Welcome to the Police State

Well, I made it into Egypt! New lands, new hands.

So I'll just write a few impressions of my first day, of which I spent nearly 7 hours just walking around downtown. Visited the museum, nice hieroglyphs, impressive mummies, ornate gilded jewelry... all very interesting.

But the most interesting of all is the 28-year old state of martial law that has been in existence here in Egypt. After Anwar Sadat was assassinated presumably for his acceptance of Israel's right to exist, Hosni Mubarak took control and imposed martial law, which has conveniently been renewed every 5 years or so (the last time being last year, renewed for a period of 2 years). With almost US$1.3 billion in military aid and over $400 million in "economic assistance", the United States is the principal backer of the Mubarak regime. So when US taxpayers aren't paying for million-dollar corporate-exec bonuses, we are funding a measly salary to the thousands of police minions that roam the streets (at least in Cairo). I think on every block I have seen at least one policeman standing behind a palm tree or catching an afternoon nap in their blue police vans. And occassionally, you get the pleasure of sighting some of those mean-looking guys, in their uncomfortably hot leather jackets (haha!) and Latin-American-death-squad-style sunglasses.

I am staying with a friend in the upper-class el Maadi district of Cairo. Almost everyone in the building works for USAID or directly with the Embassy. I noticed this morning three guys in suits just hanging out in the middle of the street, and they all stared at me as I left. Apparently, they are out here frequently, making sure the USAID people aren't double agents. Sketchy...

For normal Egyptians, the repression is a little more tangible. The Egyptian police are known for their tortures and jailings without charges; many victims have remained in prision for over a decade without being charged. There are still people in prision who bravely protested the Egyptian government's brazenly pro-Israeli stance during the 2008-09 invasion of Gaza. Read HRW's 2008 report here. I remember when Mubarak visited GW and was given an honorary degree in something by our union-busting university president, Stephen Tractenberg. It was all pomp and circumstance. It's always interesting to see who is given the title "dictator", and who isn't.

Anyways, on the right side of this blog, you'll see a link to a blog called "Tabula Gaza". I linked to that because it had good info during the recent Israeli invasion of the Strip. Well, the writer is a German-Egyptian activist who led one of the protests in Egypt against the invasion. A few days after the protest, he was bundled into a van of the secret police and held in an unknown place for 4 days. So, maybe I shouldn't wear my kuffiya just yet...

In some nice news, I met an Egyptian man with his US-born infant and his Mexican-American Islamic-convert wife from Brownsville, Texas, in the street today. Que interesante. It was nice to talk Spanish in Cairo.

Analysis of current Egypt-Palestine-Israel situation: here.