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Egypt braced for protests over transfer of islands to Saudi Arabia
Egypt police disrupt protests against transfer of islands to Saudis
(about 4 hours later)
Thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed in Cairo before planned demonstrations against the government’s transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, an issue that has already sparked the largest protests since Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, assumed power nearly two years ago.
Security forces in Egypt have used teargas to disperse small protests against the president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, witnesses have said, deterring what opposition groups had expected to be a day of large demonstrations against his rule.
Riot police backed by armoured vehicles are positioned in Tahrir Square, the focus of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, and at a suburban square where at least 600 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed in August 2013.
This month, thousands of Egyptians angered by Sisi’s transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia called for his government to fall in the largest demonstration since the former military general took office in 2014.
Many other potential gathering points were sealed off by police, including the doctors’ and journalists’ unions in central Cairo, according to witnesses.
On Monday, riot police backed by armoured vehicles were positioned in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the focus of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, and at a suburban square where at least 600 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed in August 2013 in anticipation of protests.
The military said the troops had been deployed to protect “vital and important installations” and deal with anyone who tries to “harm the people’s interests or attempt to ruin their happiness” on Sinai Liberation Day, a national holiday marking Israel’s withdrawal from the peninsula in 1982.
Security forces moved swiftly, dispersing a march in the Dokki neighbourhood with teargas as it started, a witness said. Videos and pictures posted on social media also showed that teargas was used at a small protest in the Imbaba district.
Egyptian warplanes flew over the capital to mark Monday’s anniversary, but on the ground the military kept a low profile except in the suburb of Heliopolis, home to military headquarters and the presidential palace. The interior ministry said police were there to protect peaceful citizens who wished to celebrate.
Jets and helicopters were circling over Cairo.
Sisi on Sunday urged citizens to defend the state and its institutions from the “forces of evil”, an apparent reference to the planned protests.
Police have arrested over 90 people across eight governorates in recent days, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Groups of youth were arrested at coffee shops and others targeted in their homes, the Cairo-based human rights group added.
Monday’s demonstrations would be the second wave of protests this month against the decision to give up control of the islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. On 15 April about 2,000 people protested in central Cairo over the islands.
The ministry of interior was not immediately available for comment. On Sunday, the interior minister, Magdi Abdel Ghaffar, said there would be no leniency against any “any attempts to destabilise national security and any vital public or police facilities”.
That protest was the largest against Sisi since he assumed office in 2014, nearly a year after Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader, was overthrown by the army following mass protests against his rule. Chants of “leave”, and “the people want to bring down the regime”, recalled the 2011 uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly 30 years in power.
Sisi on Sunday urged citizens to defend the state and its institutions from the “forces of evil”, an apparent reference to the protests planned for Monday.
Freedom for the Brave, an activist group, said nearly 100 people had been arrested since the latest round of detentions began last week.
Those protests, which coincide with a national holiday celebrating the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula in 1982, came as the Egyptian president faced mounting criticism for a government accord that accepted that the uninhabited Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir were in Saudi waters.
Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, off the southern coast of the Sinai peninsula, belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairo’s protection in 1950 because it feared an attack by Israel. The government says officials and experts have for years negotiated with their Saudi counterparts and agreed that the islands are inside Saudi Arabia’s territorial waters.
Saudi and Egyptian officials say the islands belong to Saudi Arabia and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them.
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The announcement came during a visit to Egypt this month by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, as the kingdom announced a multibillion-dollar package of aid and investment, fuelling charges that the islands were
The announcement came during a visit to Egypt this month by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, as the kingdom announced a multibillion-dollar package of aid and investment, fuelling charges that the islands were a bargaining chip.
Popular backlash to the decision evolved into broader opposition against Sisi and his government earlier this month, when protests carrying the 2011-era chant “down with military rule” spilled into the streets of central Cairo.
“Egypt needs the truth revealed to its people: through dialogue, not suppression, with documents, evidence and maps, not security raids and random detentions,” the columnist Abdullah el-Sinnawy wrote in Monday’s al-Shorouk daily.
“It’s difficult to resolve a crisis like this one through the fist of security, no matter how tough it is.”
Sisi insists that Egypt has not surrendered an inch of its territory and has demanded that people stop talking about the issue. But the Egyptian leader has faced mounting criticism about other issues as well, including the ailing economy and the abduction, torture and killing of an Italian graduate student, Giulio Regeni, in Cairo earlier this year.
That incident has poisoned relations with Italy, one of Sisi’s staunchest EU supporters and Egypt’s biggest European trade partner. Egyptian authorities have denied any involvement in the student’s killing.
