CAIRO: Over the past two days, the destruction of the Egyptian Scientific Institute has sparked international outcries over cultural heritage preservation, with a number of commentators liking the burning of the central Cairo institute to the attacks on Iraq's national museum in 2003. On Monday and Tuesday, volunteers were busy attempting to recover any of the artifacts that could be salvaged from the building after it was set ablaze over the weekend during clashes between protesters and the military. The volunteers are attempting to salvage the remains of some 192,000 books, journals and writings, casualties of Egypt's latest round of street clashes that has left 14 dead and over 700 injured. Protesters have accused the military, in the disguise of plainclothes officers, of being responsible for the attack on the Institute d'Egypte. They have shown video that shows the plainclothes man throwing Molotov cocktails at the building and then a subsequent video showing him uniformed, as evidence it was not the protesters who are responsible for the center's destruction. On Sunday, as clashes moved from the Cabinet building down the road toward Cairo's Tahrir Square, groups of activists formed human chains around the institute in order to save what remained of the building, which dates to the French occupation of Egypt in the late 18th century. “We did not attack the building,” one protester told Bikyamasr.com, adding that “the military is accusing us of stopping the fire truck from reaching there and that is not true. We tried to save the building after it caught fire.” The institute, a research center established by Napoleon Bonaparte caught fire over the weekend during the clashes. It had been the residence of a massive amount of writings, including a handwritten 24-volume Description de l'Egypte, which began during the three-year French occupation. According to reports, two other copies still survive elsewhere in the Egyptian capital. The military junta accused Egyptian protesters on Monday at a press conference of using “excessive force” against the armed forces and claimed they were responsible for the cultural destruction of Egypt's heritage, which has angered Egyptian activists further in the past 24 hours. The institute is now in danger of collapsing due to the extensive fire that pummeled the building. The violence that has erupted in Cairo over the past five days began when the military attacked a three-week-old sit-in at the Cabinet building. The military burned the area after protesters became angered over the abduction and beating of a demonstrator on Friday early morning. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/DSIwk Tags: featured, Institute d'Egypte, Occupy Cabinet, Protests, SCAF, Violence Section: Culture, Egypt, Heritage, Latest News
