Tuesday
Nov222011
Video: Tahrir 2011-11-22
Issandr El AmraniA stroll around Tahrir Square as thousands more join the protest, now in its third day.
I know these videos are a little surreal. I just take the camera with me where I go, film and then edit a bit when I get back home. I put them up to capture a little of the mood. I did not go all the way to the end of Mohammed Mahmoud St. at the end of the video, when it's hard to see what's happening. I like having both of my eyes.
Reader Comments (5)
I took a shot at transcribing the podcast. I got 10 minutes of it. It was more work than I thought. I'm going to try posting my 10 minutes here, but if it won't all take, I'll look around the site for Issandr's email. If the previous poster is interested in sharing this work, I think that might be more manageable for him, me and maybe another volunteer. I'm a pretty good typist, but it just took forever.
It's Nov. 20th. This is the Arabist podcast.
Were in the subterranean layer of the Arabist himself. I'm Ashraf Khalil, we have Issandr El Amrani, Ursula Lindsay, and we are all back from a chaotic and tear gas filled Tahrir square, regular listeners we recall that the last podcast was the doom and gloom edition.
And well, things have really taken a turn for the better since then. We were wrong.
IA we outdid our selves
AK what's going on.
UL your bottle of vinegar is sitting on the table that you brought with you
IA I'm here with my vinegar soaked bandannas.that are my survival ...
the stuff hurts so much as anyone listening probably know. The last few days have been really violent and have really opened up Egypt's transition. if you can argue that it was in transition to begin with, into unknown territory into a really uncertain future. not only - about the upcoming elections they're in only 8 days, but really about who's going to be controlling this country. by the end of the year.
AK the back story for those who don't know is the large Friday protest that we had mentioned in the previous podcast happened; and was rather large and a little bit diverse, I mean it was heavily islamist but had other forces and didn't all have ... they weren't all on the same page but they were all kind of there and gathered.
UL mostly there if you ask people, they were all there to protest this document of so-called super-constitutional principles and the proposal that had been mad that exceptional powers and privileges would be granted to the army ...
?: Right.
UL: ... so it was a protest that had kind of anti-army message we want a transitional government soon and no the army's not going to have an exceptional position above the law in the future.
AK: Right. The islamists were protesting the idea of a superconstitutional document that would limit the writing of the constitution, the upcoming writing of the constitution. The secular liberals for lack of a better term were protesting not the idea of it but some of the more obnoxious clauses that granted the army this special status above and beyond any kind of elected civilian authority.
UL: Because I just mentioned this document originally was supposed to be a sort of consensual foundational, let's establish some basic principles of democracy of human rights that all the parties can sign onto so that there's less tension over the elections and over the writing of the constitution because we have this common ground. it was basically hijacked by the army who tried to insert into it other principles that nobody had asked ...
AK that nobody was asking for.
UL: ... that enshrined the army's powers. Now,they've since released a revised draft where they've sort of taken all that back, but it's much too late. The protests on Friday ended peacefully. A few people stayed over night including this little group which I'd actually spoken to a few days before. There some people injured during the revolution who've been camping in Tahrir, we're talking about like 3 or 4 tents. Who are complaining about the fact that they haven't seen any justice in court that their treatment isn't being taken care of, the government isn't paying attention to them. Those people and a few other people from the protest were left over yesterday morning, Saturday morning, and were violently cleared by the police. This led to lots of other people coming out in support of them.
AK Everything has spiraled from there. The Friday protest led to a small sit-in. The army tried to clear the sit-in.
UL It was the police
AK The police yesterday, okay. And I don't think -- and it has since devolved into waves and waves of new people coming into Tahrir and ongoing clashes with the military. As of an hour ago when I left the square, Tahrir itself was in the hands of the protesters completely. The army had fallen back - the combined army and police had fallen back closer to the Ministry of Interior and were basically guarding the entrance ways to the Ministry of Interior. A lot of teargas, some buckshot, reports of heavier ammunition but nothing that I saw. Issandr you visited the make-shift clinic that was set up in Tahrir. What kind of wounds did you see?
IA well by the time I got there most people ... the fighting had ended and people were being treated for buckshot and things like this. But we know that several activists, we don't have a clear number, lost one of their eyes. One activist who lost his first eye on Jan. 28th lost his second last night
AK Yeah.
