. I actually moved towards the square. And as I approached, I could see the thugs, the Mubarak mob, but I totally underestimated what they're capable of doing.
They asked me why I was trying to get into the square. I said I had friends and relatives who are injured, and I'm just checking on them. But then the big question came: "Are you pro-Mubarak or anti-Mubarak?" And I didn't want to answer the question. I just left the person who was asking the question and tried to get in.
Two, three meters later, somebody caught on to the fact that I was trying to get in anyway, and then they yelled to the mob, "She's with them! She's with them! Get her!" And I found two big guys who came and held onto my arms and took me out, and they kind of handed me on to a mob that started beating me and pulling my hair. They ripped my shirt off. They ripped a gold necklace. If you see the recording from yesterday, you'll see that I was wearing a very close-to-the-neck kind of big necklace. So, in ripping this, they actually injured the neck. And through all the beating, I had to get a couple of stitches to the head yesterday.
I'm fine now, and I actually really wanted to give this report as a minor, you know, firsthand testimony to what is happening. What has happened to others is a lot more. We have seen people get hit by the stones thrown in by the mobs, and they have lost their eyes. There are people with concussions. I was taken in an ambulance much, much later to a hospital, where I had to spend most of the night, because there was no way of getting out. The mob is really singling us out.
The worst part of it is that the Egyptian media has been broadcasting nonstop that we are infiltrators, that we are foreign-paid, that most of the people in Tahrir are not actually real Egyptians, they are, you know, paid by foreigners outside. There have been reports about a Belgian who was caught and turned out to be a spy, Israelis who were caught in the demonstration, and so on and so forth.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of being caught, Sharif, the reports of the number of pro-Mubarak forces that have been captured by anti-Mubarak forces, the protesters in the square, The Guardian has something like 120 IDs of police. What do you know about this? And as you were reporting, Juan, the busloads of these pro-Mubarak forces being shippedshipping them in.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, the New York Times, Sharif, is reporting that they were bused in systematically throughout the day, apparently, obviously by the government. Who else would pay for all those buses?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: That's right. I mean, there's no question who these people were who attacked last night. I have seen, myself, at least four police IDs. People say they grabbedas you know, on the ground, it's difficult to get numbers. I get between dozens and hundreds of them. And they say that 90 percent of them had some sort of ID that linked them to the police or state and Central Security forces. They say many of them are baltaguias, just these kind ofthese thugs that the Mubarak regime has used for many years.
And let me just say also that I watched as they arrested a policeman in uniform today, two policemen in uniform. And in stark contrast to the way that they beat the members of the popular uprising here, like Noha Radwan and others, they arrested this man very peacefully. You know, they had just held him stiffly and put him into an army tank. And so, the difference is very clear.
And let me just add, I was devastated to hear that Professor Radwan came under attack. We left the hotel maybe 20 minutes after her. We tried to re-enter Tahrir Square. These mobs are very intimidating. They're very hostile. They're men, mostly, that range from about 20 to 45 years old. They wear sweaters and thick leather jackets. And they were basically holding a mini riot at every entrance into Tahrir, preventing anyone from going in. We tried to force our way in, Hany, Jacquie and I. We held each other and tried to go through. But we were on the verge of being beaten ourselves, and we backed off and then had to go home, and we were unable to go inside. It was a very dark day in this struggle, but the people are very proud here in Tahrir that they held their ground under this brutal assault. And to this day they remain defiant. And it remains to be seen what will happen tomorrow, but I think it will be a decisive day in this struggle.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Noha Radwan, I'd like to ask you about what I asked Sharif, the role of the military, because obviously many of the protesters at first felt that the military was on their side. Your assessment now, after what happened in the past 24 hours?
NOHA RADWAN: Can I answer that question?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes.
NOHA RADWAN: I was actually saved by the military. I was going to practically die on the street, had it not been for the fact that some very low-ranking army officerand I cannot give any more details than thatactually asked his soldiers to pick me up and put me inside the tank, and where I stayed until it got dark. And then they called an ambulance for me to get out in the ambulance and go straight to a hospital. The mob outside were really calling for my head, as a traitor, an American-paid Baradei supporter.
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AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined, Sharif, by Hossam Bahgat, a human rights activist in Egypt. He's the founder of Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Hossam, you're on the line with us now from Cairo. Can you tell us where you are and what you learned has happened with human rights organizations there?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: I'm in downtown Cairo, and I'm trying to gain access into Tahrir Square, but it seems that I keep being turned away from military checkpoints that are only allowing medical staff and medicines and ambulances to enter the square today. I'm just past the south of the square, and I saw a line of 15 or 16 ambulances that are parked outside of the square.
