Voices from Tahrir Square

Revolution is back on the streets of Cairo. Veterans of the last uprising (which unseated Hosni Mubarak) say that the police brutality is more intense than ever before, but the protestors are determined not to back down. ‘It’s like January but on crack,’ says Mohamed El Dahshan, an economist and blogger who spends his days in Tahrir Square. ‘The police are shooting rubber bullets directly in people’s faces. Many, many people have lost an eye, because aiming at the eyes is now deliberate police policy,’ he says. Some activists say that the police have also taken to shooting canisters of tear gas directly into the crowds. And that the clouds of concentrated gas have become so intense that even those deep underground in the Tahrir Square Metro station find themselves choking. ‘We’d learned to use cut-up onions or ginger to combat tear gas, but it’s not working any more,’ says one young woman. ‘We think the authorities have spent the last nine months developing more advanced equipment.’

What started as a sit-in by around 200 protestors following last Friday’s regular Tahrir rally has now escalated to violence that makes the elections, due to begin on 28 November, much less certain. So far 30 people have been killed and nearly 2,000 injured. The regime denies utilising live fire, but doctors in the square say they are seeing injuries consistent with it.

‘It’s as if the police are taking revenge for the events of January, using excessive force against people who are protesting peacefully,’ says the blogger and activist Ahmed Awadalla. He has, he says, also witnessed the police destroying field hospitals set up for the injured in Tahrir Square. The only explanation he thinks feasible is that the military council want the clashes to continue, so that the elections are delayed or cancelled.