Anastasia Balezdrova
At least 200 Egyptians gathered in front of the Egypt Embassy in Athens to support the demonstrators in Cairo who held the largest rally to date.
"Down with Mubarak", "Go Mubarak" and "Mubarak, go to hell" were just some of the slogans the demonstrators were holding in their hands. Many had brought their children. Some youths had climbed on one of the trees in front of a diplomatic mission to Egypt and led the chanting.
Most of the participants in the rally were members of the community of Egyptians in Greece. Some of them have been living and working in Greece for many years. One of the main reasons which forced them to flee their homeland was the dictatorial regime of Hosni Mubarak.
Youssef Azer Samuel is the chairman of the union of Egyptian workers. He has been living in Greece for almost 26 years. Now he is a Greek citizen and was a candidate for councilor with Mayor-elected George Kaminis at the last local elections. Yousef was not elected but has been adviser for immigrant issues at the municipality of Athens for 3 years. He is one of the founders of the Hellenic forum of immigrants. Here's what he told GRReporter:
"We came here to express our support to the events in our homeland. We want this misery to end. Want to live in freedom and as humans.
Young people in Egypt graduate and then spend their time in coffee shops because there is no work. There is a record number of diseases in the country. Cancer is much more prevalent than in any other country. Residents of Egypt drink dirty water, they have no access to good education and medical care is miserable.
Prices are very high and many people are starving. The entire economy is in the hands of 2-3 percent of the population, because they have relatives in the government. The rest of Egyptians live below the poverty line.
Mubarak's government is a police government. Nobody dared say a word against the government because they would end up ‘behind the sun’, to say. Repression against the people in prisons and in the street was carried out without any reason.
The situation in Egypt is very bad these days. There is a lack of food. Shops are closed, so are the banks. Mass transport is not running. Mobile networks and the Internet are blocked. People bake bread at home because the bakeries are closed. And the air in Alexandria, where my mother lives and has breathing problems, is filled with smoke.
Kids can not sleep because of the noise. In many cases they are shocked. People feel insecure. They can not sleep and a few families gather in one house because they are afraid of the criminals that came out of prison. I think it was intentional. The very police set them free and allowed them outrages to enable the regime to claim that "we protect you. Let us continue to rule.
The protests of the people of Egypt will not stop until Mubarak and the others around him do not cede the power. Egypt needs new leaders, a new life after the 30 years-long path to Golgotha. I, for example, have never been in Egypt the last 3-4 years for that very reason.
We are very worried about Egypt and what the people there going through."
Ali Mohammed has been living in Greece since 1984. He is a math teacher who was forced to leave his country to seek work and make his living somewhere else. All these years he has been living away from his wife and children because "I have no other choice." Ali recounts how he actually had not been aware of the importance and meaning of democracy before he ended up in Europe.
"I graduated from the university in 1980 when Mubarak took the power. He hasn’t hand it out ever since. I am a math teacher but was forced to come to Greece to become unskilled worker 26 years now. I worked as a teacher away from Alexandria for some time and at one point my family had to send me money to supplement my monthly income. Then I decided to leave and live and work here since August 1984.
I learned many things all those years, for example, the meaning of democracy. Until then I did not know what democracy means, what different parties are. The day I was born I realized that we have one president who governs us until he dies. Therein lies our problem.
There are people who have nothing to eat in Egypt and those who rule the country have billions of dollars deposited in foreign banks. They did not give people even crumbs of that wealth. If they had done this they would be in power.
People are starving, get sick and they do not pay any attention. My mother was sick and when I took her to the hospital I had to bring pillow, sheets from home, to provide the medicines. And she was lying all the time in a camp-bed. The situation is dramatic.
Two million people protest in Egypt today. There is no artist among them. The regime has bribed artists, journalists, i.e. all to ensure their support.
People in Egypt could not seek their rights. Whatever the salary or pension estimated for someone that was it. Not to mention the pathetic picture of opposition lawmakers who literally begged the ministers to take action, for example, to cover a street with asphalt or to build a bridge. You can imagine what ordinary citizens could do when you hear a lawmaker elected by the people to represent them begging a minister in the Parliament.
Protests in Egypt express the rage and hatred for this government. There are thousands of cases of people who leave their homes in the morning and never get back. And no one knows where they got lost. They approved a law on extraordinary measures and when a person does not fit them they just cover him or her somewhere. The person just disappears.
I am worried about my motherland. My family, my wife and children live there and I am very concerned about everything that happens there. So many people died but Mubarak doesn’t want to cede the power. Now he and the people around him are concerned about their treasures. He will leave as soon as they are secured. Ben Ali took a ton and a half of gold, Mubarak will take 4-5 tons with himself."
There were many young people not older than 25 years among the protestors. They told how the movement against the President Hosni Mubarak has emerged in social networks.
It all started with making a group on Facebook where photographs and materials relating to the murder of a young man by the police were uploaded. Khaled Said was in an internet cafe late in the evening when two police officers asked him to give them money. He answered that he had no money and they started beating him brutally until they killed him. The story soon crossed the borders of the country and Egyptians from around the world joined the group. Dissatisfaction with police violence have ignited views against the government and its authoritarian rule which led to today's protests in Egypt.
All the demonstrators I spoke with expressed the belief that the Egyptian people were determined to continue the protests to the end. They said this was the only way to introduce democracy, justice and equality in the country.
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