Earlier on Monday, Yehyia Qallash, the head of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, called for the resignation of Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar following the arrest of two journalists at the syndicate’s headquarters building in Cairo on Sunday.
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One security guard was wounded in one eye when police raided the union, Mahmoud Kamel, another member of the syndicate board, told Reuters.
At a impromptu press conference outside the Syndicate, Qallash called for the resignation of the Minister of Interior over the “violations”. Italy has withdrawn its ambassador from Cairo to protest what it described as a lack of cooperation in the investigation, while Egypt denies security forces were involved.
The state prosecutor said it had ordered the arrest of the two reporters as they were being investigated for “spreading news based on lies” and possessing fire arms and Molotov cocktails, state news agency MENA said. Amnesty International criticised the arrests and the use of violence against protesters in a statement on Tuesday. They had begun their own mini-sit-in at the union headquarters after discovering that police had searched their homes while looking for them.
It was unclear what size any sit-in at the syndicate could achieve. Heavily armed swat teams and barbed-wire covered transport vehicles withdrew from the street in front of the union building, but remained parked at nearby thoroughfares, where families and teenagers strolled past trucks loaded with men in black paramilitary uniforms.
Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said in an earlier speech that the two islands originally belonged to Saudi Arabia and it was time for Egypt to return them to their rightful owner.
The syndicate has invited the trade union leaders to join their sit-in to denounce the police incursion and protest restrictions on freedom of assembly for labour organizers.
Yesterday, journalists held a sit-in inside the union when officers arrested two of them working for the opposition website Bawabet Yanayer including its editor, syndicate officials said. They plan for a larger demonstration Monday afternoon.
The journalists’ syndicate has been a rallying point for demonstrations in the past, and was blocked in a similar manner ahead of planned anti-government protests last Monday.
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Various political groups and movements held short marches in Cairo and Giza against the Saudi-Egypt border demarcation agreement, which stipulates that two disputed Red Sea islands, Tiran and Sanafir, are part of Saudi territorial waters.
