Strike-hit Egypt facing threat of new crackdown

The action came yesterday as activists called for bigger street demonstrations, defying a warning that the crowds calling for president Hosni Mubarak’s removal would not be tolerated for much longer.

Efforts by vice president Omar Suleiman to open talks with protesters over reforms have broken down since the weekend, with the youth organisers suspicious he plans only superficial changes far short of real democracy. The want Mr Mubarak to step down first.

Showing growing impatience, Mr Suleiman raised the prospect of a renewed crackdown.

He told Egyptian newspaper editors on Tuesday there could be a coup unless demonstrators agree to enter negotiations and he suggested Egypt was not ready for democracy. He said a government-formed panel of judges, dominated by Mubarak loyalists, would push ahead with recommending its own constitutional amendments for a referendum.

“He is threatening to impose martial law, which means everybody in the square will be smashed,” said Abdul-Rahman Samir, a spokesman for a coalition of the five main youth groups behind protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “But what would he do with the rest of the 70 million Egyptians who will follow us afterward?”

Mr Suleiman is creating “a disastrous scenario,” he added. “We are striking and we will protest and we will not negotiate until Mubarak steps down. Whoever wants to threaten us, then let them do so.”

Nearly 10,000 massed in Tahrir yesterday in the 16th day of protests. Nearby, 2,000 more blocked off parliament, chanting slogans for it to be dissolved. Army troops deployed in the parliament grounds.

For the first time, protesters called for strikes, despite a warning by Mr Suleiman that calls for civil disobedience are “very dangerous for society and we can’t put up with this at all.”

Around the country, small strikes erupted involving state electrical workers, farmers, museum staff protesting at low wages, bread shortages and mismanagement.

Most did not appear to be in response to the Tahrir protesters’ calls, and seemed fueled by longtime discontent re-emerging amid the unrest. But some strikers threatened to feed into the Tahrir movement.

Around 8,000 protesters in the southern province of Assiut blocked the main road and railroad to Cairo with burning palm trees, complaining of bread shortages and calling for the regime’s downfall.

About 300 slum residents in the Suez Canal city of Port Said set fire to some parts of the governorate building and several motorcycles.

In Cairo, hundreds of state electricity workers stood demanding the ousting of its head. Dozens of state museum workers demanding higher wages protested in front of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Strikes entered a second day in Suez where some 5,000 workers at various state companies – including textile workers, medicine bottle manufacturers, sanitation workers and a firm involved in repairs for ships on the Suez Canal –held separate strikes and protests at their factories.

The Tahrir protest organisers called for a new “protest of millions” for Friday similar to those that have drawn the largest crowds so far. But in a change of tactic, they want to spread the protests out around different parts of Cairo instead of only in central Tahrir Square where a permanent sit-in is now in its second week.

The authorities are trying to create an image of normality. Egypt’s most famous tourist attraction, the Pyramids of Giza, reopened to tourists yesterday. But tens of thousands of foreigners have fled Egypt amid the chaos, raising concerns about the economic impact of the protests.

Mr Suleiman indicated the government plans to push ahead with its own reform program even without negotiations, a move likely to do nothing to ease protests. He has announced a panel of top judges and legal experts would recommend amendments to the constitution by the end of the month, which would then be put to a referendum.

But the panel is dominated by Mubarak loyalists, and previous referendums on amendments drawn up by the regime have been marred by vote rigging to push them through.