Egypt: Police Crackdown On Kifaya Movement

Eyewitnesses related accounts on bloody Wednesday July 26,2006 when about one thousand and five hundred demonstrators from Kifaya movement and other national political forces and their sympathizers organized a demonstration at Tahrir Square this very day. They said that the demonstrators came under brutal beatings and assaults on the part of the central security forces backed by hooligans and hirelings. The eyewitnesses identified names of kifaya members who were seriously wounded as well as names of women who came under sexual assaults on the part of the security forces which rushed at the demonstrators indiscriminately. In particular, the Kifaya website  stated that the security men mercilessly beat Aida Safe el Dawla until she nearly fainted, beat a camerawoman, and  sexually assaulted two other media prominent ladies. The kifaya report lamented that while the security forces commit these crimes against those who emerge to voice their support to their Arab brothers in Lebanon and Palestine, we see demonstrators all over the world emerge with large numbers without police interferences , citing the one million demonstration in Turkey. They also said that this act on the part of the security men shows such a fragility of the regime that it amasses a large number of security men for a demonstration and even prevents people from voicing their solidarity with their Arab brothers.