There is some discord as to what actually happened on early Saturday morning on Midan Tahrir. As shown in the post from Saturday morning, AlJazeera reported Tahrir was cleared by military police with force, the aim mainly being to get out the some ten soldiers who had joined the protests and where protected by the protestors. Al Jazeera has become some kind of authority if it comes to reporting on the Middle East protests, as it continuously provided the fastest and most comprehensive coverage of the revolts in Egypt, Syria, and some other Arab countries. And in many cases one can say it was the „only one being there“. While other channels shifted their attaention to Japan, Lybia, and wherever else events appeared to be most dramatic, alJazeera maintained at least a minor presence in countries like Egypt to follow-up on the post-revolt devlopments.
Twitter and AlJazeera account unanimously stating: army crackdown
Yet, I might indeed have given to much credit to AlJazeera or at least have not been critical enough in the sense that I tended to adopt the stance: if AlJazeera interprets the events as „army cracking down on protestors“ then this will in the end gonna be the dominant reading. (If you think about it: this might say more about AlJazeera's hegemonic position in interpreting Middle Eastern events than about the interpretation's fit with reality...) And still - it was not only AlJazeera, but also Twitter seemed to draw a clear picture yesterday morning: the army has turned on the reamining protestors, probably because of the soldiers who had joined the demonstrations and remained on Tahrir.
Every protest interrupting order qualifies as thuggery!
Contradictious reports you think? I was quite confused for a short moment and then I realized, that the explanations lies within the concept of „thugs“ respectively „troublemakers“. Of course, for the army and apparently also some other people (mainly those who think demonstrations should stop now) everyone who breaks the curfew (setting in at 2 am ending at 5 am) is placing himself „outside the law“. Thanks to the law on thuggery passed on the 23d of March, any „strikes, protests, demonstrations and sit-ins that interrupt private or state owned businesses or affect the economy in any way“ are now illegal and an act of thuggery. So technically speaking the weekly protests on Fridays are an act of thuggery. And when people then also break the curfew...hell yeah, of course they are THUGS and TROUBLEMAKERS. Egyptians have a very weird relation to laws and authority, even though they brake many laws and rules on a daily basis at some poin they rever authority and the law, respectively orders from above. One Egyptian twitter user even stated that being democratic meant obeying the curfew.
Resisting injust laws and unlawful authority
But maybe it is also me who has a particular relationship to law and authority? Maybe I have full-heartedly adopted the idea which is laid out in the German Grundgesetz (constitution): if your government, respectively regime, respectively its laws and orders are undemocratic and in contradiction to the costitution you are allowed and even obliged to resist. (I have never been much into studying law, so if my knowledgable German friends can correct me here or add to my interpretation an official one, please go ahead!)
Twitter continuously alarming
Right now tweeds (=Twitter messages) are saying: „Something is happening in #Tahrir. People are banging out warnings.“ A good example how difficult it might be for an outsider to understand what's happening. The banging out warning refers to a practice that protestors use since the early days of the revolt when they first clashed with police. All Midan Tahrir is surrounded by metal fences separating the pavements from the roads. In order to warn other protestors of approaching danger people would hit the fences metal poles in order while running along. At the same time one needs to understand, that those who are in Midan Tahrir have been exposed to violence and fear for weeks now, they saw their friends dying, have themselves been arrested and abused by military and police, and have been on alert for weeks. No wonder their interpetations and tweeds sometimes seem to be quitee alarmist, always expecting the worst....yet, on Friday night those expecting the worst, proved to be right once more....
