Egyptians are intensely outraged, after the murder of a 28-year old man by the police - for refusing to show his ID, in an event that forewarns large repercussions within the Egyptian society, with social media playing a central role in the affair.
On Tuesday June 8th, Khaled Mohamed Said was in an Alexandria internet café when two police informants - police foot soldiers with little to no formal training - walked in and asked to see the identification documents of all present and began searching them, claiming the provisions of the emergency law.When Khaled refused to show his documentation, as accounted by independent newspaper Al-Shorouk, he was attacked violently by the perpetrators, showed to the floor where the police informants kicked him. As he bloodily fainted, one of the perpetrators banged his head against a staircase railing, breaking his skull. He was then carried into the police station, then subsequently brought out again and dumped in the street by the same police informants, before he was taken by an ambulance.
Policemen subsequently returned to the scene in search of any recording devices or phones that could’ve reported the incident. They failed however to prevent the news from being covered and widely shared via Twitter and other social media tools, which detailed accounts of the events, shared photos of the deceased before and after his death, and began to organize for demonstrations and civil actions to bring the alleged perpetrators to justice and to protest the use of Emergency law, in place since 1981 and extended just last month for a further 2 years, with the explicit declaration by the state that it would only be used “in cases of terrorism and drug trafficking”.
A memorial Facebook page in the name of the victim gained 4000 followers in the first hour of its creation on Thursday; I've seen it grow, in the past 14 hours, from 20,000 to 64,000 supporters.
The Egyptian blogosphere is in mourning - and in rage. Past events of police brutality are brought up from the archives, with parallels being drawn between victims, methods, and perpetrators.
Yet the case of Khaled Said has the potential of being the furthest reaching and can have stronger repercussions than all previous police brutality cases combined.
First, unlike most other cases of fatal police brutality, this one didn’t take place in the confines of a police station or in a remote village of Egypt’s countryside, but in broad daylight, on a street of the country’s second largest city. The victim was not in the police’s custody, or under arrest for a crime or other; he was, until minutes before the events,
Second, the very graphic images of the tortured body of Khaled Said also gained an unprecedented distribution among social media users.
Third, the government has failed to absorb the rising rage or to offer, as it did for instance with the torturers of Imad Al Kabir, to bring the perpetrators to justice. Quite on the contrary, its reaction is setting it on a collision course with the Egyptian civil society.
According to the respected Al-Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of victims of violence and torture, a Thursday 70-person strong demonstration by the Sidi Gaber police station in Alexandria - where Khaled died - ended in the police beating up the demonstrators and arrested 11 persons, including two journalists and Khaled’s female cousin.
The incident has also gained significant attention from opposition political parties and movements, whose interest, genuine or not, is unlikely to falter any time soon.
Al-Ghad party president Ayman Nour, who had finished a distant second in the 2005 presidential elections before he was imprisoned, posted a note depicting the events and condemning police brutality; he also changed the profile picture of his facebook fan page into Khaled’s, in solidarity.
Supporters of former IAEA director general and presumed presidential hopeful Mohamed el Baradei have issued a statement demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice and calling upon popular solidarity to “drastically change the roots of the regime".
Earlier today, El Baradei’s official twitter account tweeted the following:
“Horrible reign of terror continues in Egypt. Criminals must be brought to justice immediately. Khaled's life must not be lost in vain.”
(His message in Arabic was a little different - he added that "Khaled's murder is the responsibility of every Egyptian")
Even the near-defunct ‘6th of April movement’, which once commended a strong mobilisation base, has joined the calls to demonstrate before the ministry of interior on Sunday.
How this affair will end is anyone’s guess, but the level of outrage surrounding it feels almost unprecedented. The intensity of the public action is bound to be met by a reaction: either a further violent one, as the demonstration in Alexandria suggests, or a more conciliatory, by bringing the perpetrators to justice. But if the campaign is sustained - and the ingredients for a long term action seem present - it could lead to deeper repercussions on the way the Ministry of interior, one of the state’s most powerful branches and armed with one of the most permissive legal texts ever created, deals with the Egyptian populace.
Already, organisations such as the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) declared that are expressing severe discontent with the impunity of the Ministry of Interior: “those informants (...) are regular police officers who were transformed, thanks to the policy of impunity, to sadistic killers above the law, this policy must be stopped at once, and no less than putting them, and the Minister of Interior who's the first responsible for this sadistic crime, on trial".
