Saturday, Jan 26, 2013
(From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 1/26/2013)
By Matt Bradley
CAIRO -- Protesters descended on city squares across Egypt on Friday, the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak's 30-year autocracy, in an outburst of the frustration and violence that have become fixtures of the country's transition to democracy.
At least four people were killed in the city of Suez, where protesters reportedly set fire to a local government building, according to state television. Some 379 people were injured nationwide, state media reported, as protesters also attacked police officers and Muslim Brotherhood offices in several cities.
The rallies exposed the country's deep political divisions and the abiding pessimism two years after euphoric Egyptians overthrew then-President Mubarak in 18 days of protests.
Friday's rallies showed that many Egyptians continue to view street-level protests and violence -- not the ballot box -- as the surest form of political expression. The general focus of rage is the government of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who his secular opponents complain has brought little real change.
The Muslim Brotherhood and their conservative Islamist allies have dominated every national vote since Mr. Mubarak stepped down. In statements this week, the Brotherhood championed Egypt's "glorious revolution" but warned of the "evil forces of darkness [who] desperately endeavor to spoil the celebration [by] spreading chaos and terror across the country."
Marchers converged from across Egypt's capital onto Tahrir Square, the nerve center of the 2011 revolution. Demonstrators chanted anti-Islamist slogans and activists delivered speeches from a sound stage, as tear gas wafted by from a small skirmish between youthful rioters and police a block away.
"This is not a memory or a memorial," said Sayyid Gouda, a 36-year-old accountant wearing a gas mask around his neck. "This is a new wave of the revolution to restore our country."
Rioters on the square threw rocks at the police over a 12-foot concrete-block wall erected last year to protect the Interior Ministry building. Police officers responded with rocks and tear gas.
In condemning the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Gouda and other activists drew from the same lexicon of resistance that defined the uprising two years ago. President Morsi and his Brotherhood backers are "fascists" who should be imprisoned for trying to take over Egypt and turn it into an Islamist state, Mr. Gouda said.
Though many of the tens of thousands of demonstrators were peaceful, according to televised images of the protests, dozens of rock-throwing youth laid siege to the Brotherhood's headquarters in the Nile Delta cities of Ismailia and Damanhour, the state news agency reported.
For the second time this week, assailants armed with Molotov cocktails attacked the offices of the Brotherhood's website in downtown Cairo, the Brotherhood reported on the site.
Friday's protests saw the first major appearance of a group of masked protesters calling themselves the Black Block, after a protest strategy associated with the violent European anarchist movement. Sporting black clothing and concealing black face-masks, members of the group blocked a tramway in the coastal city of Alexandria to make way for protesters and clashed with police in front of the presidential palace in Cairo, state media said.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
26-01-13 0801GMT