But more disturbingly, we just received news from our colleagues at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, which had been acting as the main legal aid human rights organization in Egypt and also the headquarter of a coalition of human rights organizations working under the name of the Front to Defend Egypt Protesters, their offices in downtown Cairo have just been raided by the military police, who have asked everyone to lie on the floor face down and to remove the SIM cards from their phones. And their offices are now being searched by the military police. We have information that people inside the offices were not only the legal officers and the staff of the center, but also a representative from Amnesty International in London and a representative from Human Rights Watch were also inside and are currently being questioned. We can't have access to the building, because there is mob of pro-Mubarak agents that are gathered outside and are not letting anyone in or out of the building, and are chanting slogans accusing human rights defenders of being agents and traitors and spies. And we can't call anyone, because they've all switched their phones off. And when we call the land line of the center, it is a representative of the police that picks up the phone.
That happens in the immediate aftermath of a series of steps that have been taken to target foreign journalists, and many of whom were ordered to evacuate Tahrir Square or were attacked and had their equipment confiscated on the streets. And that has escalated now, because we are getting consistent reports that all foreigners are being stopped on the streets, sometimes by the army personnel and at other times by ordinary citizens on the street in an apparent response to the persistent anti-foreigners message that they've been hearing for two days on TV, on the state television, saying that there are foreign agents and foreign forces standing behind the remaining protesters in Tahrir Square.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to just correct something. We are speaking with Hossam el-Hamalawy, who is an Egyptian journalist and blogger, who is in
HOSSAM BAHGAT: No, I'm sorry. This is Hossam Bahgat. You were correct the first time.
AMY GOODMAN: Ah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Hossam Bahgat. OK, the latest news that we have, CPJ talking about cutting off access, a serious, as you were describing, crackdown. Also, the prime minister has said that they will stop the violence, supposedly, the Egyptian prime minister, which of course indicates a level of control.
HOSSAM BAHGAT: Yes, I heard the prime minister's interview with Al Hayat TV this morning, in which he apologized for thewhat he called was a mistake last night, in terms of allowing the pro-Mubarak agents to access Tahrir Square. He said that he demanded an explanation fromI guess from his own government or his own party for this, about, I mean, who made this decision to let the pro-Mubarak agents assault the pro-democracy protesters in the square.
But what is causing the biggest alarm today is that there seems to be a series of attempts by the army itself, for the first time, of going after foreign journalists and going after human rights organizations, both Egyptian and foreign. And with the lack of access to Tahrir Square, we fear that the worst is about to happen and that there is something that the army does not want anyone from the outside world to witness.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, Hossam Bahgat, precisely that point I wanted to raise to you. It's clear now that the Mubarak government has decided that rather than for him to leave office now, that they are going to basically crack down on the center of the protest. And we're looking at the potential of another Tiananmen here, not another Philippines victory of the people as against Marcos. So, my question to you: what do you see that people in other parts of the world need to do now, especially those of us here in the United States? Do you think the U.S. government should now move to remove all military aid from the Egyptian militarybecause, after all, the military depends, to a large extent, on the financial support of the United Statesas a means of pressuring it to change its stance of the last few days?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: The most negative development that we are witnessing, starting yesterday, was that the army has given up on, you now, its position of at least apparent neutrality. Yesterday, they made the statement by an army spokesperson inviting all the protesters, the pro-democracy protesters, to go home. And then, within minutes, they removed their barricades and allowed their pro-Mubarak thugs to assault us with stones and Molotov cocktails and, later and early this morning, with live fire. And they disappeared; they were nowhere to be seen. They did not even stay to arm their ownto guard their own tanks, which they left behind.
Now, today, now that it is actually the military personnel that are stopping foreign journalists on the street, confiscating their equipment, going through their notebooks, but also now raiding the offices of a human rights organization and at least temporarily so far detaining the staff and searching their offices, it is clear now that the army has decided to pick a side. And unfortunately, it is not the side of the Egyptian people but the side of the government. We fear now that the army is about to do something that it does not want the rest of the world to see. And the whole world will bear responsibility for what is about to happen, because I think that a blood bath is still avoidable. We need to do everything in our disposal to prevent a massacre from taking place.
AMY GOODMAN: Hossam Bahgat, what do you think the United States can do?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: The United States bears the most responsibility because of the ties that they have with the Egyptian army, but also because of the constant contacts, that have been made public over the past few days, that were made between U.S. Army officials and Egyptian military officials, not to mention of course the fact that the Egyptian army remains almost exclusively funded by the United States. The U.S. can prevent this from taking place and should prevent it.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to break and then come back. We're speaking with Hossam Bahgat, a human rights activist in Egypt, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. We also are joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, on the ground at Tahrir Square, who is senior producer at Democracy Now! This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a second.
