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| Smoke rises after Egyptian protesters clash with police, unseen, in Port Said, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Violence erupted briefly when some in the crowd fired guns and police responded with volleys of tear gas, witnesses said. State television reported 110 were injured. Egyptian health officials say 3 have been killed in clashes between protesters and police in Port Said. |
CAIRO (AP) --
Egypt's president declared a state of emergency and curfew in three
Suez Canal provinces hit hardest by a weekend wave of unrest that left
more than 50 dead, using tactics of the ousted regime to get a grip on
discontent over his Islamist policies and the slow pace of change.
Angry
and almost screaming, Mohammed Morsi vowed in a televised address on
Sunday night that he would not hesitate to take even more action to stem
the latest eruption of violence across much of the country. But at the
same time, he sought to reassure Egyptians that his latest moves would
not plunge the country back into authoritarianism.
"There is no going back on freedom, democracy and the supremacy of the law," he said.
The
worst violence this weekend was in the Mediterranean coastal city of
Port Said, where seven people were killed on Sunday, pushing the toll
for two days of clashes to at least 44. The unrest was sparked on
Saturday by a court conviction and death sentence for 21 defendants
involved in a mass soccer riot in the city's main stadium on Feb. 1,
2012 that left 74 dead.
Most of those
sentenced to death were local soccer fans from Port Said, deepening a
sense of persecution that Port Said's residents have felt since the
stadium disaster, the worst soccer violence ever in Egypt.
At
least another 11 died on Friday elsewhere in the country during rallies
marking the second anniversary of the anti-Mubarak uprising. Protesters
used the occasion to renounce Morsi and his Islamic fundamentalist
group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which emerged as the country's most
dominant political force after Mubarak's ouster.
The
curfew and state of emergency, both in force for 30 days, affect the
provinces of Port Said, Ismailiya and Suez. The curfew takes effect
Monday from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day.
Morsi,
in office since June, also invited the nation's political forces to a
dialogue starting Monday to resolve the country's latest crisis. A
statement issued later by his office said that among those invited were
the country's top reform leader, Nobel peace Laureate Mohammed
ElBaradei, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabahi, a
leftist politician who finished third in last year's presidential race.
The three are leaders of the National Salvation Front, an umbrella for the main opposition parties.
Khaled
Dawoud, the Front's spokesman, said Morsi's invitation was meaningless
unless he clearly states what is on the agenda. That, he added, must
include amending a disputed constitution hurriedly drafted by the
president's Islamist allies and rejected by the opposition.
He also faulted the president for not acknowledging his political responsibility for the latest bout of political violence.
"It is all too little too late," he told The Associated Press.
In
many ways, Morsi's decree and his call for a dialogue betrayed his
despair in the face of wave after wave of political unrest, violence and
man-made disasters that, at times, made the country look like it was
about to come unglued.
A relative unknown
until his Muslim Brotherhood nominated him to run for president last
year, Morsi is widely criticized for having offered no vision for the
country's future after nearly 30 years of dictatorship under Mubarak and
no coherent policy to tackle seemingly endless problems, from a free
falling economy and deeply entrenched social injustices to surging crime
and chaos on the streets.
Reform of the judiciary and the police, hated under the old regime for brutality, are also key demands of Morsi's critics.
Morsi
did not say what he plans to do to stem the violence in other parts of
the country outside those three provinces, but he did say he had
instructed the police to deal "firmly and forcefully" with individuals
attacking state institutions, using firearms to "terrorize" citizens or
blocking roads and railway lines.
There were also clashes Sunday in Cairo and several cities in the Nile Delta region, including the industrial city of Mahallah.
Egypt's
current crisis is the second to hit the country since November, when
Morsi issued decrees, since rescinded, that gave him nearly unlimited
powers and placed him above any oversight, including by the judiciary.
The
latest eruption of political violence has deepened the malaise as Morsi
struggles to get a grip on enormous social and economic problems and
the increasingly dangerous fault lines that divide this nation of 85
million.
In an ominous sign, a one-time
jihadist group on Sunday blamed the secular opposition for the violence
and threatened to set up vigilante militias to defend the government it
supports.
Addressing a news conference, Tareq el-Zomr of the once-jihadist Gamaa Islamiya, said:
"If
security forces don't achieve security, it will be the right of the
Egyptian people and we at the forefront to set up popular committees to
protect private and public property and counter the aggression on
innocent citizens."
His threat was accompanied
by his charge that the opposition was responsible for the deadly
violence of the past few days, setting the stage for possible bloody
clashes between protesters and Islamist militiamen. The opposition
denies the charge.
In Port Said on Sunday,
tens of thousands of mourners poured into the streets for a mass funeral
for most of the 37 people who died on Saturday. They chanted slogans
against Morsi.
"We are now dead against
Morsi," said Port Said activist Amira Alfy. "We will not rest now until
he goes and we will not take part in the next parliamentary elections.
Port Said has risen and will not allow even a semblance of normalcy to
come back," she said.
The violence flared only
a month after a prolonged crisis - punctuated by deadly violence - over
the new constitution. Ten died in that round of unrest and hundreds
were injured.
In Port Said, mourners chanted
"There is no God but Allah," and "Morsi is God's enemy" as the funeral
procession made its way through the city after prayers for the dead at
the city's Mariam Mosque. Women clad in black led the chants, which were
quickly picked up by the rest of the mourners.
There
were no police or army troops in sight. But the funeral procession
briefly halted after gunfire rang out. Security officials said the
gunfire came from several mourners who opened fire at the Police Club
next to the cemetery. Activists, however, said the gunfire first came
from inside the army club, which is also close to the cemetery. Some of
the mourners returned fire, which drew more shots as well as tear gas,
according to witnesses. They, together with the officials, spoke on
condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation in
the city on the Mediterranean at the northern tip of the Suez Canal.
A total of 630 people were injured, some of them with gunshot wounds, said Abdel-Rahman Farag, director of the city's hospitals.
Also
Sunday, army troops backed by armored vehicles staked out positions at
key government facilities to protect state interests and try to restore
order.
There was also a funeral in Cairo for
two policemen killed in the Port Said violence a day earlier. Several
policemen grieving for their colleagues heckled Interior Minister
Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the force, when he arrived for
their funeral, according to witnesses.
The
angry officers screamed at the minister that he was only at the funeral
for the TV cameras - a highly unusual show of dissent in Egypt, where
the police force maintains military-like discipline.
Ibrahim
hurriedly left and the funeral proceeded without him, a sign that the
prestige of the state and its top executives were diminishing.
In
Cairo, clashes broke out for the fourth straight day on Sunday, with
protesters and police outside two landmark, Nile-side hotels near
central Tahrir Square, birthplace of the 2011 uprising. Police fired
tear gas while protesters pelted them with rocks.