UL There's at least 3 people dead and we were told a much higher figures. I think it bears emphasizing when they went back in to clear, reclear the square again today, we saw a level of brutality. There are pictures now circulating on-line where you see piles of bodies just lying on the side of the sidewalk where the police has dragged them. We were told at the mosque tonight that there were 8 bodies inside the mosque. There are ambulances going non-stop up and down (?? asvaimi street??) to Tahrir. So I mean the army has cleared the square violently before, but I think we're seeing a level of violence since we haven't seen since the revolution.
AK A level of violence
UL or since Maspero, which was the other great
AK a level of violence and a fierce response, in that every time the army pushes in it feels like more people are coming, are flooding to Tahrir to take part in this fight, and I think there's a couple of points here, in that 1) I have a feeling the army did not anticipate this kind of response when they went in to clear Tahrir.
UL Which is stupid. They should have.
AK I'm not sure I expected it.
IA Their experience for the last few months has been that it's fairly easy to clear out Tahrir once maybe there's a big demonstration is held, but then there's only a few dozen protesters left behind. They're fairly easy to clear out. I think the issue here is that first, the mood towards the army changed after Friday's demonstration and this whole debate over its future privileges under the constitution. And secondly, they obviously used excessive force when they tried to clear out those few dozen protesters. It escalated from there. We've seen the videos that show them shooting at head level at people. A lot of people, friends of mind have gotten bird shot in the head. They're lucky - that's all they have is a bruise. Other people lost their eyes, some people lost their lives. All it takes is a rubber bullet or birdshot in your jugular and you're dead if you don't get attention.
UL We also still don't know if there was .. I mean the protesters some of them claim that there was live ammunition used. Now it's hard for people to tell in these situations. But they say people that their, their heads are blown open.
AK There's going to be evidence, forensic evidence, video evidence that still hasn't even seen the light of day that's still circulating. So look for that in the coming days. That's going to lead to an escalation in tensions. This mood towards the army was something ... we've talked about our frustrations with the army and people's frustration with the army. I was seeing .. we witnessed a very tense scene at Omar Mukram Mosque which is right on the edge of Tahrir, where apparently (I came late to this or never caught up to it) but two army generals - this is after the army charge to clear the square, two army officers went to the Omar Mukram Mosque to apparently appeal to the protesters and speak to them. The crowd kind of turned on them and it turned into a bit of a rescue situation. When I came upon the mosque there were crowds of people trying to get into the mosque to get to these army officers. People from the mosque were forming a human chain saying 'No. These people are under our security. They're here as our guests.' Eventually they got away ...
IA Those at the mosque were shouting salmia, salmia peaceful, peaceful to calm down the crowd outside. I was just outside and I saw the ambulance finally
AK You saw the ambulance make the getaway huh? So this is a far cry from 'the people and the army are one hand.' AT least a certain percentage of the people are really fed up with the army and taking to the streets about it. WE can't say how much of the country feels this way, but as of right now as of about 10:00 9:30 at night Cairo time on the 20th there are protests in Alexandria and in Suez, so if this is spreading around the country then we are heading into a situation where a postponement of the elections, which do start in 8 days, is on the table.
UL So this is the big question is Where do we go from here? You have the question of What's going to happen with the elections. You have the question, I mean almost everybody is dissatisfied with the army and with the puppet government that the army has set up.
I'd add two things. I got into a rhythm, so I think the first few paragraphs aren't as well transcribed. And second, Issandr, I wasn't sure whether to use IE or IA. I assumed Amrani is the more significant part of the name to use for an initial. But if you wanted me to continue, let me know what you prefer.
And finally, I'm neither Egyptian nor an Arabic speaker, so I probably mangled some proper nouns and words - Omar Mukram, salmia, the name of a street near the square. If someone wants to set up a mechanism where I'd submit a transcript and someone could correct it, that'd be great.
"I like having both of my eyes"
No one can blame you Issandre: http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/516594
Thank you for posting this intimate view of Tahrir...
Ryan, thanks for this. I know transcribing is tough, I do it myself on interviews. It helps to have special software, I use Transcriva on the Mac. Anyone want to get in touch with this can email me at issandr [AT] arabist.net
Issandr,
This is a really great feature where you just walk around.
I'd love to get more of a sense about what's going on in the economy.
How about taking a walk through some of the main tourist locations or elsewhere to give us a sense of how dead the place has to be?