Aided by positions overlooking the crowd and the apparent consent of the military, pro-Mubarak supporters unleashed a barrage of automatic gunfire and Molotov cocktails. Protesters responded with homemade bombs, sticks and rocks. At least seven people were killed and over 800 were wounded before dawn broke. The vast majority of the victims appeared to be on the pro-democracy side. There are widespread reports that many pro-Mubarak supporters were either plainclothes police officers or others paid by the regime.
AMY GOODMAN: Shortly after the first gunfire erupted, Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté reached Egyptian activist Mona Seif in Tahrir square.
MONA EL SEIF: They have rifles. They are shooting live ammunition at us. We've alreadywe've had a lot of wounded. I don't know how many. The ambulance keeps on coming and carrying wounded people and speeding away with them. We have had so far four confirmed deaths. One of them was with a shot right through the head. And it justit is still going on. And the army is there, and they are not moving, and nobody's moving. And we keep on sending other of our people to the forefront to try and protect us, and we keep on losing some of them. And that's how it is.
AARON MATÉ: And what is the military doing?
MONA EL SEIF: The military is not doing anything. On the side, where the main clashes are, where we lost already four people and lots of wounded, there are more than six army trucks, and they are not doing anything. And right now there isit seems that there is another clash on another of the entrances to Tahrir Square, but I cannot confirm it, like people are running towards it, but I don't know yet if there is something.
AARON MATÉ: Now, it's almost 6:00 in the morning there, and it's obviously very dangerous. Why are you still there?
MONA EL SEIF: Because we cannot leave. We came here peacefully demanding for Mubarak to leave. We were so numerous yesterday. This is not our demand alone. This is the demand of the majority of Egyptians all over the country. We were here peacefully. Yesterday was such a festive day. If you saw the place, you would think it was a park. We had children playing and people chanting and dancing and singing. And now, all of a sudden, it's this war zone, just because they leashed at us those thugs, with their weapons and their knives and their cocktail Molotovs thrown at us from rooftops. We are here because we've lost a lot of people for a certain demand and a certain cause, and we owe it to them to stick it and stay here.
AARON MATÉ: Now, the corporate media here has described what's happening today as clashes between two sides. What do think of that description?
MONA EL SEIF: It isn't. It isn't. If it was clashes between two sides, then you would assume that the two sides had opposing causes and they were equal. It isn't. Most of thewe have caught a lot of the thugs they have released at us. We have searched them. Most of them were one of two things. Either they had police IDs on themand we have taken photos of this, and we've already sent it out to Twitter and Facebook; you can look for it, the hashtag is jan25or they were unemployed people that were promised either jobs or money. And we've alreadywe have a testimony of one of them on videotape. We are just waiting for a chance to have internet to show the world what this government is capable of. We know this. We know this since every demo we went to. They always plant thugs and pretendlet them pretend to be civilians, so they can start the violence. I just never saw this amount of violence, this publicly displayed, and nobody stopping it.
AMY GOODMAN: Egyptian activist Mona Seif, speaking after the pro-Mubarak forces opened fire on Tahrir Square. Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté also reached another activist there, Selma Tarzi.
SELMA AL-TARZI: The Mubarak thugs were shooting at us with the machine guns. The army shot back at them. Two of them were killed. One of us was killed. And the army was chased them and took their machine guns away. However, more are coming. And we are so tired. People are so tired. We've been fighting for the past 12 hours. And we're just protesters; we're civilians. We're protesters. We're notwe're improvising fighting tactics. All we have is stones and sticks. And we're tired. This is not what we're here to do. This is notthis is not howthis is a crime of war. They're killing us.
AARON MATÉ: Tell us what you're seeing right now.
SELMA AL-TARZI: I'm seeing doctors running left and right, ambulances driving left and right, people carrying wounded people, trying to take them to the place that we set up and made an improvised doctor tent. On the other side, people are sitting on the pavement so exhausted and so tired. And that is us. Some people are trying to lift the morale or encourage people to go and fight. But people are tired. People are tired.
And channels like the BBC are claiming that it's a Muslim Brother movement and that all the people in the square are Muslim Brothers. We are not Muslim Brothers. I'm not the Muslim Brothers. I couldn't care less for the Muslim Brothers. They're everything I work against and I believe against. However, in this fight, we are working together side by side. And there are people from all sorts of ideologies here. It's a people's movement.
AARON MATÉ: Who are these forces that have been shooting at you?
SELMA AL-TARZI: These are thugs. These are thugs that are trying to attack the square from all the entrances. Our people are trying to secure the entrances of the square. But these are the Mubarak thugs, and not only Mubarak. And it has to be very clear to everyone that when we say that we want Mubarak out, we mean his whole government, his whole regime, including Habib El Adly, including Omar Suleiman, the chief of intelligence, including the parliament, including the parliament heads that are hiring these thugs to kill us, basically.
