Egypt reports five more cases of A/H1N1 flu

Egypt reported five more cases of influenza A/H1N1 on Sunday, bringing the total number of the flu in the populous country to 97, according to the Ministry of Health.

    The first case was a 27-year-old Indian man who just came from South Africa, the second was a six-year-old Egyptian boy who contacted other cases, and the third was a 14-year-old Egyptian, Health Ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman Shahine said in a statement.

    The fourth case was a British engineer (59) who worked in Cairo and the fifth was an Egyptian woman (27) who returned from London recently, said the spokesman.

    The health condition of the new cases is stable after proper treatment, said Shahine, adding that about 79 of the country’s total 97 cases have recovered.

    Egypt reported its first A/H1N1 flu case on June 2, a 12-year-old Egyptian-American girl coming from the United States via the Netherlands.

    Egypt, the most populous Arab country hit hard by the fatal bird flu in 2006, decided in late April to cull all pigs in the country to stem the highly infectious flu A/H1N1.

    So far the new flu virus has caused more than 100,000 laboratory-confirmed infections in some 136 countries and regions, with 440 deaths, according to latest figures provided by the World Health Organization, which on June 11 formally announced the first pandemic in the 21st century.

Tragic Symbol: Egypt’s Headscarf Martyr

The murder of Marwa al-Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian pharmacist stabbed to death in a German courtroom last week, has stoked growing anger in Egypt, where the local press has taken to referring to Sherbini as the “headscarf martyr.” But with everyone from Islamists to the government claiming her as a symbol of their cause, Sherbini’s death is transitioning from shocking tragedy to a weapon of religion and politics.On July 1, as a pregnant Sherbini prepared to give evidence against a German man of Russian descent who had been convicted and fined for trying to remove Sherbini’s headscarf and calling her a terrorist, the man ran across the courtroom and stabbed her 18 times. The attack has set off a wave of outrage in Egypt over what is perceived to be rising European racism and anti-Islamic sentiment. “What’s the problem with wearing the headscarf?” asks Ahmed Kiskh, a Cairo convenient-store owner. “This is racism against Islam, and ignorance about Islam.” (See TIME’s photos of Islam’s soft revolution)

Adding insult to injury, many say, was the indifference of the Western press - German papers at first buried the story, while it took papers in other countries several days to pick up on it. There was also the added detail that Sherbini’s husband was shot and injured by a guard who at first thought he was the attacker. And all that was compounded by the initial lack of a formal apology from Germany. (On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel offered her condolences to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the G-8 summit in Italy). “Had the Muslim been the aggressor as the guards initially thought, the story would have made headlines … It would have perfectly fitted into the promoted image of Muslims being aggressive, barbaric and uncivilized,” wrote a columnist in Egypt’s main English language daily, Daily News Egypt.

In Egypt, the reaction has been impassioned - some would say extreme. When Sherbini’s body was buried in her hometown of Alexandria on Monday, thousands turned out for the funeral, raising banners and, according to wire reports, chanting slogans such as, “The Germans are the enemies of God” and “Down with Germany.” Sherbini’s brother told the Associated Press that the family would “avenge her killing” and The Sheikh of Al-Azhar, one of Egypt’s top government-sponsored religious authorities, called for the maximum punishment for Sherbini’s murderer. The Egyptian Pharmacists’ Syndicate has even suggested a boycott of German drugs.

Not everyone is buying into the frenzied rhetoric. “‘Death to Germany?’ Why?,” asks taxi driver, Mohamed Abu Maryam, who says he is dismayed by some of the responses. “Why blame a country for the actions of an individual?”

But for many, Sherbini has become a convenient martyr, an easy, emotional means to an end - or a distraction from Egypt’s domestic woes. “The Islamists in Egypt have already [begun] using this as a card to mobilize for the veil - not for the right of women to wear whatever they want, but in defense of the veil,” Hossam el-Hamalawy, an Egyptian journalist and author of the popular blog Arabawy.org, tells TIME.

Indeed, Sherbini’s heroic status in the Egyptian press appears in large part to derive from her determination to wear the headscarf in what has been painted as a landscape of cruel, racist taunting. Her death has also become the latest weapon in the controversy over remarks made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy last month, in which he equated the most conservative style of Islamic women’s dress, the burqa, with subservience. “This is cowardly act supported by many western politicians like Sarkozy … We should stand against such an inhumane act,” wrote one man on the message board of a Facebook group titled “Defending The Rights of the Late Marwa El-Sherbini,” which claims over 1,000 members.

But more salient than the women’s dress issue is the manipulation of Sherbini as a symbol of Islam in a perceived stand-off between the Muslim world and the West. “She is a martyr of Islam and justice will be served on the day of judgment,” wrote one man on the wall of another Facebook group, “Marwa El-Sherbini ‘Muslim Martyr.’” Even Iran, Egypt’s traditional adversary, has joined the fray, holding a symbolic funeral for Sherbini in Tehran on Friday, and summoning the German ambassador to the Foreign Ministry to hear Iran’s formal protest over the attack.

