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At noon on Friday, thousands upon thousands were still marching on to Tahrir Square for a million-man gathering calling for the ruling generals to step down and cede power to a civilian government. This morning 1990s-PM Kamal El Ganzouri was asked to form “a national rescue” cabinet, the news of his re-appointment Thursday nght creating a wave of opposition among those sitting in in the square.
El Ganzouri, 78, had served as PM under former president Hosni Mubarak from 1996 to 1999, and despite being esteemed by many, his cabinet did include now-hated figures such as former Interior Minister Habib El Adly and former regime bigwig Safwat El Sherif. The new PM gave a brief press conference on Friday afternoon. “The square wants new faces, the youth don’t want someone who has been tried already by Mubarak,” veteran journalist Louis Grace told his host on state TV’s channel one on Friday.
Footage on Friday showed crowds in both Tahrir square and Abbassiya -- the latter, an estimated 20,000-strong, want the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) to remain in power until a proper transition to a new president is in place.
The square meanwhile is pulsating with activity as a sea of people carries banners, chants and moves supplies in and out. However, it’s marred by some horrific incidents of sexual harassment by both policeman and civilians on the square that have left many women doubtful that they want to be in the field.
Sexual harassment is generally rampant in Egypt, and some women have given in to the fact that it has almost become a daily hassle.
However, more and more women in Tahrir on Thursday night and before reported being subjected to verbal, physical harassment and even abuse at the hands of police and protesters -- a significant departure for the square from the first 18 days of the revolution where Tahrir was regarded as a safe haven for women in Egypt.
Cases in point are Mona El Tahawy and Bothaina Kamel. Twitter buzzed with the news of Mona El Tahawy’s arrest on Wednesday. The popular US-based Egyptian journalist and columnist used her personal twitter account @monaeltahawy to describe the harassment she alleges took place at the Interior Ministry, where she was detained for 12 hours.
Her last tweets before her arrest on Wednesday night were nostalgic: “Across street from AUC (American University in Cairo) gate I used to enter every day from Mohamed Mahmoud Street. Can't believe it. A cacophony of sirens, horns, flashing ambulance lights … Pitch black, only flashing ambulance lights and air thick with gas.”
The last tweet that her 75,000 twitter followers received from her was an abrupt “Beaten arrested in interior ministry."
As soon as El Tahawy was released Thursday morning, she began a series of tweets detailing her ordeal where she alleges five or six members of the CSF sexually assaulted her: “The past 12 hours were painful and surreal but I know I got off much easier than so many other Egyptians … God knows what would've happened if I wasn't dual citizen and that I wrote/appeared [in] various media … 5 or 6 surrounded me, groped and prodded my breasts, grabbed my genital area and I lost count how many hands tried to get into my trousers.”
She says that at first she didn't want to go with military intelligence but they told her “either come politely or not. Those guys didn't beat or assault me. Instead, blindfolded me for two hours, after keeping me waiting for three.”
A few hours after she was released she published a picture of herself standing in a hospital donning a loose-fitting T-shirt, while her lower arms were wrapped tightly in white casts. She tweeted that X-Rays showed she had broken bones in both arms. El Tahawyrecounted her full story to CNN, and appeared on ONTV speaking to show host Yosri Fouda in Arabic.
“The amounts of hands that were reaching inside my pants were unbelievable. I’m speaking openly because I want people, and not only in Egypt, to know what happens to women and female journalists,” she said. At one point while she was being assaulted, she said she “fell to the ground and for a second I thought, ‘If I don’t get up, I’ll be raped,’ so I mustered the strength and got up. They cursed me as they beat me, and pulled my hair.”
A few days earlier, Kamel, who is a presidential hopeful, reported being similarly targeted and dragged violently into interrogation by members of CSF. “Not one part of my body wasn’t touched and groped by these men,” she said. The ordeal had left her bruised and disorientated.
French journalist Caroline Sinz, reporting for France 3, told AFP that while filming in Mohamed Mahmoud street, she and her cameraman was mobbed by a group of young men about 14 and 15-year-old. She were separated from him, then assaulted by the crowd. “I was beaten by a group of youngsters and adults who tore my clothes” and then molested her in a way that "would be considered rape," she was quoted as saying.
"Some people tried to help me but failed. I was lynched. It lasted three quarters of an hour before I was taken out. I thought I was going to die," she said.