There has been live shooting all day. I was helping with the wounded. And I have, myself, seen to a couple of cases of gunshots in their legs, because they're below. They're shooting their legs below. They're not showing the guns. At the beginning, they weren't. Now that they're using machine guns, apparently they're being obvious about it, but at the beginning they were shooting below thethey were shooting the legs. They weren't showing their weapons. And we did not know where the shot is coming from.
JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Selma Tarzi, speaking from Tahrir Square in the midst of pro-government forces opening fire on the pro-democracy demonstrators.
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AMY GOODMAN: And we just got this message, as messages are coming into us right and left. This is a message from our guest yesterday on Democracy Now!, Noha Radwan. She's a professor at UC Davis, University of California, Davis, Egyptian American. She's been in Tahrir Square for days now, part of the protests. We had her on the show. She was in a studio with Sharif, who joined us yesterday from the studio. By the way, they won't be able to join us from studio today, because the studio is shut down as a result of security concerns. But Noha Radwan was attacked. She said, "I wanted your show to know that as I left the studio to go back to Tahrir, I got attacked by the mob and beaten half to death by the Mubarak thugs, who were happy to snatch my necklaces off my neck and to rip my shirt open. I am now fine, but the big thug must go. Wish us the best. Our Internet comes and goes." Again, that was Professor Noha Radwan after she left the studio yesterday.
We are going right now to Sharif Abdel Kouddous, our senior producer, Democracy Now! senior producer, on the ground. He was supposed to be in the studio in Cairo. That studio has been shut down.
Sharif, describe the whole scene in Tahrir Square right now.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I'm talking to youI'm standing on a rooftop near the 6 of October Bridge, just a few hundred yards from where the studio is. It's impossible to get across. I'm standing basically on the frontlines of the battle between the pro-democracy uprising and the Mubarak regime. There is a lot of rock throwing that is happening back and forth. There are army tanks that are stationed on the bridge. And there's the crackle of gunfire, and it's unclear who is firing.
The people in Tahrir that I met throughout the day today were very proud of the fact that they held the square, that theydespite this brutal assault that they came under, that they managed to hold Tahrir. You know, "Tahrir" means "liberation." And what the people say now is that they're going to stay in Liberation Square until liberation.
And I'm speaking to you right nowthe pro-democracy forces seem to have pushed back and keep on pushing back the Mubarak thugs. We were here earlier, and the border was further near Tahrir. And now they seem to be pushing back the Mubarak forces.
Right now, it's unclear what is going to happen in the evening. Tomorrow, Friday, is going to be a decisive day. Of course, Friday is the day for Muslim prayer, and they expect hundreds of thousands to come to Tahrir. And they want the ouster of the Mubarak regime, and they demand nothing less.
We were walking around Tahrir yesterday. They held the square, but they suffered terribly. There are peoplemany, many hundreds wounded. I've seen broken legs and arms. I've seen many people bandaged. They've shown me bullets that were fired. There's a man right now trying to give me bread. We went to a makeshift hospital, where people have beenthe doctors have been up for more than 48 hours, tending to the wounded. The numbers of the dead vary, but there's somewhere between five and 10 people, they say, were shot in the head, people hit by rocks, who died. They said they weren't allowed to leave the square yesterday and that they were trapped inside.
Another thing is that the armypeople are very angry at the army, because they say they were complicit in all of this. You know, in my earlier reports, I said that the Egyptian armypeople were convinced that the army wouldn't harm them. But what they didn't imagine was that they would just stand by and allow these pro-Mubarak thugs to come in hordes, on horseback and camel, to attack them with rocks and Molotov cocktails and to lay siege to Tahrir to try and make them leave.
