Crowds of pro-government demonstrators attacked opponents of President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday while police looked on, staining a day of national voting that government leaders had touted as a major step toward democracy.
In some cases, pro-Mubarak protesters dragged unarmed men and women by the hair and beat them with police-style rubber truncheons. In other cases, young men who arrived marching in formation groped female demonstrators and used wood poles bearing cardboard portraits of Mubarak to beat rival demonstrators over the head in plain view of hundreds of uniformed police.
Though voting in most of the capital unfolded quietly, the violence marred what Egyptian leaders had pledged would be a showcase of democratization in the Arab world’s largest country. The measure in Wednesday’s referendum, widely expected to pass, asked Egyptians to vote on a constitutional amendment that would clear the way for the country’s first multiparty presidential elections. But opposition groups had called for a boycott, arguing that the rules all but bar the most popular challengers from entering the race.
Fresh off a trip to Washington last week to explain the proposed amendment to the Bush administration, Egyptian officials had hoped that a clean vote Wednesday would counter criticism from rights groups at home and abroad that Mubarak’s regime continues to harass, silence and jail political opponents.
The clashes at two small rallies, involving about 150 demonstrators, left at least two anti-regime demonstrators injured and 30 were arrested, said George Ishak, chairman of the pro-democracy movement Kifaya, the Arabic word for “Enough.”
The violence and arrests extended a monthlong police crackdown that has led to the detention across the country of 850 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an illegal but influential Islamist movement.
“We haven’t seen something like this before,” Ishak said of the intensity of the clashes. “The Egyptian people have witnessed what happened here today. We will continue with our struggle.”
Magdy Allam, a senior official in the ruling National Democratic Party, acknowledged that the party recruited the pro-regime protesters and called the violence “friction” between partisans.
`Full, open investigation’
Standing to the side of clashes outside the headquarters of the National Journalists Union, Allam disputed that pro-regime demonstrators sparked the violence, but promised “a full and open investigation into any allegations.”
“Our membership is not going to attack anyone, but we are going to defend President Mubarak,” said Allam, a member of the National Democratic Party’s top policy committee.
Ten yards from where Allam was speaking, three rows of uniformed police detained about a dozen anti-regime demonstrators, mostly men and women in their 20s. Minutes later, the police cordon opened, and about 25 pro-government protesters surged in, beating, kicking, pulling hair and groping the detainees.
Asked by a reporter why police permitted it to continue, a plainclothes officer with a walkie-talkie said: “These are our orders.”
A few minutes earlier, a crowd of pro-Mubarak demonstrators harassed and knocked to the ground a British employee of the Los Angeles Times and kicked her repeatedly, before she escaped without serious injury.
A few yards away, 36-year-old lawyer Raba Fahmy was set upon by a mob of young men bearing pro-Mubarak placards, who tore open her shirt and skirt. “I need a pin, I need a pin,” she pleaded, holding her clothes together, as police escorted her to the side and shooed away reporters.
“Mr. Mubarak, if you are a respectable president, give the Egyptian people their rights,” she shouted.
A female reporter from The Associated Press also wrote of being cornered, grabbed and pulled by the hair. Victims said they believed many of the young male pro-regime demonstrators were police in plainclothes. That could not be independently confirmed, though they marched in formation and some carried batons of the kind used by Cairo police.
The crackdown could pose a stark challenge to the Bush administration’s pledge to condemn dictatorship in the Middle East, even in the case of American allies.
Egypt, a vital U.S. ally that received $1.8 billion in American aid last year, has been singled out for criticism before. Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized the detention of a political challenger and after Rice canceled a visit to Cairo, the politician was released on bail. Days later, Mubarak proposed the constitutional change that led to Wednesday’s vote.
But as arrests have mounted this month the White House has shied away from criticizing Egypt. Visiting Cairo over the weekend, First Lady Laura Bush praised Mubarak’s proposed amendment as “bold and wise,” drawing fire from democracy advocates who said the Bush administration is not living up to its call for Arab reform.
The referendum would permit Egyptians for the first time to choose from more than one presidential candidate in an election slated for September. Until now, the 77-year-old Mubarak, who took over in 1981, has been approved every six years by referendum, never garnering less than 90 percent of the vote. Results of Wednesday’s vote are expected Thursday.
Mubarak wants high turnout
Mubarak has emphasized he wants a high turnout. The front page of the state-owned Al Ahram daily newspaper urged Egypt’s 32.5 million eligible voters to cast ballots, along with a story warning that anyone who seeks to “disrupt security” will meet “strict confrontation.”
The opposition Al Wafd newspaper, however, reiterated calls for a boycott, calling voting day “A Day of Mourning.”
As demonstrations mounted downtown, Egyptians visited polling places at police stations, schools and other government buildings across the country. Most voters interviewed said they endorsed Mubarak’s amendment and, indeed, would support their longtime president if he decides to run for his fifth term this fall.
“We want the president to continue the path he started. This is a gift for the next generation,” said Adel Mohammed Abdel Rahman, 45, an agricultural engineer and member of the ruling party who was spending the afternoon with four friends seated beside the polling both at a police station in the poor Bab al-Sharqiya neighborhood.
Without being asked, the man supervising the ballot box spoke up to add: “Thank God, people are coming. God is going to choose the best man, and the best person is the president, Hosni Mubarak.”
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eosnos@tribune.com
