Thousands of police were deployed across much of Cairo on Monday to stifle plans for mass demonstrations called to protest the government’s decision to surrender the islands of Tiran and Sanafir.
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Protesters who mounted rare anti-government demonstrations on April 15 to express their anger with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s decision to gift two uninhabited Red Sea islands once considered Egyptian to Saudi Arabia have vowed to stage mass sit-ins Monday to mark a patriotic public holiday, Sinai Liberation Day.
Saudi and Egyptian officials say the islands belong to the kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them. For Saudi Arabia, which has regional ambitions opposed to those of its arch rival Iran, keeping Egypt under its aegis is crucial.
The NGO said Cairo and its twin city Giza registered the highest number of arrests.
Police arrested at least 286 people on April 25, according to the Front for the Defense of Egyptian Protesters, an independent group of lawyers and activists.
AFP journalists said relatives of detained people crowded police stations in central Cairo on Tuesday trying to find out information about them.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a Cairo-based human rights group said police have in recent days arrested over 90 people across eight governorates.
Protests are essentially banned in Egypt under laws passed after Sissi led the military overthrow of his elected but divisive Islamist predecessor, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013. Rights groups say as many as 100 have been arrested since late last week, with some picked up by police just hours before Monday’s protests were due to start.
Thousands of Egyptians called for al-Sissi to resign earlier this month.
With large protests expected in Cairo on Monday, Egypt’s government is conducting a security crackdown. The incident has poisoned relations with Italy, one of el-Sissi’s staunchest EU supporters and Egypt’s biggest European trade partner.
On April 15, political forces including April 6 Youth Movement and liberal and leftist parties supported by former presidential candidates, protested the recent Egyptian-Saudi maritime demarcation agreement to hand over the islands of Tiran and Sanafir to the oil-rich Gulf country.
President al-Sisi made the remarks in his speech ahead of the 34th anniversary of the Sinai Liberation Day, which marks the 1982 withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the Sinai Peninsula.
For the protesters it appears el-Sissi gave up the islands for cash, announcing the transfer when Saudi King Salman was in Cairo and himself announcing billions of dollars in investments, all of which will help to prop up the el-Sissi government.
An Egyptian policeman who shot dead a vendor over the price of a cup of tea will stand trial, a prosecution official said, amid growing outrage at police abuses.
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“Egypt needs the truth revealed to its people: Through dialogue, not suppression, with documents, evidence and maps, not security raids and random detentions”, prominent columnist Abdullah el-Sinnawy wrote in Monday’s edition of the Al-Shorouk daily.