But the people here are defiant, and they refuse to leave. And there's more coming into Tahrir, as I speak. But right now, I'm on the very edge of it, and the battle continues to rage. I can see more Mubarak forces continuing to gather at the foot of one of the bridges. It's unclear what will happen next. There are rocks absolutely everywhere on the ground, rocks that were thrown from both sides, mostly from the baltaguia, from the thugs. The people in Tahrir point to the square that they were so proud of, that they had cleaned up the garbage and tended to it so well, and now there is trash, there are rocks everywhere, because they had to defend themselves. They say they are forced to throw back, that they don't want, but they were forced to throw back to defend themselves. And they appear to be holding their ground.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Sharif, you mentioned the role of the military. We did get some reports that when the pro-Mubarak forces started shooting machine guns, that the army did intervene and tried to confiscate those. Are you getting any sense that there's an increase in the military presence, or does this represent basically conflicting orders that are coming in to the military about what to do in this situation?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Juan, they certainly did let in the pro-Mubarak thugs to come in on horseback and camel, which people are very shocked at. You know, they say, "What are we living in? Barbarian times?" I have heard the same reports, that when machine gun fire started, that the army did come in and pushed back Mubarak's forces. So, it appears that at a certain point they intervened, but people don't understand why they let it come to that point. Many were wounded here, hundreds were wounded, and some were killed. And they want the army to do more to protect Tahrir. Tahrir has become the epicenter in all of Egypt for this struggle for democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, we're going to break, and we're going to come right back. We're speaking to Democracy Now! senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is in Tahrir Square. We also finally got Noha Radwan on the line, who was with Sharif yesterday in the studio, who was beaten badly when she left the studio after her interview with Democracy Now!. This is Democracy Now! We're covering the uprising in Egypt, live on the ground. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: We're live on the ground in Cairo in Tahrir Square with our senior producer, Democracy Now!'s Sharif Abdel Kouddous. We're also joined by Noha Radwan, assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis, who is currently taking part in the protests in Tahrir Square. She joined us yesterday with Sharif in studio.
Noha, describe what happened when you left the studio.
NOHA RADWAN: Hi, Amy. What happened is I left the studio with Sharif and your cameraperson Jacquie, and they were stopped at the Ramsis Hilton and had to stay inside the hotel. I actually moved towards the square. And as I approached, I could see the thugs, the Mubarak mob, but I totally underestimated what they're capable of doing.
They asked me why I was trying to get into the square. I said I had friends and relatives who are injured, and I'm just checking on them. But then the big question came: "Are you pro-Mubarak or anti-Mubarak?" And I didn't want to answer the question. I just left the person who was asking the question and tried to get in.
Two, three meters later, somebody caught on to the fact that I was trying to get in anyway, and then they yelled to the mob, "She's with them! She's with them! Get her!" And I found two big guys who came and held onto my arms and took me out, and they kind of handed me on to a mob that started beating me and pulling my hair. They ripped my shirt off. They ripped a gold necklace. If you see the recording from yesterday, you'll see that I was wearing a very close-to-the-neck kind of big necklace. So, in ripping this, they actually injured the neck. And through all the beating, I had to get a couple of stitches to the head yesterday.
I'm fine now, and I actually really wanted to give this report as a minor, you know, firsthand testimony to what is happening. What has happened to others is a lot more. We have seen people get hit by the stones thrown in by the mobs, and they have lost their eyes. There are people with concussions. I was taken in an ambulance much, much later to a hospital, where I had to spend most of the night, because there was no way of getting out. The mob is really singling us out.
The worst part of it is that the Egyptian media has been broadcasting nonstop that we are infiltrators, that we are foreign-paid, that most of the people in Tahrir are not actually real Egyptians, they are, you know, paid by foreigners outside. There have been reports about a Belgian who was caught and turned out to be a spy, Israelis who were caught in the demonstration, and so on and so forth.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of being caught, Sharif, the reports of the number of pro-Mubarak forces that have been captured by anti-Mubarak forces, the protesters in the square, The Guardian has something like 120 IDs of police. What do you know about this? And as you were reporting, Juan, the busloads of these pro-Mubarak forces being shippedshipping them in.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, the New York Times, Sharif, is reporting that they were bused in systematically throughout the day, apparently, obviously by the government. Who else would pay for all those buses?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: That's right. I mean, there's no question who these people were who attacked last night. I have seen, myself, at least four police IDs. People say they grabbedas you know, on the ground, it's difficult to get numbers. I get between dozens and hundreds of them. And they say that 90 percent of them had some sort of ID that linked them to the police or state and Central Security forces. They say many of them are baltaguias, just these kind ofthese thugs that the Mubarak regime has used for many years.
And let me just say also that I watched as they arrested a policeman in uniform today, two policemen in uniform. And in stark contrast to the way that they beat the members of the popular uprising here, like Noha Radwan and others, they arrested this man very peacefully. You know, they had just held him stiffly and put him into an army tank. And so, the difference is very clear.
And let me just add, I was devastated to hear that Professor Radwan came under attack. We left the hotel maybe 20 minutes after her. We tried to re-enter Tahrir Square. These mobs are very intimidating. They're very hostile. They're men, mostly, that range from about 20 to 45 years old. They wear sweaters and thick leather jackets. And they were basically holding a mini riot at every entrance into Tahrir, preventing anyone from going in. We tried to force our way in, Hany, Jacquie and I. We held each other and tried to go through. But we were on the verge of being beaten ourselves, and we backed off and then had to go home, and we were unable to go inside. It was a very dark day in this struggle, but the people are very proud here in Tahrir that they held their ground under this brutal assault. And to this day they remain defiant. And it remains to be seen what will happen tomorrow, but I think it will be a decisive day in this struggle.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Noha Radwan, I'd like to ask you about what I asked Sharif, the role of the military, because obviously many of the protesters at first felt that the military was on their side. Your assessment now, after what happened in the past 24 hours?