Some accuse the Egyptian government, too, of claiming Sherbini’s tragedy for its own purposes. The attention the government has given the case - called a “bloodbath” in the state-sponsored press - strikes many in Egypt as contrived, given Egypt’s dismal track record in protecting its citizens both at home and abroad. Human rights organizations and the local press point to abuses suffered by Egyptian migrant workers in the Persian Gulf states, as the government seemingly turns a blind eye. “The government is also trying to hijack the campaign and trying to present itself as patriotic in defense of Egyptians abroad,” says journalist Hamalawy. “What do they do for the Egyptians who are in the Gulf and who actually face similar treatment, if not worse?”

For the man in the street, Sherbini provides an easy outlet for Egyptian frustration - a distraction, some say, from the more serious abuses of an authoritarian regime. “The whole thing is just stupid. But it’s convenient,” says popular blogger Mahmoud Salem. “It’s an opportunity to have fake outrage because it keeps Egyptians busy.”

The ultimate impact of Sherbini’s death remains uncertain, but what’s clear is that Egypt will continue to hold the murdered pharmacist up as a martyr as long as someone, or some group, finds it useful to do so. “The debate could be taken in any direction at the moment,” says Hamalawy. “It depends on the actors on the ground . . . and how they are going to mobilize around it.”

Egypt’s Christians see bias in pig slaughter

The Egyptian government is using swine flu as an excuse to get rid of tens of thousands of pigs raised by garbage collectors who live amid the refuse in Cairo slums. But the move has prompted accusations Monday that Muslims are attacking minority Christians, who breed the animals.

The government last week ordered the slaughter of all the country’s 300,000 pigs as a precaution against swine flu, even though no cases have been reported in the country. But after the World Health Organization criticized the measure as entirely unnecessary, the government expanded the rationale for the slaughter to confront a long-standing hygienic problem posed by pigs and garbage dumps in the midst of densely populated areas of the capital.

An estimated quarter of a million people in Cairo, primarily poor Christians, make their living from garbage collecting and raising pigs in city slums. They collect the refuse, dump it in the courtyards of their house and comb through it for material recycled in crude workshops nearby while the animals feed on food waste.

Islam forbids Muslims from eating pork because pigs are considered unclean. With pig raising and consumption almost entirely confined to Christians, some see the slaughter as having religious overtones.

The city’s garbage collectors say destroying pigs is an attack on their livelihood that will only further impoverish them and they clashed violently with police on Sunday as government workers came to haul the animals away for slaughter.

“This is all because we are Christians. This is the only reason,” said one middle-aged garbage collector in Cairo, evoking a common sentiment. He would not give his name because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Christians make up an estimated 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million and for the most part live in harmony with the country’s Muslims, though they occasionally complain over discrimination.

The government denies the slaughter has anything to do with Muslim distaste for pork and maintains that new, hygienic pig farms using imported animals will be set up in two years time.

But Adel Hammouda, the chief editor of the weekly al-Fagr and a Muslim, picked up on the religious undertones in his column this week entitled “Sectarian flu in Egypt.”

“They found in this black epidemic their golden opportunity to wage their religious war against Christianity, hiding behind the pigs,” he wrote.

Egyptian Christian groups in the U.S. have also condemned the move as singling out Christians and targeting their economic lifeline.

“The question is why the government decided to destroy all Egyptian swine? The answer is simple, it’s part of the forced Islamization which has been planned for over 50 years,” said Archbishop Ashraf Ramelah, head of the U.S.-based Voice for Copts, as Egypt’s Christians are known.

The government maintains that it has long been working to move the pig farms out of these slums because their steady diet of scraps and the city’s organic refuse, is unhygienic.

According to Isaac Mikhail, the head of Garbage Collectors’ Association, pig farmers want to move out of the slums to cleaner pastures, but have been prevented by the local municipality.

“If the government had moved us ten years ago, we wouldn’t have faced this problem now. People are desperate to move to healthier location,” he said. “We want to separate the pigs from the birds from the humans to prevent the virus.”

Other critics of the government decision have pointed out that removing the pigs does not address another major part of the health hazard — the massive piles of rotting garbage in the slums.

Egyptian officials say they have killed about 700 pigs so far and they insist they are pressing ahead with slaughter of all swine in the country despite the mounting criticism.

The World Health Organization says the H1N1 virus that sickened 1,000 people around the world and killed 27 is being spread by humans, adding that pork products are safe to eat.

Egypt’s decision threatens to devastate the country’s largely Christian-run pork industry in Egypt. Girgis Youssef Boulis, the head of pork producer Ramsis Meats, said pork accounts for about 30 percent of the country’s total meat production.

