Egyptian Activists Plan to Escalate Protests Against Military Rule

Thousands of Egyptian activists marched to the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Cairo on Friday, demanding an end to military rule as the country prepares to mark the first anniversary of President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. The activists rallied outside the building and renewed calls for Egyptians to join them in a general strike, beginning on Saturday and continuing until the military council that has ruled Egypt since Feb. 11, 2011, cedes power to a civilian council.

Perhaps indicating how ad hoc the military administration of the country remains after a full year, one activist, Lilian Wagdy, recorded an interesting moment of dialogue between one of the protesters and a military police officer during the rally. Speaking across a barbed-wire barricade outside the building, the protester asked, “Do you think anyone can get their rights through the law?” In reply, the officer said simply, “I don’t know.”

As The Associated Press reports, the military council, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, issued a statement late Friday vowing never to “bow to threats, nor succumb to pressures, nor accept ultimatums.”

Responding online, activists mocked the statement, which was read aloud on state television hours before the anniversary.

#SCAFmessage: We do not yield to threats and we do not succumb to pressure. #Egypt #SCAF #Feb10

— Egyptocracy (@Egyptocracy) February 10, 2012

SCAF: Blah blah blah blah

— Mostafa Hussein (@moftasa) February 10, 2012

Ahram Online, a Cairo news site, reported earlier that one of the marchers was Asmaa Mahfouz, an Internet activist who helped rally support for last year’s revolution in a video message calling for Egyptians to join the first protests. As she marched, she said in an interview with Al Jazeera that just as Mr. Mubarak now “faces charges of instigating the killing of protesters during the revolution,” the military council “should also be tried for the crimes committed under its rule.”

A year after Ms. Mahfouz helped galvanize the protest movement with her viral video, other activists have posted more elaborate short films on YouTube to explain the call for a general strike. On Wednesday, The Lede featured one of those films, “Egypt’s Military, Inc.,” which examined the large chunk of the Egyptian economy under the control of the generals and was produced by Aalam Wassef.

SCAF r not in the habit of “handing” things over. Any gains in the past year have been taken not given. It’s important to accept that #feb11

— Shahira Abouellail (@fazerofzanight) February 10, 2012

Here is another film, “General Strike: No Sweat for Those Who Shed Our Blood,” in which the activists Omar Kamel and Shahira Abouellail look back at the failures of the military government and explain the planned escalation of the protests.

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Activists and American Observers Detained as Bahrain Marks Protest Anniversary

Mazen Mahdi/European Pressphoto AgencyNabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, center, surrounded by protesters and American observers.

Bahrain arrested three local human rights activists on Tuesday, along with six Americans who had traveled to the kingdom as part of a private monitoring mission, during a security crackdown on the first anniversary of the country’s protest movement.

As Reuters reports, the authorities detained Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and the American observers who entered the country last week to work with Witness Bahrain, a project set up by international activists to monitor the policing of demonstrations in the country.

Bahrain’s state news agency reported that the six Americans were deported “for applying for tourist visas under false pretenses.” An immigration official told the agency, “People coming to visit Bahrain need to understand that lying on immigration documents is against the law.”

Two Bahraini activists, Naji Fateel and Hassan Jaber, were also detained with Mr. Rajab after the police fired tear gas at a small group of demonstrators who tried to march to the former site of Lulu Roundabout, or Pearl Square, the focal point of protests last February. (To deny opposition activists a rallying point, the authorities removed the traffic circle last March, and pulled down the pearl monument that had become a symbol of the protest movement.)

Hamad I. Mohammed/ReutersNabeel Rajab, a rights activist, was detained at gunpoint in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, on Tuesday.

After Mr. Rajab was released several hours later, he updated his Twitter feed with just one word: “resistance.”

Video posted online by activists showed armored police vehicles patrolling the streets, in the capital and in Shiite villages where support for the protest movement is strong.

Video said to show police vehicles near the former site of the Lulu Roundabout in Manama on Tuesday.Video of Bahrain’s security forces on patrol on Tuesday.

According to Reuters, clashes on Monday continued into the early hours of Tuesday, and young men “threw petrol bombs at police cars during skirmishes before dawn, prompting authorities to flood Shiite villages around Manama with police reinforcements backed by helicopters.” Some of the raw video posted online by activists appeared to show a Molotov cocktail landing on a police vehicle.

Late Tuesday, another video clip posted online by activists appeared to show police officers firing tear gas while on patrol in one of the villages.

As it often does, Bahrain’s Interior Ministry referred to opposition protesters as “rioters” on its Twitter feed and focused mainly on the traffic problems caused by the marchers.

Rioters arrested for blocking traffic on SH Khalifa bin Salman Rd. Proper procedures taken to refer them to Pub Prosecution #Bah

— Ministry of Interior (@moi_bahrain) February 14, 2012

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