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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 5 November
The Egyptian caretaker government is rapidly exposing itself as a true successor to Hosni Mubarak, determined to maintain itself in power by fair means or by foul – with circumstances demanding mainly the latter.
The Egyptian army was mobilised to mount violent attacks on Coptic christians as they protested at the main television building in central Cairo on 9 October. Their protest was in response to the torching of a newly-rebuilt church in the village of Marinab (Aswan) incited by a local fanatic preacher.
The protest was not only about the attacks on christians, however, but against the military government itself. The most common refrain of the protesters was “The people want to bring down the field marshal,” ie, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who has effectively stepped into Mubarak’s shoes. There were also chants of “Muslims and christians are one hand”.
The army assault resulted in 24 people dead and over 200 injured. While gangs of Islamist thugs roamed the streets looking to set upon any unarmed and defenceless christian, there were plenty of muslims who, seeing the unwarranted attack, joined the christian demonstrators in fighting back against the army.
Egyptian television, in the meantime, was fanning the flames by urging citizens to go to the defence of the army, as though it had been the Copts who had been responsible for the attack!
A few days later the army announced that it plans to remain in control of government even after the parliamentary elections that will be taking place on 28 November, with parliament playing a subordinate role, as it did under Mubarak, until a new presidential election in 2013. The only way it might get away with such an unpopular decision is if it manages to divide the Egyptian people against each other – hence the attempts to incite religious violence.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 5 November
Having with the help of the Saudi army put down the Arab spring protests of the downtrodden masses of Bahrain, the authorities, who were clearly terrified by the popular uprising, are now turning on anti-government activists quite literally with a vengeance.
In a country whose population is only half a million, 34 people have been killed, over 1,400 have been arrested and 3,600 have been fired from their jobs. Those arrested have been subjected to torture, of which four have already died. Among those arrested were dozens of doctors and nurses from the Salmaniya Medical Complex (Bahrain’s largest public hospital), who have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment between five and 15 years for treating demonstrators wounded by violent attempts to disperse them. Eight prominent protest leaders have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
The sentencing of medical personnel is all part of a government campaign to deny medical treatment to anybody injured in the ongoing and growing protests. However, the punishment meted out to the doctors and nurses so clearly exposes the fascistic nature of a regime that western imperialism is anxious to support that pressure has been brought on the Bahraini government to back down. As a result, it has announced that the cases are to be re-tried.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
In Yemen, the part of the army that remains loyal to the imperialist puppet president Ali Abdullah Saleh, under the command of Saleh’s nephew, General Yahya Saleh, opened fire with heavy-calibre machine guns and other weapons on unarmed protesters in Sana’a on 18 September.
By 20 September there were armed confrontations between Saleh’s forces and those of the First Armoured division, led by General Ahmar, who has sided with the protesters against the government.
The following weekend, Saleh, who had been detained in Saudi Arabia to recover from wounds he received in an attack on the presidential palace, returned to the Yemen, announcing that he was “carrying the dove of peace and the olive branch”.
That peace and that olive branch, however, are entirely dependent on the Yemeni masses succumbing to his demand to remain in power, when almost the whole of Yemen wants him to step down.
