I received a very worrying statement from Kamal Abbas of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services… After cracking down on the Center’s branch in Naga’a Hammadi, accusing its directors of “communism” and “spreading the culture of strikes,” the Ministry of Social Security sent a senior official on Tuesday evening to the Center’s branch in Mahalla and threatened to close it down, according to Kamal.
“It’s the same scenario of Naga’a Hammadi, being repeated again in Mahalla,” Kamal told me. “A wave of security crackdowns on the labor movement is to be expected.”
Click on the photo below to download the CTUWS statement, with more details in Arabic…

[Above: CTUWS activist Sayyed Habib, who was among the Ghazl el-Mahalla December strike leaders. Sayyed was showing his visitors then cartoons drawn by the workers mocking the Labor Ministry's attack on the Mahalla workers. I took this photo last March, while researching the Egyptian textile workers' struggle against neo-liberalism]

The Hisham Mubarak Law Center called for a meeting this Thursday 5pm, where activists will be discussing a solidarity campaign with the CTUWS. The center is located at: 1 Souq el-Tawfiqiya St., off Ramses Street.