“There is a 100 percent impact on sales. They’ve ground to a halt,” said Boulis, whose company — one of the largest pork producers in Egypt — employs about 100 people and runs state of the art farms in the countryside.

“If this continues, one of the first things that I will think about is layoffs,” he said. “But more than that, there are the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people at stake in this industry, from the farmers, to the producers, to the workers and the drivers who deliver the meat.”

“I’ve invested millions of pounds in equipment, including buildings, fridges, etc. Who will compensate me for these millions in investments?”

The move is already having an impact on the market for other meats, he said. Domestic fish prices have surged about 100 percent as people turn to other lean, protein-rich meats in place of pork.

“If beef prices haven’t gone up now, they will in a week,” Boulis predicted.

Pig farmers clash with police

Clashes erupted in Cairo on Sunday between Egyptian police and pig farmers who were trying to prevent their animals being taken away for slaughter, an AFP correspondent said.

Egypt began a mass cull of the nation’s 250,000 pigs on Saturday, despite the World Health Organisation saying there was no evidence the animals were transmitting swine flu to humans.

No cases of swine flu, or influenza A(H1N1), have been reported in the Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world.

Bardot slams planned pig cull

French animal rights activist and former actress Brigitte Bardot has written to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, slamming the decision to slaughter the country’s pig population in the wake of swine flu.

“Taking advantage of the global hysteria over the propagation of ‘Mexican’ flu, which has nothing to do with animals, in order to launch a campaign to exterminate pigs raised by a destitute section of the population is extremely cowardly,” Bardot wrote in the letter, a copy of which was also sent to AFP.

On Wednesday, the authorities announced that Egypt’s estimated 250,000 pigs would be culled as the world grappled with the spread of swine flu.

But on Thursday, Cairo said the cull was a general health measure rather than a precaution against swine flu after the United Nations said there was no evidence the animals were spreading the disease.

Egypt’s pig population belongs to and is eaten by members of the Coptic Christian minority. The animals are reared in Cairo slums inhabited mostly by Christian rubbish collectors.

In her letter, Bardot urged the authorities not to proceed with their stated intention to set up what the agriculture ministry’s head of infectious diseases Saber Abdel Aziz Galal called “new farms in special areas, like in Europe.”

She called such facilities “horrific and shameful.”

“To want to kill all these animals and then later establish intensive piggeries where they will be packed tightly together and badly treated is unacceptable,” she wrote, urging Mubarak to prevent the planned slaughter.

Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza said on Thursday the mass slaughter would begin in earnest on Saturday.

“It will take three weeks to a month, they’ll kill them in specialised slaughterhouses after they’ve been checked for swine flu,” state news agency MENA quoted him as saying.

Egypt orders slaughter of all pigs over swine flu

 Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precautionary measure against the spread of swine flu even though no cases have been reported here yet, the Health Ministry said.

The move immediately provoked resistance from pig farmers. At one large pig farming center just north of Cairo, farmers refused to cooperate with Health Ministry workers who came to slaughter the animals and the workers left without carrying out the government order.

“It has been decided to immediately start slaughtering all the pigs in Egypt using the full capacity of the country’s slaughterhouses,” Health Minister Hatem el-Gabaly told reporters after a Cabinet meeting with President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt’s overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork due to religious restrictions. But the animals are raised and consumed by the Christian minority, which some estimates put at 10 percent of the population.

Health Ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman estimated there were between 300,000-350,000 pigs in Egypt.

Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza told reporters that farmers would be allowed to sell the pork meat so there would be no need for compensation.

In 2008, following fears over diseases spread by animals, Mubarak ordered all pig and chicken farms moved out of population areas. But the order was never implemented.

Pigs can be found in many places around Muslim world, often raised by religious minorities who can eat pork. But they are banned entirely in some Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Libya.

In Jordan, the government decided Wednesday to shut down the country’s five pig farms, involving 800 animals, for violating public health safety regulations.

Police on strike alert

Egypt ordered its police on alert to foil a nationwide strike planned by pro-democracy activists for Monday.

Sunday’s order from the Interior Ministry came a day after police arrested 28 activists of the April 6 Movement, which has called for the strike to protest government restrictions on the activity of political groups.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, said it will also take part in the strike.

Plain clothes security men were deployed in Cairo’s main squares and around several government offices where the activists said they will stage their protests, Interior Ministry officials said.

The April 6 Movement gets its name from the date last year of a strike by workers at a textile factory who were demanding higher wages.

That protest prompted a brutal police crackdown.

Following that episode, the movement’s activists attempted to channel popular discontent over lack of democracy, corruption and human rights abuses through protests organised by cellphone messages and the social networking site Facebook.

However, their call last year for a nationwide strike on May 4, President Hosni Mubarak’s birthday, went largely unheeded.

The group says it has the support of 75 000 members.

