Chile no stranger to tragedy

Egypt must not try factory workers before a military court

The London-based rights watchdog denounces the military prosecution of Helwan workers…

Amnesty international has condemned the trial before an Egyptian military court of eight factory workers, all civilians, detained after taking part in a protest against poor safety conditions at the factory, following an explosion which killed one of their fellow workers.
The trial of the eight workers from Helwan Factory for Engineering Industries (Military Factory No. 99) resumes at the military court in Nasr City, in the east of Cairo on Saturday.

Torture in Saudi Arabia

مؤتمر صحفي لمحاميي وعائلات عمال مصنع ٩٩ الحربي المحالين للمحاكمة العسكرية

Tomorrow Saturday 9:30pm, there will be a press conference held by the families and defense lawyers of the Helwan workers who are facing military tribunal for protesting lax industrial safety measures at their factory.

The event will be held at the Center for Socialist Studies, 7 Murad Street, Giza.

Doma دومة

Ahmad Doma, blogger and activist, is currently serving time in a maximum security prison for taking part in a pro-democracy street protest…

Floods erode Pakistan cotton income

Mahalla updates

I was chatting today with a labor organizer, and I was shocked to hear from him that the number of labor force in Ghazl el-Mahalla has gone down to 18,000, from 27,000 workers in 2006. The drastic decrease, he said, was due to increased pressure from the management on workers to accept early buyout packages, coupled with the increasingly dismal conditions of machinery which has given the workers a bleak view of the company’s future.

Organizing on the shop floor has been suffered a great set back following the failure of the 6 April 2008 strike to materialize, despite the eruption of the city in a two day uprising. A protest was organized in October 2008, followed by another crackdown where labor organizers were transferred to the company branches outside the Nile Delta.

The strike movement, though sparked by Ghazl el-Mahalla, has not died down with the downturn in industrial action in the factory. Already there has been a spat of strikes in other textile firms in the city, especially those in the Qualified Industrial Zones, and others. And recently there has been protests among the hospital workers in town, among whom many are relatives of workers in the textile firm.

The factory is still a heavy weight player in the labor arena, even when it’s witnessing a downturn. A revival in the militancy is not impossible.

سؤال وجواب حول الحماية القانونية والأمان الرقمي لمستخدمي الانترنت

متأخر قليلا في التنويه عنه.. ولكن عموما مفيد الإطلاع على دليل الحماية القانونية والأمان الرقمي التي قام مركز هشام مبارك للقانون بوضعه….

10 tips for the aspiring street photographer

Nice tips by Eric Kim.

Hebron massacre remembered