Protests against Egyptian president spread
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Egyptian anti-government protesters attack a riot police car at the port city in Suez, about 134 km (83 miles) east of Cairo east of Cairo, January 27, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Mohamed Abd El-Ghany
CAIRO |
CAIRO (Reuters) - Web activists called for mass protests across Egypt on Friday to end President Hosni Mubarak's three-decade rule after protesters clashed with security forces late into the night in the eastern city of Suez.
Emboldened by this month's revolt in Tunisia that toppled its long-serving leader, Egyptians have staged mass protests since Tuesday in an unprecedented outburst of anger against Mubarak's strong-handed rule.
"This is a revolution," one 16-year-old protester said in Suez late on Thursday. "Every day we're coming back here."
Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, who returned to Egypt from Vienna on Thursday, has called for Mubarak to resign and said he would join the protests on Friday.
A page on Facebook social networking site listed more than 30 mosques and churches where protesters were expected gather.
"Egypt's Muslims and Christians will go out to fight against corruption, unemployment and oppression and absence of freedom," the page said, adding more than 70,000 had signed up online.
Late into Thursday night in Suez, police fired tear gas at protesters who hurled stones and petrol bombs. Fires burned in the street, filling the air with smoke.
At another rally near Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, police used tear gas to break up hundreds of protesters late at night.
Security forces shot dead a Bedouin protester in the north of Egypt's Sinai region on Thursday, bringing the death toll to five.
The United States, Egypt's close ally and major aid donor, is concerned Islamic radicals could exploit continuing anger.
In his first comments on the unrest, President Barack Obama was careful to avoid any sign of abandoning Mubarak but made it clear that he sympathized with demonstrators.
"...I've always said to him that making sure that they are moving forward on reform -- political reform, economic reform -- is absolutely critical to the long-term well-being of Egypt," Obama said in comments broadcast on the YouTube website.
"You can see these pent-up frustrations that are being displayed on the streets."
FRUSTRATED
As in many other countries across the Middle East, Egyptians are frustrated over surging prices, unemployment and an authoritarian government that tolerates little dissent.
The world is changing. It is a democracy that is building in the M.E. The U.S. foreign policy should be ready to adapt to this change rather than support the right wing rulers of the region. As it says in the article, the U.S. and Israel do not want this democratic change in the region.
That is called the “domino effect”. Dictatorships and fascists regimes are in trouble. Communist governments are learning from this and soon some of them are going to release a little bit the choke they have on their people.
@johnnyboone
“The world is changing. It is a democracy that is building in the M.E.”
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What democracy? There are no democracy-oriented forces in ME that can take over from the current regimes. What’s building is a power vacuum that will be in the end filled by islamic extremists. Case in point – Iran. As bad as the Shah was, the mullocracy that replaced him is much worse and causes lots of troubles in the region and worldwide.
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