Egypt Follow

For over half a century the small Egyptian village of Kamshish in the Nile Delta has been a battleground between Egypt's landlords and its impoverished peasant farmers.

Democracy campaigners in Egypt are sensing victory in a battle of wills with the government over the persecution of two judges who exposed widespread ballot ballot rigging in last November’s parliamentary elections.

Two Egyptian high court judges, Mahmud Mekki and Hisham Bastawisi, have become unlikely heroes of the country’s movement for democracy.

About 50 people picketed the Egyptian embassy in London last Saturday against the continuing arrests and beatings of democracy activists in the cities of Cairo and Alexandria.

Egyptian state security forces have arrested 11 democracy activists as part of a crackdown on the opposition Kifaya movement.

Egyptian security forces last week seized leading members of the Kifaya movement – Enough in Arabic – during an attack on a sit-in held in support of a protest by 80 judges in the capital, Cairo.

In our school history books it is called "the Suez crisis". This was the moment when the sun went down on the British Empire. Egyptians call the events of October and November 1956 "the triple aggression". They remember with pride how they defeated an invasion by Israel, Britain and France.

In 1956 I was a worker in a small factory in Alexandria. I had only just got out prison after two and half years on a charge of leading a Communist organisation. I was 17 years old and a member of a group called Workers’ Vanguard.

"Keep the movement on the streets" was the message of the Fourth Cairo Conference against imperialism and globalisation, which was held in the Egyptian capital last week.

British anti-war activists have a great opportunity to join hundreds of Arab and international delegates in Egypt later this month for the fourth Cairo Conference against US intervention and occupation in the Middle East.

The Egyptian state, a key US ally the Middle East, revealed the hypocrisy of George Bush’s vision of democracy for the region when it detained Respect MP George Galloway last weekend.

Respect MP George Galloway has been refused entry to Egypt on the grounds of "state security".