Second day of revolts

The second day was yesterday of course, but the internet connection was down and I couldn't access blogger or youtube. I took some photos yesterday, the rest of the time I was watching attacks and abductions in distress.

I arrived in the early morning in downtown, and even from my room I could feel the awful business as usual with cars honking incessantly, as if the 25th of January hasn't been only the day before. I wandered a heavily policed Tahrir Square, a few hours after thousands were spending their night in hopes for the regime to topple. Trying to gather any info on marches. I kept chasing them down until I found a group of around 200 journalists in front of the syndicate as you can see from my recent feed. The numbers increased and there was heavy media presence, so I reckoned it was the only gathering so far. How sad that we're back on the excluded steps of the syndicate, Cairo's Hyde Park. Luckily, I proved to be wrong. Within minutes another group was chanting outside the cordon and the police closed the street to cars and pedestrians. They started to abduct people from the other protest, with the help of thugs. It was awful. We saw people dragged, journalists or not, old and young, including prominent journalist Mohammad Abdul Quddos. We could only scream, cry, or watch in horror. Apparently more people were gathering in nearby areas and soon enough we saw scores of trucks and soldiers in the distance. All our attempts to break security cordon failed and up to the point where I left 10 people were abducted.

On the main street it was chaotic, people rushed from Boulaq abul Ela choking on tear gas and I could see black smoke. Later it was revealed violent clashes took place in the poor neighbourhood and continued throughout the night, resulting in two more deaths, one of them a policeman, which leaves six dead officially so far. In Suez, they opened fire on protesters, that's how they died.

The Tunisian revolution has made it clear to Egyptians that only massive waves of anger will bring down an oppressive regime. We have all seen a dictator fall down who has actually provided better pay and education to his people than has ours. We have a thousand reasons to revolt; poverty, brutality, persecution, oppression, high unemployment rates, low wages, poor health services to name a few.

Twitter remains blocked but those who have access through other applications are spreading the word on protests in Abbassia and Helwan now. Tomorrow is also expected to be a bloody day after Friday prayers...by 40% of the Egyptian population who are below poverty line and have nothing to lose.