by Peter Bouckaert
(Human Rights Watch, Emergencies Director)
"(Alexandria) - When my translator and I arrived at the main morgue in Alexandria on Saturday morning to try and figure out how many people had died the previous day in the violent clashes that engulfed the city, officials held us back. We needed official permission, they said, and couldn't give us any information without that.
As we walked around looking for the hospital director, his colleagues whispered to us that he was hiding, afraid of the consequences of letting a foreigner into the morgue. But the relatives of the dead had had enough. They shouted at the officials, grabbed us by the arms and pushed us inside.
Suddenly we were in the cold room surrounded by corpses.....
The dead and wounded we saw at the hospital were ordinary Egyptians like those I had watched the previous day emerge from a mosque and start marching against the regime. The protesters had made their nonviolent intentions clear, shouting "We are peaceful!" time and time again, and holding their arms in the air. But they were brutally and immediately attacked by the city's riot police.
This was not a battle provoked by the protesters but it was one they ultimately won, suddenly ending -- at least in Alexandria -- Egypt's 30-year existence as a police state. At the morgue we were confronted with the human cost of that victory.
What is happening in Egypt today is historic: The Egyptian people are engaged in a battle to bring down an abusive police state and will not stop until they achieve their dream. Now they know their power and will not likely stop for changes that are simply cosmetic. As one protester told me outside the morgue, "We want to uproot the entire tree, down to the roots, and then plant a new tree.".....
Many believe that the embattled President Hosni Mubarak and his interior ministry have a hand in the chaos. Mubarak's mantra to his people was always that he was the guarantor of their safety and the nation's stability.
Over the weekend, unexplained prison breaks and incidents of undercover police caught looting suggested to many that the Mubarak regime was fomenting chaos as a pretext to end the popular uprising.
But out of chaos, hope is already emerging. In Alexandria, Cairo and Suez, communities responded by organizing themselves into "popular committees" arming themselves with sticks and kitchen knives and walking the streets of their neighborhoods all night to guard their homes and shops.
The popular committees I have seen in action are not acting like vigilantes and are carefully organized by street, neighborhood and city. When they catch looters they don't dispense street justice but hand them over to the army.....
Those behind the protests don't look threatening out on the street. The people are tired from days of protest and nights of standing guard, but they are united behind the single goal to stand together to safeguard that change they have already brought about without any outside support and to continue to fight for a permanent end to the abusive police state of President Mubarak, peacefully."
(Human Rights Watch, Emergencies Director)
"(Alexandria) - When my translator and I arrived at the main morgue in Alexandria on Saturday morning to try and figure out how many people had died the previous day in the violent clashes that engulfed the city, officials held us back. We needed official permission, they said, and couldn't give us any information without that.
As we walked around looking for the hospital director, his colleagues whispered to us that he was hiding, afraid of the consequences of letting a foreigner into the morgue. But the relatives of the dead had had enough. They shouted at the officials, grabbed us by the arms and pushed us inside.
Suddenly we were in the cold room surrounded by corpses.....
The dead and wounded we saw at the hospital were ordinary Egyptians like those I had watched the previous day emerge from a mosque and start marching against the regime. The protesters had made their nonviolent intentions clear, shouting "We are peaceful!" time and time again, and holding their arms in the air. But they were brutally and immediately attacked by the city's riot police.
This was not a battle provoked by the protesters but it was one they ultimately won, suddenly ending -- at least in Alexandria -- Egypt's 30-year existence as a police state. At the morgue we were confronted with the human cost of that victory.
What is happening in Egypt today is historic: The Egyptian people are engaged in a battle to bring down an abusive police state and will not stop until they achieve their dream. Now they know their power and will not likely stop for changes that are simply cosmetic. As one protester told me outside the morgue, "We want to uproot the entire tree, down to the roots, and then plant a new tree.".....
Many believe that the embattled President Hosni Mubarak and his interior ministry have a hand in the chaos. Mubarak's mantra to his people was always that he was the guarantor of their safety and the nation's stability.
Over the weekend, unexplained prison breaks and incidents of undercover police caught looting suggested to many that the Mubarak regime was fomenting chaos as a pretext to end the popular uprising.
But out of chaos, hope is already emerging. In Alexandria, Cairo and Suez, communities responded by organizing themselves into "popular committees" arming themselves with sticks and kitchen knives and walking the streets of their neighborhoods all night to guard their homes and shops.
The popular committees I have seen in action are not acting like vigilantes and are carefully organized by street, neighborhood and city. When they catch looters they don't dispense street justice but hand them over to the army.....
Those behind the protests don't look threatening out on the street. The people are tired from days of protest and nights of standing guard, but they are united behind the single goal to stand together to safeguard that change they have already brought about without any outside support and to continue to fight for a permanent end to the abusive police state of President Mubarak, peacefully."
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