català Abaixo in Egypt has always seemed a distant country to the English state, a country with whom we have not historically had cultural and political ties, but today is a neighbor of the Mediterranean area.
Egypt has always been a key country - by its geopolitical situation, and Suez Canal, its political-economic, cultural and demographic in the Arab world. A country is necessarily involved in the Palestinian conflict. Currently its rickety dictatorship, corrupt and repressive custom figure by Mubarak - octogenarian patient and close ally of the U.S. - is in crisis. The Islamists are the main opposition force.
But this picture has been transformed in recent years a new phenomenon: great struggles in the factories - especially in the textile industry - and the emergence of a new independent trade union movement, the official union is fully integrated in the repressive state. The regime's response to this new movement has been predictable: repression arrests and torture.
Stop the show trial of Egyptian protesters
begin trials of 49 Egyptians accused of involvement in the two-day uprising in Mahalla, a Nile Delta town in April 2008.the 6th and 7th April, Mubarak troops occupied Ghazl el-Mahalla, the largest textile factory in the Middle East, with 27,000 workers, aborting a strike announced by the Independent League of Textile Workers to protest increases spiraling food prices and to demand a minimum wage increase has remained stagnant since 1984.
The troops used live ammunition, tear gas, water cannons and clubs against peaceful protestors in the town who took the streets after the crushing of the strike. There were at least three dead and hundreds injured and arrested.
The 49 detainees face a list of false charges, some of them confessed under torture. They will be tried in a special court, which has been consistently denounced by human rights observers for lack of international standards for a "fair and secure."
The trials begin on 8 November. We the undersigned call on the Egyptian dictatorship to release them immediately. Alfons
Bech (Secretary Cooperation CCOO)
Txell Bragulat (Technical Director, Sodepau)
Rosa Cañadell (USTEC)
Alex Hinn (Palestine Comunitat de Catalunya)
Marc Jamal (Xarxa d'enllaç amb Palestine)
Luis González (Secretariat, Mediterranean Social Forum)
David Karval (Platform Aturem War)
Roque Martinez (Works Council TV3)
Saturnino Mercader (Chair, Bus Company TMB)
Omar Minguillón (UGT, Iberia, Barcelona)
Josep Maria Navarro Cantero (President, Sodepau)
Carlos Vallejo (CCOO Barcelonès)
Robin M. White (CCOO)
Add your name to this list. Send us an e-mail to concairo@gmail.com .
protest letters to:
of the Interior Minister General Habib El Adly El Sheikh Rihan Street
Cairo Arab Republic of Egypt
(00 202 2 5792031 Fax. E-mail: Moi1@idsc.gov.eg )
Embassy of Egypt in Spain C / Velázquez, 69 28006 Madrid
(Fax 91 578 1732. E-mail: info@ecros.org )
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