NOHA RADWAN: Can I answer that question?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes.
NOHA RADWAN: I was actually saved by the military. I was going to practically die on the street, had it not been for the fact that some very low-ranking army officerand I cannot give any more details than thatactually asked his soldiers to pick me up and put me inside the tank, and where I stayed until it got dark. And then they called an ambulance for me to get out in the ambulance and go straight to a hospital. The mob outside were really calling for my head, as a traitor, an American-paid Baradei supporter.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I had just ducked into a stairwell to talk to you. I'm back on the roof right now. There's some kind of fire bombs thrown back and forth. You can hearI don't know if you can hear them exploding in the background. There's smoke coming. They are coming in the air, and there's just tons ofJesus, tons of rocks on the ground. It's unclear where they are coming from, but they seem to be coming largely from the pro-Mubarak forces.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, where are you in relationin Tahrir Square, what area are you looking on it from? And be very careful. Don't be on the phone if you're in any danger.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I'm on a rooftop. I'm on a rooftop that is near the museum, that is overlooking near the Hilton hotel and where we were staying, near the studio. And I can seeit's right on the 6 of October Bridge. Clashes are breaking out right on the 6 of October Bridge. There's a lot of rock throwing. People are advancing forward now. This is really the frontline of the struggle between the pro-democracy movement and the Mubarak regime. And it remains to be seen what will happen next, but right now the battle is raging.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, we have unconfirmed reports, but tweeted by various journalists on Twitter, that Shahira Amin resigned from Nile TV, citing her inability to lie any longer. Nile TV is state TV. The significance? And describe what you're seeing now. Just tell us what's happening.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I don't know about her resignation. I know a lot of people have come up to me, and any time we kind of were filming, they say, "Make sure you film the reality of this." They're very aware of the propaganda of the state TV. And the state TV is filming Tahrir Square, just filming these empty spaces, to try and show that there's hardly anyone there, when in fact there are tens of thousands there, that they do not show the brutal assault that they came under. And so, they know the state TV and the bias that it has. If someone resignedand I've heard of other resignations, not sure if it's from Nile TV.
But right now, again, I'm standing on this roof, and basically what it is is, from the main square, there's a big street that runs next to the museum. And the people have created three lines of barricades, with burnt-up trucks to form barriers. They've also torn corrugated iron from a construction site, and they're using that to barricade themselves, as well, and use it as shields under the shower of rocks that keep flying over. And so, they have fortified themselves here after the assault yesterday, and they're ready to defend Tahrir Square, Liberation Square, they say, until liberation.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Sharif, I know it's difficult with the events you're seeing right now unfold before you, but I'd like to ask you a little bit in terms ofhave you seen any evidence of involvement of the Egyptian labor movement in any of these protests? I'm not talking about the official labor organizations that the government basically sponsors. But there has been, over the last few years, a very strong laborindependent labor movement in Egypt. And one report that I saw recently said that there have been over 3,000 actions by Egyptian workers since 2004, involving more than two million people. One historian called it the largest social movement in the Arab world, and it's gone largely unreported. Do you have any sense of whether the masses of Egyptian workers, in one way or another, are poised maybe to act on Friday or in the coming days in any kind of organized form?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Juan, I would say that the labor movement has been extremely important in this struggle. I think this popular uprising really started to gain strength a few years ago during the strike in Mahalla, which is the site of the biggest textile factory in the Middle East. I think it's something like 30,000 to 40,000 workers. They held a strike, and they were brutally cracked down upon by the Mubarak regime. And after that, the uprisingmany believe that's when it started. Demonstrations started in bigger, bigger and bigger numbers. And, you know, what isthis uprising that started a week ago was really led by the youth movement, and one of the youth movements that helped organize it on Facebook calls itself the April 6 Youth Movement. That is the date of that strike. And so, the labor movement is very important to this. It's hard to say how many of them are here in Tahrir, but, you know, many of themmany of the people here are the youth. And sobut labor, indeed, has been very important in this uprising.
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AMY GOODMAN: We're live on the ground in Cairo in Tahrir Square with our senior producer, Democracy Now!'s Sharif Abdel Kouddous. We're also joined by Noha Radwan, assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis, who is currently taking part in the protests in Tahrir Square. She joined us yesterday with Sharif in studio.
Noha, describe what happened when you left the studio.
NOHA RADWAN: Hi, Amy. What happened is I left the studio with Sharif and your cameraperson Jacquie, and they were stopped at the Ramsis Hilton and had to stay inside the hotel. I actually moved towards the square. And as I approached, I could see the thugs, the Mubarak mob, but I totally underestimated what they're capable of doing.
