by Anna-Liza Kozma | CBC.ca | January 31, 2011
Egyptian-Canadians and other sympathizers gather in Toronto's Dundas Square on Saturday, Jan. 29, 2011, to support the protests taking place in Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/Canadian Press)
An Egyptian-Canadian and a research scientist for Environment Canada, Dr. Shokr has been in intermittent email and phone contact with his son, a Ph.D. student, who has been taking part in the demonstrations in Cairo's central Tahrir Square over the last few days.
"Freedom has a price," Dr. Shokr says. "If the price is for me to go though this hard time and be worried about my son for a day or two, then so be it. Hopefully, it will end soon."
Hundreds of Canadians — many of them with family connections in the Middle East — called our program on Sunday to voice their concerns, excitement and insights about the standoff in Egypt.
Iman Noffeir, who left Egypt in 1974 and now lives in Montreal with her immediate family, feels overwhelmed by conflicting emotions.
"I'm not normally a political person," she told me. "But right now I am cycling between depression and elation, between joy and fear."
A matter of pride
This weekend, Ms. Noffeir, a project manager for a phone company, attended a small demonstration outside the Egyptian Consulate in Montreal and was struck by how the protests in Cairo have raised the hopes of so many. "In this particular standstill, it's a matter of pride," she says.
"Any Egyptian today is feeling that if this gets squashed and people submit again to Mubarak, than nobody is going to have any feeling of pride at all to say that 'I'mEgyptian.'
(Right) Meanwhile, in Montreal, suppporters gathered on Friday in front of the Egyptian Consulate. (Ryan Remiroz/Canadian Press)
"My sister-in-law told me that if the demonstrations in Cairo are squashed, as student protests in the '70s were, then she would never again be able to hold her head up."
Kamal Mattar, a surgeon from Niagara Falls, Ont. who worked with the grassroots peace organization Code Pink in Gaza last year, said he was ecstatic to see the vehement protests in Egypt.
"The truth is that the entire region of the Muslim and Arab world has been oppressed since the end of World War Two and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It's due time that we are seeing a social revolution."
Everyone is watching
Dr. Mattar, whose Palestinian family emigrated to Egypt, said that he hopes for a democratic socialist regime to take hold there "like the revolutions that we've seen through South America and Bolivia and Venezuela."
But he also believes that will take time and that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei would be a good interim leader.
Mona Eltahowy, an award-winning columnist for Qatar's Al Arab newspaper, Israel's The Jerusalem Report and Denmark's Politiken, believes that governments and ordinary people across the Middle East are watching the events in Tunisia and Egypt closely, but with differing motivations.
"Every single Arab country has been led by a dictator for a number of years now," she told us.
"So you can be sure that the governments of all of those countries are watching what's happening in Egypt in terror, because they are worried that if Mubarak falls — and Mubarak will fall, I'm convinced he's finished — they're worried that they will be next."
She also suggests that "the people of all of those countries are watching Egypt in delight, because they are watching a people whose imaginations are released, and watching a people who are standing up to a dictator, and it's incredibly inspiring.
"I call Hosni Mubarak 'the Berlin Wall,' and when he falls, everyone will fall."
No going back
Samira Moheeadin, who lives in Toronto and was a student during the 1979 Iranian revolution, struck a cautionary note about mixing change with religious fundamentalism.
(Below) And in London, Ont., more Canadians gathered to support the protests taking place in Egypt. (Dave Chidley/Canadian Press)
"My message to Egyptian friends is to not go down that path," Moheeadin said. "I have seen the consequences of mixing religion with the state."
As for ElBaradei, who has been negotiating, it has been reported, with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Moheeadin says: "ElBaradei is one person, one figure. He doesn't have any organization behind himself.
"He might come along with the Muslim Brotherhood because, from what I am hearing, they have the most organized system. They will use him and at a certain point, they will get rid of him. The same way [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini did with [Mehdi] Bazargan, who was head of the Freedom movement in Iran."
Tamer Mahdi called from Toronto to voice the frustrations of his extended family and other ordinary citizens in Egypt. On the one hand, he says, people on the streets are saying, "There's no going back," and yet the government seems determined to stay.
"Hundreds of thousands of people are going into the streets of all Egyptian cities with one main demand: the regime should go. People are starting to refer to it as the 'previous regime' already, but the regime is still there," he says in disbelief.
"The president was today [Sunday, Jan. 30] on national television, along with the military command. Egyptians are shocked. They can't believe that after all that the regime has seen, that knowing the majority of people are against them, they continue to rule."
At least for the time being.
With files from Sandra Ferrari
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2011/01/31/f-egypt-canadian-voices.html
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