Engy Ghozlan, co-founder of HarassMap, a center which runs an electronic application that tracks and maps sexual harassment on Cairo streets, told Egypt Today, “I received phone calls from women who were sexually abused in Tahrir. They’re so traumatized that they said they will never go back to the square again.”
HarassMap has set up a number 6069 that women can text in case of sexual harassment or assault. Alternatively, they can just tweet at the center.
Ghozlan said that another reporter Sanaa Youssef has gone through a similar ordeal to El Tahawy’s.
Egyptian freelance video journalist Farah Saafan described on her personal Twitter account on Thursday night that she was surrounded by several men, who shouted at her for recording the events. She felt threatened and told an Egypt Today reporter that she yelled repeatedly for help when this happened.
Other female Tweeters relayed similar fears, with some, like Al-Ahram’s journalist who is most known by her Twitter handle @Zeinobia, saying that this is the first time she would ask her male cousins to accompany her to Tahrir for safety.
Following El Tahawy’s assault, Reporters Without Borders issued a warning to female journalists asking them to avoid being in Tahrir square.
Nayra El Sheikh, an activist, said that she was sexually harassed and groped repeatedly while she was transporting medical supplies into the field hospital, but this time it wasn’t police but protesters who invaded her personal space. Her experience may have been less traumatic than El Tahawy’s, but it was an ordeal nonetheless. “It wasn’t the majority of people who were groping, it was a minority. They’re just ignorant,” she says.
ElSheikh, in charge of delivering supplies to the hospital set up on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, was however saved by a 20-year old protester who stepped in and helped her out until she finished delivering her supplies. “This was definitely very different than the revolution.
Women didn’t have problems then when it came to harassment,” she adds.
But apart from the harassment, it seems that the current uprising has seen more consistent violence from both ends, with protesters fending off not only security forces but military forces as well, in addition to more aggressive assaults.
“This is not the Tahrir I've known before. Gone is the festive optimism, the spirited chanting. There's a deep sense of urgency, people are tearing and gasping from the gas hanging in the air, motorcycles whiz past carrying collapsing bodies and crowds watch as men walk straight into Mohamed Mahmoud Street. It's the closest I’ve ever been to what feels like a warzone and it's terrifying. But I think that's indicative of the culmination of these past months; there's a terrifying sense that we, as civilians, have no cards left to play but Tahrir,” said Soraya Morayef, a local journalist and activist who was present in the field on Wednesday, when tensions were high and clashes were still ongoing.
Until late into last night and even amid preparations for a rowdy Friday, the shadow of those who had fallen still loomed ominously.
Jack Shenker, The Guardian’s Cairo correspondent and witness to the January uprising, tweeted on Wednesday night that “a surgeon in Tahrir field hospital just ran through some of his recent cases with me. ‘Tantawi is more brutal than Mubarak,' he concluded."
An activist on the square told Egypt Today earlier that he’s sad to say, “that not even Mubarak tear-gassed a field hospital.”
The official death toll stands at 41, but those on the square, who have seen how bloody were the clashes between protesters and police that began on November 19 and ceased on November 25, say they refuse to believe that hundreds are not killed. Around 3,000 are injured according to the Health Ministry casualty count.
Learning their lesson from the events of last January, people are more organized in handling injuries and emergencies and know exactly how to react.
Over the past days of violence supplies to combat the tear gas being used on protesters were delivered within hours, the routes to let ambulances through were manned and the men who zipped through the crowds on their motorcycles to collect the injured and dead once again became national heroes.
“Revolutionaries are more confident, stronger and more savvy. They learned from their mistakes, they know they can make a difference because they’re better organized and are better at documentation. Also there is an awakened sense of nationalism rediscovered. People will not let that go,” says Nagla Rizk, associate dean for graduate studies and research at the American University in Cairo.
Demonstrations continue across the nation, the one thing keeping protestors safe are perhaps the cheap gas masks being sold for LE 15 and handed out to those heading to the frontline.
Many feel the SCAF, who have been in power since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in February, have let the Egyptian population down with promises unmet: They have not improved the corrupt conditions of the Interior Ministry, they have not properly dealt with the trials of the former regime and they have sentenced around 12,000 Egyptian civilians before military tribunals.
But despite the fact that Tahrir is full to the brim, the protesters amassed in Abbassiya waving banners supportive of Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi have highlighted the rift in public opinion on whether the military junta should immediately hand over power or not.
“People are divided, between Tahrir or not,” says photographer Yehia El Alaily. “The other difference is that the factors of this uprising are so many and the divisions equally many.”
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