Marching through Dokki

I just got back from another Kifaya protest, this one aimed at the problem of political prisoners in Egypt. Like Ayman Nour's campaign, Kifaya notifies media and others of their events through telephone text messages, or SMSs. This time my phone beeped with the following:

Mubarak rosy promises excluded stopping tortue. "End torture in Egypt" is our call. If you agree, join us in Dokki Square Wed.@ 6 p.m.

The protest started just after 6. Like the other recent protests--the one in central Midan Tahrir on Election Day, and a large protest in Talat Harb downtown on Saturday, the police hung back and watched, but did not interfere with the protesters (at least during the hour or so I was there). Again there were white uniformed officers and plenty of intelligence officers in suits. But they let the protesters gather--even though they were blocking traffic in a very busy intersection--and let them go where they wished.

The core crowd of protesters numbered about 100-200. But many people on the street joined to walk with the crowd, till it numbered some 400-500 or so. It was hard to tell how many people joined in out of curiousity, because political protests are so novel, and how many were moved by the cause. But its fair to say there was considerable interest in the issue of torture in prisoners and unfair detentions. A young man handing out photocopied information sheets about the cause was swamped with people.

Along with the young, long haired student activist and artist-type young men leading the chants as the protests started, there were other types: There was a man whose body seemed pained and twisted in a wheelchair held up by the chanting crowd. There was a group of some 20-25 heavily veiled women--most of them middle aged or old-- holding up black and white photos of their imprisioned sons, brothers and fathers, arrested for their alleged involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. One woman said her husband has been in prison for 40 years. There was one young man prominently holding up a Koran--quite a contrast from the leftists in Kifaya I've spent some time with in the last few weeks.

During the 7 p.m. call to prayer, a Kifaya protester gestured to the crowd to quiet down. They did, stopping their chants (Down, Down Hosni Mubarak!) as long as the muazzin's prayer rang through the streets. Some 20 or 30 protesters then switched from anti-Mubarak cries to 10 or 20 rounds of Allah Akbar (God is the Greatest) and then into political slogans: "Security for Egypt, not for Israel."

Unity of purpose, not uniformity of belief, definitely seemed the name of the game.

Apparently there was a much larger protest last Saturday, with some 5,000 people. I did not go to that one, but will hopefully hit the next.

NOTE: Final results in the election, for the record, were 88.6 ercent for Mubarak, 7.6 percent for Nour and his al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, and 2.9 percent for Gomaa and the Wafd Party. The most interesting thing about the results? Only 23 percent of Egypt's 32 million registered voters actually turned out. Either this was a dramatic effort at honesty from a regime known for inflating turnout figures by two or three times, or the real turn out was much lower. Mubarak knows that the low turnout gives him less legitimacy--but perhaps what is most interesting about that is Mubarak has to worry less about legitimacy than an truly elected leader. There are many other essential ingredient that keep his party in power; the large security presence, entrenched bureaucracy, corruption, apathy, inertia, and an actual affection for Mubarak as leader (things could be worse!)...the list goes on and on...