It is a sad day in Egypt, and the shared hope is that, at least, Khaled’s death would not have been in vain.
11 comments:
The best English article thus far on the issue. Good job Mohamed.
It is hard to fight back the tears. I hope NGOs and human rights organizations capitalize on the anger created by this sadistic crime and do something. But it doesn't look promising:
http://www.shorouknews.com/ContentData.aspx?id=245812
It looks like the criminals are going to walk away with impunity. I hope this turns out to be a serious embarrassment for the regime. It's gone too far.
انا اسمى خالد محمد سعيد ..... و للأسف
مصرى
thank you so much for translating this into english; its wonderful. the pictures alone were heartbreaking; the story just aweful. i hope they get what they deserve, either at the hands of men or god (whichever you choose to worship). nobody deserves to be treated this way...EVER! for now, they have gotten away with murder, possibly not for the first time, and i seriously hope they are held accountable for their actions.
Egyptblogger -
Thanks! I read that article and indeed, it doesn't look good... at all. The whole story is so strange though..
Anonymous -
My pleasure. We hope the regime will be held accountable too.
A great piece Mohammed, unfortunately this is the situation in other parts of the world as well:(
I agree, all parties involved should be held accountable for their actions not only in Egypt but also all over the world.
I think, Mohamed, that the uproar in this case is also fueled, in addition to all the reasons you gave, by the fact that the boy belonged to a middle-class family and seems to not have been a "troublemaker" in the middle-class sense, and who has been abused and killed in a situation that many middle-class young people could identify with. Unlike many of the previous cases (perhaps with the exception of the case of the handball player killed at the hands of a police officer in a fight last year), this kid was not a microbus driver, or a poor guy or a felon of any sort. Needless to say that this doesn't mean that it's less grave to abuse/torture and/or kill microbus drivers, poor people or felons at the hands of police thugs (you probably already know how critical I am of middle-class morality), it just sheds a little more light into explaining why this particular incident is causing such an unprecedented uproar among middle-class Egyptians, and consequently among Egyptians at large.
Besides, the regime has already been adding insult to injury lately through its various shitty policies and decisions. It seems to be unmistakably faltering, and the accumulative effect of this crap has made people fed up, and the increasing pace and momentum of social and political protest has encouraged them to voice their uproar in more open and politicized forms.
Sukran jazeelan as an Ajami who loves Egypt and her people I hope this young man's martyrdom will not be in vain. Insh'allah we will see a revolutionary Egypt leading the Arabs & Muslims and all the oppressed.
Horrific. I sat for a long time looking at that tortured face, those eyes, shaking my head. It seems technological advances are speeding the worldwide trend toward governments increasingly widespread and speeded up use of ID systems, document checks and abuse by police/internal security officials abuse to maintain the status quo and keep people in line. But technology is also enabling people to at least educate themselves about it and get the word (and even more important, the images) out - the first step in the long process of change. I fear though, that it will be a while before Mubarak and his ilk are reined in, propped up as they are by the USA.
Meadows we must never lose hope. Always struggle to order the good and forbid the evil.
Very good job Mohamed. Keep the good work. These sadistic animals need to be stopped.
Nasser,
Yes, it's important to not lose hope. :-)
Soha,
I agree that the class of a victim makes a difference in how abuse by government is perceived. Seems to be true in numerous countries. In the Philippines which had experienced so much abuse and so many murders by the govt, it was only after the assassination of a mainstream, prosperous opponent, Benigno Aquino, in the 1980's that domestic support fell away. The Reagan administration in the USA, under pressure from allies throughout the world, the Filipino elite, and the Vatican, finally withdraw its financial support for the Marcos regime which promptly fell. Although the "democratic" system that replaced it is still riddled with corruption, it's a step up from what they had under Marcos. In the USA, it was the race as well as the class of the dead that made the difference during the Civil Rights movement: even the killings of little African-American girls in a church evoked sympathy but no serious groundswell for change. It wasn't until images of white middle class youth being beaten in civil protests were beamed into American living rooms during the evening news on TV that the tide began to turn. Same for the Vietnam anti-war movement: African American college students who were killed at Jackson State University while protesting the war didn't register a blip on the national consciousness. However, the white students killed that same month at Kent State U. turned middle America against the war and sparked a nationwide student strike.
Each voice counted. They are afraid from our voice to be getting louder and louder. Be all tuned and this incident will determine if we as Egytpians are worthy for life or - these sadistic animals perceived us- not worthy the life.
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