PROTESTERS IN EGYPT DEFY BAN AS GOVERNMENT CRACKS DOWN

[“This is do or die,” said Mustafa Youssef, 22, a student who marched from skirmish to skirmish with friends, including one nursing a rubber-bullet wound. “The most important thing to do is to keep confronting them.”]

 

 

By KAREEM FAHIM and LIAM STACK

CAIRO — The Egyptian government intensified efforts to crush a fresh wave of protests on Wednesday, banning public gatherings, detaining hundreds of people and sending police officers to scatter protesters who defied the ban and demanded an end to the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

The skirmishes started early in the afternoon, and soon, small fires illuminated large clashes under an overpass. Riot police officers using batons, tear gas and rubber-coated bullets cleared busy avenues; other officers set upon fleeing protesters, beating them with bamboo staves.

Egypt has an extensive and widely feared security apparatus, and it deployed its might in an effort to crush the protests. But it was not clear whether the security forces were succeeding in intimidating protesters or rather inciting them to further defiance.

In contrast to the thousands who marched through Cairo and other cities on Tuesday, the groups of protesters were relatively small. Armored troop carriers rumbled throughout Cairo’s downtown on Wednesday to the thud of tear-gas guns. There were signs that the crackdown was being carefully calibrated, with security forces using their cudgels and sometimes throwing rocks, rather than opening fire.

But again and again, despite the efforts of the police, the protesters in Cairo regrouped and at one point even forced security officers, sitting in the safety of two troop carriers, to retreat.

“This is do or die,” said Mustafa Youssef, 22, a student who marched from skirmish to skirmish with friends, including one nursing a rubber-bullet wound. “The most important thing to do is to keep confronting them.”

Late on Wednesday, Reuters reported, protesters in Suez set a government building on fire, according to security officials and witnesses; the fire spread through parts of the provincial administration office but was put out before the flames engulfed the entire building.

Dozens of protesters also threw gasoline bombs at the office of the ruling party in Suez, Reuters reported, but they did not set it on fire. Police officers fired tear gas to push back the demonstrators.

Elsewhere, the authorities had better success smothering the unrest. A significant police presence in Alexandria, where protesters on Tuesday tore down a portrait of Mr. Mubarak, managed to contain demonstrations quickly when they began Wednesday. Several dozen young men tried to gather on the Corniche, a boulevard along the Mediterranean, but the gathering was quickly broken up by more than 100 police officers in riot gear assisted by plainclothes security officers. The baton-wielding officers arrested several protesters as the rest scattered.

In the poor Alexandria neighborhood of Abu Suleiman, a demonstration lasted for more than half an hour before it was shut down by the police. Nearly 100 people wended their way through narrow back streets, chanting, “Come down, come down, Egyptians,” to neighbors, who peered down on them from windows on the higher floors.

The Associated Press, quoting witnesses, said that riot police officers with batons attacked about 100 protesters in the central Egyptian city of Asyut, arresting nearly half of them.

The government said about 800 people had been arrested throughout the country since Tuesday morning, but human rights groups said there had been more than 2,000 arrests.

Abroad, there were growing expressions of concern from Egypt’s allies. The United States ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, called on the government “to allow peaceful public demonstrations,” and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated that call in blunt remarks to reporters. The German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, speaking to reporters, said, “We are very worried about how the situation in Egypt is developing.”

But despite signs that the protests were taking a domestic toll — the country’s benchmark stock index fell more than 6 percent — Egyptian officials, at least publicly, were mostly dismissive.

In a statement, Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party reiterated the government’s assertion that the protests were engineered by the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition movement. “The Brotherhood organization is illegal, and a number of parties are exploiting the enthusiasm of youth to achieve chaos,” the statement said. Abdel Moneim Said, a member of the N.D.P. and the chairman of Al Ahram, which publishes the state-owned newspaper of the same name, explained the government’s lack of concern.

“The state is strong,” he said. “There is a history of there being a moment of exhaustion, and there is a kind of resilience on the part of the government. It happened with the terrorist groups.”

As the protesters marched against a backdrop of Beaux-Arts buildings and bustling shops in downtown Cairo, they showed few signs of fatigue. They pressed their demands with antigovernment chants, threw stones and set fire to trash and rows of tires. They seemed undaunted by the police officers in padded black riot gear, members of the central security forces, who formed lines to interrupt their roaming demonstrations.

The protesters seemed far more worried about burly plainclothes officers, part of the feared state security services. The officers carried wooden planks, short clubs and other crude weapons, and as they stormed the gatherings, they beat anyone who happened to be standing in the way, including reporters.

The police set the tone as the day’s skirmishes began, beating several protesters with bamboo canes outside the Egyptian lawyers’ syndicate building.

Later, the clashes spilled into the streets of the working-class neighborhood of Boulaq, where residents and a few workers joined the protesters.

There was a tense standoff on Galaa Street, as nervous officers, surrounded by small fires, faced an army of angry young men who hurled pieces of broken concrete. An officer sitting atop an armored jeep fired tear-gas canisters that scattered the demonstrators. The officers took off their helmets and smiled, celebrating their victory.

It lasted only a few minutes, because soon the protesters regrouped and charged two personnel carriers. The protest wound its way past an upscale hotel and onto the Corniche, where plainclothes officers chased down the protesters, dragging several away as their friends tried to intervene. At one point, the officers ordered out the passengers on a public bus and used it as a detention center.

Half an hour later, Mr. Youssef, the student, and his friends met up with a large group of protesters who waved flags as they hopped through a clothing market. The young men, like many of the protesters interviewed since Tuesday, said they were not affiliated with any political party.

“If we were Ikhwan,” Mr. Youssef said, referring to the Muslim Brotherhood, “we’d be much better organized.”

The vendors in the market stalls shouted words of encouragement. The police, for a moment, were nowhere to be seen. One vendor, Mohamed Abdul Aziz, said that Mr. Mubarak had brought the protests on himself. “I hope this doesn’t end until he leaves,” he said.

A few minutes later, tear gas filled the market.

Reporting was contributed by Mona El-Naggar and Dawlat Magdy from Cairo, and Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet from Alexandria, Egypt.

 @ The New York Times