MEDIA RELEASE
January 31, 2011
Stop the War Coalition welcomes and supports the protests for democracy and freedom in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere across the Middle East.
We stand in solidarity with the Egyptian masses who are struggling for their basic rights against a dictatorship which has been supported for decades by the West.
We support the people’s right to assemble and their freedom of speech without the threat of repression.
Stop the War Coalition was formed to oppose Australia’s participation in brutal US-led military interventions that have been cynically marketed as “wars for democracy”. These wars have only brought death, not freedom.
The people of Tunisia, Egypt and other countries in the region are showing how democracy can be created.
Egypt has been a cornerstone of the US’ failed “war on terror” strategy for dominating the Middle East.
Egypt has been the second biggest recipient, after Israel, of “aid” from the US Empire, including $1.3 billion a year for its security forces alone.
These same forces have killed dozens of protesters in the last few days and injured thousands more.
President Hosni Mubarak has made Egypt a US client state in the Arab world.
Without a collaborating regime in Egypt, Israel would not be able to maintain its siege of the Gaza Strip. The border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is closed, combining with Israel’s closure of its border to impose a total blockade
We salute the Egyptian masses for their continuing heroic defiance of the regime and its security apparatus. We salute their determination not to accept a re-arrangement of the status quo and to struggle for real change, which includes economic and social rights which have been denied them.
The US has been by far the most important backer of the Egyptian state, but the Australian government is an avid supporter of, and participant in, the US “war on terror” and its wars in the Middle East. We should not forget that Mandouh Habib and others have been “rendered” by the US to Egypt to be tortured as part of the so-called war on terror. Mubarak’s designated successor General Omar Suleiman – his chief of intelligence – was the torturer managing the CIA’s rendition program.
Julia Gillard has to make clear its opposition to the atrocities committed by the Mubarak regime and support for the Egyptian protestors’ demands for freedom.
The only way that will happen is if activists in Australia join with those around the world to put pressure on Western governments to break with their past support for the Egyptian regime.
Stop the War Coalition therefore calls on the Gillard government to:
· Break all ties with the Mubarak regime.
· Support the demands for a transition to democracy being put forward by the mass popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt.
· Refrain from interfering with the democratic movements and interfering in the internal affairs of the Arab countries. US efforts to impose a leadership on the democratic movements should be opposed.
· Demand the release of all political prisoners.
· Withdraw Australian troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and stop supporting other Western military interference in the Arab world including covert operations in Yemen and Somalia.
Pip Hinman
0412 139 968
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