Posted on 04/05/2005 11:56:48 AM PDT by jwalburg
Thousands of Egyptian university students have demonstrated angrily against the government, in the largest such protest yet to be staged. The students - mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood movement - marched at five campuses in Cairo and the Nile Delta.
Hundreds of police prevented them from taking their protests outside university gates onto the streets.
Islamists, liberals and nationalists want an end to Egypt's 24-year-old state of emergency.
They also called for an end to the presidency of Hosni Mubarak.
Mr Mubarak has been the country's leader since 1981. He is hoping to win a fifth term in office in elections in September - for the first time in a multi-candidate poll.
Campus protests
Reports quoting police say 4,000 students marched inside the grounds of al-Azhar university in the historic heart of old Cairo.
Many students at this important seat of Sunni Muslim learning flashed V for victory signs and waved small copies of the Islamic holy book, the Koran.
About 1,000 protesters were reported at each of Cairo's Ain Shams and Helwan universities.
Protests at the universities in Kafr al-Sheikh and Mansoura in the Nile Delta attracted about 2,000 students apiece, reports say.
In addition, many students called for an end to the authorities' security control over student elections.
"It is all part of the reform... we want to change students' elections bylaws," said Ain Shams student Khaled Sultan.
Security forces have recently arrested hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members at protests and in raids designed to prevent demonstrations, under the authority of the controversial emergency law.
Under growing US pressure, Egypt has been moving slowly towards reform, with Mr Mubarak allowing rival candidates to appear on the ballot paper.
Until this year, electors could only accept or reject a single candidate chosen by parliament, which is dominated by Mr Mubarak's National Democratic Party.
Caption: Egyptian veiled students of Al Azhar university, the highest Islamic Sunni institution, march as they call for more freedom and ending of emergency law during a protest at their campus in Cairo Tuesday, April 5, 2005.There have been a flurry of protests in Egypt over the past months, all of them small, numbering in the hundreds of people, but by groups that never previously had dared take to the streets against the government
This is great news
Interesting that that huge banner is written in English. For foreign consumption, perhaps.
Please educate me on this one. True Mubarak is not the most democratic guy in the world, but he's no Saddam Hussein nor is Egypt as socially repressive as Saudi Arabia. The Muslim brother had gotten its start in this country and there is a long standing sympathy for this movement (Salafist) that has its roots in an anti-colonialist movement as well as a so-called getting back to Islamic roots. Something tells me (this is where I want to be educated) that the Egyptian population is not as sophisticated as the Iraqi people, nor the Palestinian people. There is definitely a well educated class, but a huge swath of people that are semi-literate or only literate as far as Koranic studies go. It would not take much for a bunch of wild eyed sheiks to grab the reigns of power and we'd have another Iran on our hands. Probably worse than Iran (which has oil wealth, but it's badly managed).
I was happy to see this until I read that it's the Muslim Brotherhood. They are bad news.
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