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Suleiman: We will unleash “dark bats of the night… to terrorize people” if protests continue
Forbes
February 9, 2011
Egypt’s anti-government activists called on supporters Wednesday to expand their demonstrations in defiance of the vice president’s warning that protests calling for President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster would not be tolerated for much longer.
Vice President Omar Suleiman, who is managing the crisis, raised the prospect of a new crackdown on protesters Tuesday when he told Egyptian newspaper editors there could be a “coup” unless demonstrators agree to enter negotiations. The protesters insist they won’t talk before Mubarak steps down, which the president is refusing to do.
“He is threatening to impose martial law, which means everybody in the square will be smashed,” said Abdul-Rahman Samir, a spokesman for a coalition of the five main youth groups behind protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “But what would he do with the rest of the 70 million Egyptians who will follow us afterward.”
Suleiman is creating “a disastrous scenario,” Samir said. “We are striking and we will protest and we will not negotiate until Mubarak steps down. Whoever wants to threaten us, then let them do so,” he added.
For the first time, protesters were calling forcefully Wednesday for labor strikes, trying to draw powerful labor unions into support for their cause.
Suleiman’s warning was the latest in a series of confused messages from the government to the protesters. Officials have made a series of pledges not to attack, harass or arrest the activists in recent days, followed by Suleiman’s thinly veiled threat of a new crackdown.
“We can’t bear this for a long time,” he said of the Tahrir protests. “There must be an end to this crisis as soon as possible.” He said the regime wants to resolve the crisis through dialogue, warning: “We don’t want to deal with Egyptian society with police tools.”
He also warned of chaos if the situation continued, speaking of “the dark bats of the night emerging to terrorize the people.” If dialogue is not successful, he said, the alternative is “that a coup happens, which would mean uncalculated and hasty steps, including lots of irrationalities.”
Although it was not completely clear what the vice president intended in his “coup” comment, the protesters heard it as a veiled threat to impose martial law – which would be a dramatic escalation in the standoff.
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