Egyptian Professors protest in sign of wider dissent

Jordan Times, April 21, 2005

CAIRO (Reuters) — Professors and other academic staff at Cairo University joined a growing Egyptian protest movement on Tuesday with a one-hour march demanding the security services keep out of university affairs. About 100 academics, dressed in their black gowns, marched on campus, and the head of the university, Egypt's most prestigious, received a 20-page memorandum entitled “No to Security Interference in the University.” The document said that the government's security services meddled in the choice of lecturers, travel abroad by faculty and academic contacts between them and foreign academics.

The protest indicated that the small dissident movement which started demonstrating against President Hosni Mubarak last year is emboldening new sectors of Egyptian society.

About 1,500 judges in northern Egypt said last week that they do not want to monitor this year's elections unless they are given a full supervisory role with guarantees of judicial independence from the executive. The stance taken by the judges was an implicit criticism of the way the government has treated them in the past and a rare assertion of independence by a conservative group which usually tries to stay out of politics.

Egypt has seen small but frequent demonstrations this year against a fifth six-year term for Mubarak later this year or any attempt to install his son Gamal as his successor. After the protests started, Mubarak proposed changing the constitution to allow multi-candidate presidential elections, instead of giving parliament the right to choose a single candidate, who then goes to public referendum. The prospect of change has shaken up the political scene, though it is not yet clear whether the ruling party, which dominates parliament, will change the rules in a way that makes possible a credible and serious challenge to Mubarak. Groups of hundreds of students have been demonstrating against Mubarak on and off for several weeks but they have mostly confined their protests to campus, where the riot police do not usually intervene to disperse them. Journalists have also been protesting against the one-year prison sentences imposed on three journalists convicted of libelling Housing Minister Mohammad Ibrahim Soleiman. Mubarak promised last year to try to repeal legislation allowing custodial sentences for publishing offences.

One of the Cairo University professors, Sayed Al Bahrawi, said: “The university is ruled by security and not the university administration. That's the situation that prevails in the country. This protest is not only against the situation in the university but against security control in general.”

Another professor, Amina Rashid, one of three who met the university head, told Reuters the faculty planned to step up their protests, but on the basis of specific incidents.