In Egypt, detentions, but no general strike (News Feature)

By dpa correspondents Apr 6, 2009, 17:58 GMT

Cairo - What a difference a year makes in Egypt.

Last April 6, teargas filled the streets of the Nile Delta industrial town of Mahalla al-Kobra as rioters firebombed buildings, hurled rocks at riot police, and toppled a freestanding poster of Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak. At least two people were killed in clashes with the police and dozens more were wounded.

The riots followed violence in bread queues at government-subsidized bakeries, as spiraling wheat prices drove more of the country's urban poor to rely on subsidized bread.

A small group of Internet-savvy activists, smelling revolution in the air, at the time used the social-networking websites Facebook and Twitter to call for a national strike in support of Mahalla's textile workers, who planned a strike for April 6, 2008. Egypt's opposition press endorsed their calls, and thousands joined the group organizers created on Facebook.

They became known as the 'Facebook Youth,' or the 'April 6 movement,' and they caught the imagination of the international news media to such an extent that James Glassman, former US under secretary of state for public diplomacy, last November identified them as 'Egypt's largest opposition group.'

But since March 2008, or around the time the 'Facebook Youth' were born as a group, the price of wheat - of which Egypt imports 7.5 million tonnes a year, more than any other country in the world - has dropped more than 57 per cent. Last week, Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity said the country had 2 million ton of grain stored, enough to last the country four months.

Which may help explain why, despite calls for a general strike originally posted on the social networking website Facebook and amplified in Egypt's opposition newspapers, few heeded the calls this year.

'Do you see a strike? There is no strike,' Mohammed Hassan, a lawyer, told the German Press Agency dpa from the streets of downtown Cairo on Monday. 'All we see is intense security and media propaganda. Maybe the invitation to strike was private.'

'April 6? What are you talking about?' university student Samira Ahmed asked. 'No, I haven't heard anything about it.'

Perhaps anticipating this response, the organizers of the 'April 6 movement' - a loose coalition of online activists, students and, after a last-minute endorsement Thursday, members of Egypt's largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood - had recently begun calling for 'a day of rage' instead of a general strike.

'It is not so much the day of a strike, but a day of rage,' Ayman Nour, the former head of the Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, told dpa from the steps of downtown Cairo's Press Syndicate, where perhaps 50 people gathered to chant 'Down with Mubarak!'

Nour, who spent more than three years in prison on fraud charges after he ran against President Hosny Mubarak in the 2005 presidential elections, was released from prison in February.

At the Press Syndicate and at similar protests at universities around Cairo and in Alexandria, riot police and plainclothes officers vastly outnumbered protesters. Nine trucks full of police conscripts were on hand to reinforce riot police at the Press Syndicate.

The Hisham Mubarak Legal Centre, a Cairo-based rights group, on Monday said that security officers had detained five activists from the Nile Delta province of Minufiya and at least another five students were detained at protests at universities around Cairo on Monday.

Security officers on Sunday detained another nine activists from the Muslim Brotherhood in Shobra al-Khima, just north of Cairo, a source in the Interior Ministry told dpa on Monday.

Cairo's Youm al-Sabaa newspaper on Monday reported that police had arrested three other activists from al-Fayoum, roughly 150 kilometres southwest of Cairo.

George Ishaq, a leading organizer of the Kifaya (Enough) umbrella opposition group, blamed 'the security forces' terrorism' for the small size of Monday's protests.

'Considering how much security is in force, and the number of arrests, then the number of people at the protests is quite high,' Mohab al-Dib, a young Kifaya activist, said. 'It shows that there are still people who are not afraid.'

But Wael Abbas, a young blogger and journalist famous for posting videos depicting police brutality on the Internet, called the calls for a strike 'a media phenomenon which does not reflect reality on the ground.'

The young protesters who took part in Monday's demonstrations were undeterred.

'The Egyptian people are like camels,' al-Dib, the young Kifaya activist, said. 'They store everything up and then they explode. This is a revolutionary moment; the moment is coming soon.'