Egypt: Citizen Media Exposes Violence During Media Black Out (Graphic)
This post is part of our special coverage of Egypt Protests 2011.
Warning: the videos listed bellow contain images that are graphic in nature. Viewer discretion is advised.
On February the 2nd, the Egyptian authorities decided to restore the Internet after five days of a near-complete shut down of the service. During that period, which is believed to have cost the country tens of millions of dollars, the government clamped down on journalists and international media, heavily disrupting cell phone communications and satellite broadcasting. During the ban, activists succeeded in circumventing censorship and filtered out hours of videos, filling the gap created by the media black out.
The content of some of these videos has not been independently verified but they capture the violence that was occurring on the sidelines of the “revolution,” away from the peaceful scenes of ordinary traffic in downtown Cairo and empty streets that the State TV has been broadcasting during the period of the ban.
The first videos to filter out of Cairo showed a fierce battle over the Kasr Al Nile Bridge that occurred on the first day of the ban. A sinister pattern already emerges: the sheer violence with which the regime of Hosni Mubarak is willing to confront pro-democracy protesters including running over unarmed demonstrators with anti riot police vans. This video compilation posted by Storyful covers the scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7d8HGDEGpU
In this video posted by BlackDeadex, a protester is run over by a fire truck, amid total confusion, as demonstrators were throwing stones at the police:
This video posted by Omar Rashid shows a similar incident when, amid chaos, a driver (allegedly aboard a diplomatic car) is caught in panic and drives into the crowd:
In this video, a clearly recognizable Egyptian police van runs into a crowd of peaceful marchers (posted by engai):
This post is part of our special coverage of Egypt Protests 2011.