CAIRO - A co-Founder of a youth movement, using the Internet to press for political change in Egypt, has said that his group is completely independent from other opposition powers. "The April 6 Youth Movement believes in change, and helps collect the signatures of those who support the call for change in the country. This does not mean we blindly support the group or party involved in this campaign," said Ahmed Maher, the co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, an opposition group that was created on the Internet two years ago. Maher was referring to his group's campaign for the Change Document that was developed by the National Coalition for Change, spearheaded by the former chief of the UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei. "Collecting signatures from people who support change is a bid to raise the political standards in the Egyptian street in the first place. This changes Egypt into a democracy," Maher told The Egyptian Gazette. He added that his group was pinning its hopes on ordinary Egyptians to bring about such change. The April 6 Youth Movement is an Egyptian Facebook group started by Esraa Rashid and Ahmed Maher in the spring of 2008 to support the workers in el-Mahalla el-Kobra, an industrial Delta town, who were planning to strike on April 6. As of January 2009, the Facebook group had 70,000 predominantly young and educated members, most of whom had not previously been politically active. Their core concerns include freedom of speech, ending government nepotism, and restarting the country's stagnant economy. The group's activists have joined ElBaradei's campaign for change, despite alleged harassment from security agencies. "Our members ask people to sign the Change Document. To do this, we take care that no more than three or our members gather in one place, due to the restrictions imposed by the Emergency Law," Maher said. He alleged that three members of his group had been briefly detained in the coastal city of Alexandria Friday night as police attempted to confiscate the signed documents. Magdi el-Kurdy, the former member of the leftist Al-Tagammu Party now leading a campaign to support Gamal Mubarak, the son of President Hosni Mubarak, had reportedly asked the April 6 to help him in his campaign. Maher strongly rejected this request. "It seems that this el-Kurdy knows nothing about Egypt's political life. He is involved in a political farce," Maher said. On the other side, el-Sayyed el-Badawi, the head of the Al-Wafd opposition Party, said last week that he was ready to help “rehabilitate” the April 6 Movement. Aside from discussing the state of the nation online, members of the young group have organised public rallies to free imprisoned journalists and engaged in dozens of protests at Israeli attacks on Gaza and labour disputes. They have recently led a campaign against the police who allegedly killed blogger Khaled Saeed in Alexandria. They take the claim for pushing the authorities to put on trial two policemen suspected of beating the 28-year-old blogger on trial.