They asked me why I was trying to get into the square. I said I had friends and relatives who are injured, and I'm just checking on them. But then the big question came: "Are you pro-Mubarak or anti-Mubarak?" And I didn't want to answer the question. I just left the person who was asking the question and tried to get in.
Two, three meters later, somebody caught on to the fact that I was trying to get in anyway, and then they yelled to the mob, "She's with them! She's with them! Get her!" And I found two big guys who came and held onto my arms and took me out, and they kind of handed me on to a mob that started beating me and pulling my hair. They ripped my shirt off. They ripped a gold necklace. If you see the recording from yesterday, you'll see that I was wearing a very close-to-the-neck kind of big necklace. So, in ripping this, they actually injured the neck. And through all the beating, I had to get a couple of stitches to the head yesterday.
I'm fine now, and I actually really wanted to give this report as a minor, you know, firsthand testimony to what is happening. What has happened to others is a lot more. We have seen people get hit by the stones thrown in by the mobs, and they have lost their eyes. There are people with concussions. I was taken in an ambulance much, much later to a hospital, where I had to spend most of the night, because there was no way of getting out. The mob is really singling us out.
The worst part of it is that the Egyptian media has been broadcasting nonstop that we are infiltrators, that we are foreign-paid, that most of the people in Tahrir are not actually real Egyptians, they are, you know, paid by foreigners outside. There have been reports about a Belgian who was caught and turned out to be a spy, Israelis who were caught in the demonstration, and so on and so forth.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of being caught, Sharif, the reports of the number of pro-Mubarak forces that have been captured by anti-Mubarak forces, the protesters in the square, The Guardian has something like 120 IDs of police. What do you know about this? And as you were reporting, Juan, the busloads of these pro-Mubarak forces being shippedshipping them in.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, the New York Times, Sharif, is reporting that they were bused in systematically throughout the day, apparently, obviously by the government. Who else would pay for all those buses?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: That's right. I mean, there's no question who these people were who attacked last night. I have seen, myself, at least four police IDs. People say they grabbedas you know, on the ground, it's difficult to get numbers. I get between dozens and hundreds of them. And they say that 90 percent of them had some sort of ID that linked them to the police or state and Central Security forces. They say many of them are baltaguias, just these kind ofthese thugs that the Mubarak regime has used for many years.
And let me just say also that I watched as they arrested a policeman in uniform today, two policemen in uniform. And in stark contrast to the way that they beat the members of the popular uprising here, like Noha Radwan and others, they arrested this man very peacefully. You know, they had just held him stiffly and put him into an army tank. And so, the difference is very clear.
And let me just add, I was devastated to hear that Professor Radwan came under attack. We left the hotel maybe 20 minutes after her. We tried to re-enter Tahrir Square. These mobs are very intimidating. They're very hostile. They're men, mostly, that range from about 20 to 45 years old. They wear sweaters and thick leather jackets. And they were basically holding a mini riot at every entrance into Tahrir, preventing anyone from going in. We tried to force our way in, Hany, Jacquie and I. We held each other and tried to go through. But we were on the verge of being beaten ourselves, and we backed off and then had to go home, and we were unable to go inside. It was a very dark day in this struggle, but the people are very proud here in Tahrir that they held their ground under this brutal assault. And to this day they remain defiant. And it remains to be seen what will happen tomorrow, but I think it will be a decisive day in this struggle.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Noha Radwan, I'd like to ask you about what I asked Sharif, the role of the military, because obviously many of the protesters at first felt that the military was on their side. Your assessment now, after what happened in the past 24 hours?
NOHA RADWAN: Can I answer that question?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes.
NOHA RADWAN: I was actually saved by the military. I was going to practically die on the street, had it not been for the fact that some very low-ranking army officerand I cannot give any more details than thatactually asked his soldiers to pick me up and put me inside the tank, and where I stayed until it got dark. And then they called an ambulance for me to get out in the ambulance and go straight to a hospital. The mob outside were really calling for my head, as a traitor, an American-paid Baradei supporter.
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AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined, Sharif, by Hossam Bahgat, a human rights activist in Egypt. He's the founder of Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Hossam, you're on the line with us now from Cairo. Can you tell us where you are and what you learned has happened with human rights organizations there?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: I'm in downtown Cairo, and I'm trying to gain access into Tahrir Square, but it seems that I keep being turned away from military checkpoints that are only allowing medical staff and medicines and ambulances to enter the square today. I'm just past the south of the square, and I saw a line of 15 or 16 ambulances that are parked outside of the square.
