After being the venue for protesting Copts, Maspero now hosts anti-SCAF rallies. Rasha Sadek blends in It was difficult to avoid treading on the shards of glass while heading to Maspero through Corniche Street on Sunday afternoon. Glass bottles, white and green, broken into hundreds of pieces each and mixed with rocks, told of a street fight the details of which are yet unknown. There is a shortcut to Maspero, the site of the radio and television building, through a narrow backstreet, but it was blocked by a "popular committee" which would not let anyone through. The longer route through Corniche was the only way in. The signs boded ill. Razor wires over two metres high surrounded the building. Army special forces, in small numbers, deployed against the walls of Maspero. At a nearby side street, security vehicles were parked. Protesters had announced a sit-in at Maspero on Saturday after they had moved semi-permanently there on Wednesday 25 January, calling -- prime among a set of other demands -- for the step down of the ruling military council, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Expectations were high amid a large portion of the public of a near "thugs" attack. Nobody knew when, though. Until they hit on Sunday at the stroke of midday. "More than 100 thugs attacked us at noon coming from Bulaq. They pelted us with rocks and glass bottles," eyewitness Mohamed Samir told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We couldn't fight back. We didn't have even stones to throw back at those thugs. Look at the injured over there." On a small pavement island in front of Maspero, protesters' tents had been erected with a number of wounded demonstrators sitting or lying outside; three others were taken to a hospital. Amr, a teenage protester, had just had his right foot banded. "A thug hit me. But I will not leave. I will stay until the SCAF leaves," he stated, expressions of fresh pain evident on his face. Anti-SCAF chants roared non-stop at Maspero. "Down with military rule, the people are the red line" echoed among several groups. Recognising a familiar face in the crowd -- estimated at less than 2,000 -- I headed to Ahmed Mohamed, aka Iskandar. In his mid-20s, Iskandar is a protester who this reporter had met at the field hospital of Omar Makram Mosque during the December clashes of Al-Qasr Al-Aini between the army and demonstrators. It was the fourth time his arm had been broken since the outbreak of the revolution last year. "After hitting us at noon, thugs came back three hours later in a similar attack. We managed to push them back. They are now [5pm] re-assembling at the Wekala flyover. They might hit again," a restless Iskandar said. However, a third attack organised by thugs was not to be, perhaps thanks to the thousands-men march that a short while later poured into Maspero coming from Mohandessin's Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque in support of Maspero protesters and their demands. "Constitution after presidential elections" read a banner raised by a veiled woman on the third day of protesting at Maspero. "She is right," another protester, Gamal Eid, remarked to the Weekly. "How could we have a constitution drafted under the rule of the military? The constitution should be written after the election of a president and the end of the transitional period. The military council wants the constitution drafted while it is still in power to guarantee a special above-the-law status for its institution, as was evident in the proposed 'El-Selmi document'", Eid said while a number of gathering protesters nodded in agreement. While the SCAF had already set 1 July for the handover of power to an elected president, protesters remain unsatisfied. On Friday night, as the usual rounds of side talk between protesters were taking place, a charismatic female demonstrator asked her circle of gatherers: "How can we trust SCAF anymore? In the constitutional declaration issued in March, SCAF said it was going to hand over power in six months. It didn't. The date was pushed to 2013, and if it weren't for the blood shed in the November clashes of Mohamed Mahmoud Street, SCAF wouldn't have decided on this July," the woman, who the Weekly couldn't interview privately because of the big number of converging protesters around her, said. "There are no guarantees SCAF will commit to its word to hand over power in July. We have to push for it." While on top of demonstrators' list at Maspero the past eight days has been the step down of SCAF and the speeding up of presidential elections, so was retribution for those killed since the revolution began. "You martyr, sleep and rest, we will go the rest of the way," was among the chants repeated at Maspero -- once the venue for Coptic protests against their community and the site of a bloody clash with the army that left 27 dead. Next came the trial of the Mubaraks and Habib El-Adli, Hosni Mubarak's interior minister. While those are already being tried on charges of corruption and the killing of protesters during the 18-day revolt that toppled Mubarak, "we don't see any sentences taking place. Their trial is a mockery and the courtroom in which they are 'tried' is a theatre stage," said protester Sherif Ahmed on the night of the first anniversary of the revolution. One of the main reasons protesters chose to raise their demands in front of the radio and television building is because they are calling for "the purging of the media". State television has been repeatedly accused of toeing the government line and being the mouthpiece of the ruling military. The majority of Egyptians are unhappy with the "systematic lies told by the state television and the persistent tarnishing of the image of revolutionaries," famous blogger and political activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah said after arriving at Maspero in a march on Friday night from Tahrir. Abdel-Fattah was immediately invited into the building to give a live interview on the state's "Voice of Egypt" programme. "There is a conscious decision on the part of protesters to put pressure on this institution. Since the eruption of the revolution we have noticed that Maspero has been one of the strongest cornerstones on which the regime is based. Until today, those in power use this institution to control and end the revolution." He added that state television should be "purged of its leaders who were members of the [disbanded, formerly ruling] National Democratic Party." Later that night, the Kazeboon (Liars) campaign projected a video showing SCAF violations on the Maspero building before protesters raised their shoes high in a sign of contempt at both the killings and the state media. The next day, 28 January, marked the anniversary of those brutally killed by security forces on the Qasr Al-Nil Bridge during that bloody day dubbed the "Friday of Anger". A number of marches were organised to commemorate the martyrs by crossing over the bridge to Maspero and join other protesters who had already declared a sit-in. In their thousands, protesters held placards of photos of martyrs and some of the dead's last muttered words while they chanted for the fall of the SCAF. Many protesters explained to the Weekly throughout the past week that they chose to raise their demands at, or head with marches towards Maspero because of the festivities taking place at Tahrir Square marking a year of the revolution. Despite the fact that marches calling for the fall of SCAF, trying the Mubaraks and their associates and retribution, were organised on the 25th to Tahrir, the Weekly noticed they had left by late afternoon. Instead, street vendors were all over the square and the streets leading to it. Tahrir, to many protesters, was like a souq, where different kinds of merchandise were displayed. From bread, peanuts and sweet potatoes to cheap shades and shirts, Tahrir, that night, had lost its revolutionary zeal. The spirit of revolt was lost amid Islamic chants and the harassment of this reporter and other females by young and middle-aged men's intimidating attitude. But the zest of the revolution was recreated at Maspero, although at most times protesters didn't exceed 5,000. Since the eve of the anniversary of revolution and for the following days the Muslim Brotherhood "converged on Tahrir Square to celebrate their gains [winning in parliamentary elections]." "What celebrations? The revolution has not fulfilled its demands. The regime is still firmly in power, the Mubaraks have not been tried, those who killed protesters were not held accountable, and the power is not in the hands of the people," said Ahmed. "And the clearest evidence of this is that protesters at Maspero are not represented by political parties or members of parliament."
