Egypt Detains Australian Journalist, U.S. Student
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE81A0OC20120211?irpc=932Egypt detains Australian journalist, U.S. student
Sat Feb 11, 2012 5:47pm EST
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities detained an Australian journalist and an American student on Saturday on suspicion they had distributed cash to workers and incited them to take part in a strike called by activists demanding an end to army rule, the state news agency said.
The pair were detained along with their Egyptian translator in the industrial city of al-Mahalla al-Kubra north of Cairo.
They were referred to the prosecutor general for investigation, the agency said, identifying the American student as Derek Ludovici and the Australian journalist as Austin Mackell.
Activists had called for a nationwide strike on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the toppling of Hosni Mubarak from power and to press demands for a faster end to the rule of the military council that replaced him.
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Fahmy and other critics say the current government – the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF – is taking this very real sense of outside threat and whipping it up into fullblown xenophobia through State TV and radio. “There is a deliberate use of this xenophobic language, of this suspicion of foreigners by SCAF and by the Minister of International Cooperation,” he said.
There have been verbal and physical attacks, as well as citizen arrests. Baghat said foreigners are caught in the crossfire as the Egyptian government tries to undermine the continued protests. “It presents the political protest movement in Egypt as being primarily pushed by the famous foreign agendas. And the foreign agendas are normally understood to mean western agendas,” he said.
Even so, Historian Khaled Fahmy said it’s clear there is a concerted campaign against foreigners. And he said the Egyptian government shouldn’t just worry about the safety of tourists, but about the very foundation of Egyptian society. “Egypt throughout its long history thrived not by being shunned off and shut out and inward looking, but rather by being open and engaged, and by interacting.”
http://www.theworld.org/2012/02/growing-xenophobia-egypt/
It serves the purpose of the military government in Egypt to portray the protests there not as an indication of the massive discontent with the military's reluctance to give up power, but rather as a foreign plot against Egypt. Why would anyone not want the army to rule the country indefinitely? 