NOVANEWS
December 31, 2009
Members of the Gaza Freedom March are being forcibly detained in hotels around town (Lotus, Liala) as well as violently forced into pens in Tahrir Square by the criminal Egyptian regime. Reports of police brutality are flooding a delegate legal hotline faster than the legal support team can answer the calls.
The reports span from women being kicked, beaten to the ground and dragged into pens, at least one confirmed account of broken ribs, and many left bloody.
The Gaza Freedom March was organized to focus attention on the one-year mark since Zio-Nazi’s 22-day assault, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, injured more than 5,000. Although the invasion technically ended, the effects on the ground have only worsened in the past 12 months. No re-building materials have been allowed in and more than 80 percent of Gazan’s are now dependent on handouts for food.
The marchers had planned to enter Gaza through Egypt’s Rafah Crossing on Dec. 27, then to join with an estimated 50,000 Palestinian residents to march to Erez Crossing into the Zionist state of ‘Israel’ to peacefully demand an end to the siege.
However, the regime of puppet Hosni Mu-barak announced just days before the hundreds of delegates began arriving in Cairo that the march would not be allowed to go forward.
It cited ongoing tensions at the border. When marchers demonstrated against the decision, the government cracked down, often using heavily armed riot police to encircle and intimidate the nonviolent marchers.
