Egypt’s Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq has apologized for shocking attacks by government supporters on the largely-peaceful demonstrators (and members of the world press) but the bottom-line question among many will be: Sure this sounds reassuring but, if many of the government supporters armed with machetes etc. were basically police or paid-for thugs, what value does an apology have?
The question of precisely who these government-supporting demonstrators were who suddenly showed up and immediately went on the attack raises a slew of questions that will likely be answered in coming weeks. MSNBC reports it this way:
Egypt’s prime minister apologized Thursday for attacks by government supporters on protesters after a night of violence in which gunfire was heard in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and at least five people were killed.
Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq told state TV that the attack on the anti-government protesters which began late Wednesday was a “blatant mistake” and promised to investigate who was behind it. He said the actions of the pro-Mubarak supporters were “a million percent wrong.”
However, there are many who don’t believe this was a “mistake” at all but a tactic used in Egypt and some other countries where an autocratic leader or regime will essentially try to stage a mood — bringing in people on to foment violence so the government can later crack-down and say it’s being done in the name of order. The fact these demonstrators showed up and suddenly went on the attack raises eyebrows so high they go above hairlines.
The BBC:
“This is a fatal error,” Mr Shafiq told the privately-owned al-Hayat television.
“When investigations reveal who is behind this crime and who allowed it to happen, I promise they will be held accountable and will be punished for what they did.”
“There is no excuse whatsoever to attack peaceful protesters, and that is why I am apologising,” he said, urging the protesters “to go home to help end this crisis”.
That’ll be the operative phrase: the violence started by pro-government demonstrators is already being used to argue for demonstrations being ended.
But it doesn’t seem as if suggesting the pro-government demonstrators just showed up and by some kind of psychic link began attacking around the same time is convincing everyone.
A cross-section of opinion:
—The New York Time’s Nicholas Kristof:
Pro-government thugs at Tahrir Square used clubs, machetes, swords and straight razors
on Wednesday to try to crush Egypt’s democracy movement, but, for me, the most memorable moment of a sickening day was one of inspiration: watching two women stand up to a mob….
…..Thuggery and courage coexisted all day in Tahrir Square, just like that. The events were sometimes presented by the news media as “clashes” between rival factions, but that’s a bit misleading. This was an organized government crackdown, but it relied on armed hoodlums, not on police or army troops.
The pro-Mubarak forces arrived in busloads that mysteriously were waved past checkpoints. These forces emerged at the same time in both Alexandria and Cairo, and they seemed to have been briefed to carry the same kinds of signs and scream the same slogans. They singled out foreign journalists, especially camera crews, presumably because they didn’t want their brutality covered. A number of journalists were beaten up, although far and away it was Egyptians who suffered the most.
Until the arrival of these thugs, Tahrir Square had been remarkably peaceful, partly because pro-democracy volunteers checked I.D.’s and frisked everyone entering. One man, a suspected police infiltrator, was caught with a gun on Tuesday quite close to me, and I was impressed with the way volunteers disarmed him and dragged him to an army unit — all while forming a protective cordon around him to keep him from being harmed.
In contrast, the pro-Mubarak mobs were picking fights. At first, the army kept them away from the pro-democracy crowds, but then the pro-Mubarak thugs charged into the square and began attacking.
The “Berlin Wall” analogy that has been a staple of Western media discussion of the struggle for power in Egypt looked way off the mark on Wednesday as the regime unleashed a brutal strategy for remaining in power that might make “Prague Spring” a more apposite European analogy. The Berlin Wall’s rupture saw East Germany’s communist regime collapse; the democratic uprising in Czechoslovakia in 1968 was crushed by Russian tanks.
The Egyptian army, which had previously vowed not to use force against the protesters, stood by passively as thousands of pro-government thugs were bused in and bludgeoned their way into the peaceful anti-Mubarak crowd on Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Violent chaos and gunfire raged throughout the night, leaving hundreds wounded and at least four dead, according to local media reports. It made clear that earlier suggestions that the army was siding with the protesters were premature. And on Thursday, the military took up positions between anti-government demonstrators and supporters of Mubarak, moving on the pro-government group. Meanwhile, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq apologized for the attacks on protesters Wednesday. “This is a fatal error, and when investigations reveal who is behind this crime and who allowed it to happen, I promise they will be held accountable and will be punished for what they did,” he told Al-Hayat TV. His apology was not only rare for a leadership that rarely makes public admissions of a mistake but his vow to investigate who was behind the attack was issued only hours after the Interior Ministry denied that its police were involved.
–A professor in Cairo describes how the pro-government demonstrators were brought in place from outside, put on small trucks and moved to demonstrations areas. He rejects idea that the pro-Mubarak demonstrators were spontaneous but “professional thugs” who have been seen before by the Ministry of Interior. Says, unlike China, the government is not using the Army but thugs, former criminals and people paid to use violence to go after the crowd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM_kdOikaUc&feature=player_embedded
—Bikyamasr
Egyptian protesters on Wednesday reported demonstrators in support of President Hosni Mubarak entered scenes of peaceful demonstration against the aging president and started throwing rocks in an effort to start violence, one day after Mubarak said political forces were behind the protests and violence.
In central Cairo, the army seemingly did not attempt to stop the pro-Mubarak demonstrators from attacking the thousands of anti-government protesters, sparking one activists to lament, “the army has failed us.”
“They are paying these thugs to come in and attack us so they can try and get violence and clashes to start between the Egyptian people. Is this what people want, no, we want to see Mubarak go and out government for the people,” said 22-year-old Mohamed Radwan from near the violence.
–Euro News wonders who are the pro-Mubarak supporters:
–-The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl:
Just hours after promising that he would give up power seven months from now, Hosni Mubarak unleashed the “chaos” he had warned Egyptians was the only alternative to his autocratic regime. The regime’s thugs ran riot in the center of Cairo, Alexandria and other cities Wednesday, attacking what had been peaceful anti-government encampments with stones, knives and Molotov cocktails.
Bahey El Din Hassan, who is one of Egypt’s leading human rights activists, is not surprised. Hassan, who for the last quarter century has been one of the relatively small contingent of activists fighting against the abuses of the Mubarak regime, recognized tactics he has been documenting for years — the use of plainclothes intelligence and security operatives; violence directed against peaceful protesters and journalists; and, most of all, the attempt to create a pretext for a still bloodier intervention.“I was expecting that something like this would happen today,” Hassan told me in an interview in Washington. “Because even though he offered the country a deal last night, Mubarak’s statement was not reconciliatory. His speech was full of threats and negative interpretations of the demonstrations. And immediately after it ended state television began calling for ‘supporters of stability’ to show their strength.”
Hassan’s cellphone was chiming incessantly during our conversation with calls from his colleagues in Cairo’s Tahrir square. “They are afraid there is a plan to clear the square tonight by any means,” he said. In other words, rather than beginning the “orderly transition” to democracy President Obama said should begin “now” in Cairo, Mubarak may be trying to create the conditions for a massacre — an Arab Tiananmen Square.
Hassan, who currently is director of a regional human rights group called the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, left Egypt on Jan. 25, the day opposition organizers had planned a “day of rage” against the Egyptian government. In contrast to Tunisia’s spontaneous uprising, Egypt’s was planned. But Hassan said neither he nor the young leaders of the April 6 movement who organized that first protest expected such a huge turnout. Nor did they plan for the demonstrations to continue beyond Jan. 25.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.