Couple jailed for swinging

A Cairo court has sentenced a man to seven years and his wife to three years in prison for setting up a swingers’ club, the press reported on Sunday, in a case that has angered conservative Egyptian society.

Tolba Abdel Hafez, a 48-year-old civil servant, and his wife Salwa Higazi, a 37-year-old schoolteacher, were sentenced by the Agouza Criminal Court on Saturday, the state-owned Al-Gomhuria reported.

Extra-marital sex is illegal in the mainly Muslim country where Islamic law is a principal source of legislation.

The Cairo couple, who have children, used the pseudonyms Magdy and Samira on a website and in e-mails to organise wife-swapping parties and orgies.

They were arrested in October on prostitution charges and confessed to having sexual relations with three other couples, although at least 44 couples signed up for Cairo swinging sessions via the website.

In sentencing the pair, the judge described the case as “one of the worst crimes committed,” Al-Gomhuria reported.

Rights groups have criticised the 1961 law that can be used to prosecute suspects because it defines certain sexual acts as prostitution even if no money changes hands.

Egypt village mob torches Bahai homes

Egyptian villagers have set fire to Bahai homes after a member of the religion said on television the village was “full of Bahais,” the latest incident to reflect religious tensions in the country.

Furious villagers rampaged through Sharoniyah, near Sohag in southern Egypt, on Monday and Tuesday, setting fire to and damaging four Bahai homes, a security official told AFP, asking not to be named.

The fires spread to two Muslim homes which were also damaged, the official said.

The villagers also threatened the village’s roughly 30 Bahais with death, the official said, after which all of them fled.

Police have detained six people in relation to the attacks are are questioning them, and additional police have been deployed in the area.

The arson attacks were the culmination of unrest that began with stone throwing immediately after a Bahai named Ahmed called a television talk show that was discussing the religious minority on Saturday night.

Ahmed, who now lives in Cairo after fleeing persecution in Sharoniyah, described the village as “full of Bahais,” which showed that Egypt’s around 2,000 Bahais are not just a minority in Cairo.

Several human rights organisations denounced the “criminal aggression” against the Bahais and called on the authorities to prosecute those responsible.

Sectarian tensions run high in Egypt, with sporadic violence erupting between Muslims and Coptic Christians. Reports of anti-Bahai violence are rare.

Clashes and killings between Muslims and Copts have broken out sporadically over the past decades in Egypt, where Copts account for an estimated six to 10 percent of the country’s 80 million inhabitants.

In March, a village north of Cairo saw three days of violent clashes between Muslims and Copts that left one Copt dead.

In October, a Copt shot at his sister and her family, killing her husband, after she converted to Islam and married a Muslim,

Bahais frequently complain of persecution in Egypt, which until recently only allowed citizens to put Islam, Christianity or Judaism as their religion on identity cards. A recent court ruling has allowed citizens to leave the religion field blank.

A column in the state-owned Al-Gomhuriyah newspaper said on Tuesday that the Bahais, whose world headquarters are in Haifa, Israel, are connected to “world Zionism.”

Columnist Gamal Abdel Rahim described the Bahai as “a deviant group which seeks to harm Islam to serve the interests of the enemies of the Muslim religion, in particular world Zionism.”

“I know very well that the villagers of Sharoniyah protect their religion and their beliefs. The proof is that the Bahai Ahmed himself admitted during the programme that he had stones thrown at him at his home because he abandoned Islam.”

Bahais consider Bahaullah, born in 1817, the last prophet sent by God, while Muslims believe the last messenger of God was the Prophet Mohammed.

Of the faith’s 12 principles including the unity of mankind, the elimination of all forms of prejudice, gender equality and independent investigation of truth, it is obedience to government that Bahais most stress in Egypt.

Egyptian Bahais do not join political parties, take part in demonstrations or hold elections for their spiritual assemblies.

Egypt skips key Arab summit on unity

Egypt’s president will skip a key Arab summit this week, the country’s foreign minister announced Saturday, in a move highlighting divisions within the group.

President Hosni Mubarak will not attend the Arab summit in Qatar on Monday, although Egypt will still be represented at the annual gathering, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said on Saturday.

He also stayed away from a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Doha on Saturday in advance of the summit.

Egypt and Qatar have recently taken rival approaches to the Palestinian crisis as Cairo continues to mediate talks aimed at Palestinian reconciliation and forging a sustainable ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian group ruling the Gaza Strip.

Qatari officials tried to play down Mubarak’s decision not to participate.

“Egypt is a represented in the summit and we respect their decision. … I can’t say that the Egyptian-Qatari relations are excellent, but we have a good working relation,” Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani told reporters after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers on Saturday.

Also Saturday, Arab League chief Amr Moussa said that a resolution rejecting an international court’s arrest warrant for Sudan’s president would be issued during the summit.

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