But more disturbingly, we just received news from our colleagues at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, which had been acting as the main legal aid human rights organization in Egypt and also the headquarter of a coalition of human rights organizations working under the name of the Front to Defend Egypt Protesters, their offices in downtown Cairo have just been raided by the military police, who have asked everyone to lie on the floor face down and to remove the SIM cards from their phones. And their offices are now being searched by the military police. We have information that people inside the offices were not only the legal officers and the staff of the center, but also a representative from Amnesty International in London and a representative from Human Rights Watch were also inside and are currently being questioned. We can't have access to the building, because there is mob of pro-Mubarak agents that are gathered outside and are not letting anyone in or out of the building, and are chanting slogans accusing human rights defenders of being agents and traitors and spies. And we can't call anyone, because they've all switched their phones off. And when we call the land line of the center, it is a representative of the police that picks up the phone.
That happens in the immediate aftermath of a series of steps that have been taken to target foreign journalists, and many of whom were ordered to evacuate Tahrir Square or were attacked and had their equipment confiscated on the streets. And that has escalated now, because we are getting consistent reports that all foreigners are being stopped on the streets, sometimes by the army personnel and at other times by ordinary citizens on the street in an apparent response to the persistent anti-foreigners message that they've been hearing for two days on TV, on the state television, saying that there are foreign agents and foreign forces standing behind the remaining protesters in Tahrir Square.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to just correct something. We are speaking with Hossam el-Hamalawy, who is an Egyptian journalist and blogger, who is in
HOSSAM BAHGAT: No, I'm sorry. This is Hossam Bahgat. You were correct the first time.
AMY GOODMAN: Ah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Hossam Bahgat. OK, the latest news that we have, CPJ talking about cutting off access, a serious, as you were describing, crackdown. Also, the prime minister has said that they will stop the violence, supposedly, the Egyptian prime minister, which of course indicates a level of control.
HOSSAM BAHGAT: Yes, I heard the prime minister's interview with Al Hayat TV this morning, in which he apologized for thewhat he called was a mistake last night, in terms of allowing the pro-Mubarak agents to access Tahrir Square. He said that he demanded an explanation fromI guess from his own government or his own party for this, about, I mean, who made this decision to let the pro-Mubarak agents assault the pro-democracy protesters in the square.
But what is causing the biggest alarm today is that there seems to be a series of attempts by the army itself, for the first time, of going after foreign journalists and going after human rights organizations, both Egyptian and foreign. And with the lack of access to Tahrir Square, we fear that the worst is about to happen and that there is something that the army does not want anyone from the outside world to witness.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, Hossam Bahgat, precisely that point I wanted to raise to you. It's clear now that the Mubarak government has decided that rather than for him to leave office now, that they are going to basically crack down on the center of the protest. And we're looking at the potential of another Tiananmen here, not another Philippines victory of the people as against Marcos. So, my question to you: what do you see that people in other parts of the world need to do now, especially those of us here in the United States? Do you think the U.S. government should now move to remove all military aid from the Egyptian militarybecause, after all, the military depends, to a large extent, on the financial support of the United Statesas a means of pressuring it to change its stance of the last few days?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: The most negative development that we are witnessing, starting yesterday, was that the army has given up on, you now, its position of at least apparent neutrality. Yesterday, they made the statement by an army spokesperson inviting all the protesters, the pro-democracy protesters, to go home. And then, within minutes, they removed their barricades and allowed their pro-Mubarak thugs to assault us with stones and Molotov cocktails and, later and early this morning, with live fire. And they disappeared; they were nowhere to be seen. They did not even stay to arm their ownto guard their own tanks, which they left behind.
Now, today, now that it is actually the military personnel that are stopping foreign journalists on the street, confiscating their equipment, going through their notebooks, but also now raiding the offices of a human rights organization and at least temporarily so far detaining the staff and searching their offices, it is clear now that the army has decided to pick a side. And unfortunately, it is not the side of the Egyptian people but the side of the government. We fear now that the army is about to do something that it does not want the rest of the world to see. And the whole world will bear responsibility for what is about to happen, because I think that a blood bath is still avoidable. We need to do everything in our disposal to prevent a massacre from taking place.
AMY GOODMAN: Hossam Bahgat, what do you think the United States can do?
HOSSAM BAHGAT: The United States bears the most responsibility because of the ties that they have with the Egyptian army, but also because of the constant contacts, that have been made public over the past few days, that were made between U.S. Army officials and Egyptian military officials, not to mention of course the fact that the Egyptian army remains almost exclusively funded by the United States. The U.S. can prevent this from taking place and should prevent it.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to break and then come back. We're speaking with Hossam Bahgat, a human rights activist in Egypt, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. We also are joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, on the ground at Tahrir Square, who is senior producer at Democracy Now! This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a second.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass