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Reprinted by permission of Ray Abernathy. Ray's website is available at: http://www.rayabernathy.com
Kamal Abbas, Gamal Mubarak and
Ibrahim Eissa are all their early forties. All three are deeply
involved in the debate over the future of Egypt. All three have
dedicated followings. By this time next year, Gamal probably will be
president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, having been boosted there by
the heavy hand of his father, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, the military
strongman who has run the country as a closely-held dictatorship for
the past 27 years. Kamal and Ibrahim will most likely be serving time
in Egypt’s hellish prison system, sent there by the same heavy hand for
opposing Gamal’s ascension to power. Abbas is the labor leader I wrote about last August (“Strikes Sweep Egypt, Labor Center Pay”) http://www.rayabernathy.com/?p=18.
His outspoken support of workers striking across Egypt last winter drew
retaliation from the Mubarak regime. It shut down the Center for Trade
Union and Workers Services (CTUWS), an NGO Abbas founded 20 years ago
after leading a successful strike at the Egyptian Iron Works in the
Heyman Industrial District just outside of Cairo. Now the Egyptian
opposition blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy http://arabist.net/arabawy/
is reporting that Abbas has been sentenced to a year in jail on a
trumped up charge of “defamation” brought by a Mubarak sycophant.Eissa
is the editor of the opposition newspaper Al Dustour and he’s been
giving Mubarak all he can handle for years. As reported by Liz Sly in
the Chicago Tribune on Oct. 15 (“Egypt’s Media Defy Mubarak at their
Peril”) htttp://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/monday/chi-egypt_slyoct15,0,7285323.story
Eissa has been similarly accused of “defamation” for writing in a
front-page editorial that 89-year-old Hosni was having health problems.
In September, Eissa was sentenced on an old charge that he unfairly
criticized Gamal for “not being ready” to lead the country. His trial
on the new charge began Oct. 1. Sly wrote: “In the last few months,
liberal activists, members of the Moslem brotherhood and media types,
judges, professors and bloggers have all been harassed, detained or
imprisoned.” Of the Abbas conviction, which is now on appeal,
el-Hamalawy blogged: “Now, we have a court sentence to imprison
citizens who published facts about corruption cases. Does this mean we
give impunity to corruption and immunity against any criticism or
disclosure? Is this believable?” Egyptian opposition leaders say it is
indeed believable, part of a vicious turning-of-the-screws on dissent
in a nation where poverty and totalitarian government are pushing
America’s only stable ally in the Middle East toward the arms of Arab
militants. Both Eissa and Abbas seem undaunted by the prospect of
entering prisons where more often than not detainees emerge with
multiple broken bones and full-blown AIDS.Eissa said to Sly: “I’ve
found that I’m allowed to take my iPod. This is progress in the
Mubarak era. Yes, they do torture you in your cell, but they allow you
to listen to your iPod.”
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Abbas told me in my interview with him: “We know we are living in a dictatorship, in a closed society, so we have to make demands. We are on the right track. We will come back.”
Workers at the giant Mahalla textile plant where the strikes germinated last winter are already back. As reported in Huffington Post on Sept. 24 by blogger Freddy Deknatel, 20,000 of them are on strike again demanding 150-day shares in annual profits, improved industrial safety and a raise in annual bonuses.
Send your letters of protest on behalf of Kamal Abbas and Ibrahim Eissa to: His Excellency Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Abdin Palace, Cairo, Egypt.