CAIRO - Citizens have every right to demonstrate, in order to express their opposition to certain kinds of injustice or to obtain their rights. However, it is unacceptable that they should block roads and railway lines, as happened earlier this week in el-Ayyat, Giza about 30 miles south of Cairo, where residents were angry that a mobile phone relay station had been installed, in their village. In fact, the problem of these relay stations is an old that hasn't been properly addressed by successive governments, which should have issued a law stipulating their installation in locations where the public's health won't be jeopardised. Although most Egyptians, whether rich or poor, have a cell phone, they still don't want such relay stations established close to their homes, because they are concerned that they will harm their health. In the meantime, they turn a deaf ear to the growing international warnings of the dangers of the mobiles themselves to users' health. It is illegal to block a road in Egypt for any reason, but the Government has made the same mistake of giving in to the public will and resolving the problem without punishing the demonstrators for obstructing a highway and the railway line. What happened in el-Ayyat was nothing new. Just a few weeks earlier, citizens in Qena blocked the highway and the same railway line for almost two weeks, in opposition to their new Governor, a Coptic police general. Leaving violaters unpunished in Qena surely encouraged the people in el-Ayyat to do the same thing. What's to stop other citizens from following suit if the authorities continue to refuse to punish demonstrators for breaking the law? Then there are the occasional demonstrations outside the State TV building in central Cairo, that have closed the Nile Corniche for days at a time, causing unbearable traffic jams in the downtown area and even further afield. It is time for the Government and the ruling Military Council to get tough, so that the public would learn the difference between causing chaos and demonstrating in a dignified fashion.
