Attackers wielding machetes, knives and axes created mayhem at scattered polling places around Egypt on Sunday, killing one man and wounding dozens of others. The violence was seen as a government effort to create chaos to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from making further gains in the second round of three-stage parliamentary elections.
Voters at some polling places praised the government for its organization, with independent judges supervising transparent ballot boxes. But the violence erupted around polling places that were considered strongholds for the Muslim Brotherhood, which did surprisingly well in the first round of elections, particularly in poorer neighborhoods in this Mediterranean city.
The man killed was identified as the driver for one candidate. The driver was stabbed to death by one of the attackers -- many of whom, election observers said, appeared to be high on drugs or drunk and who were brought into the areas on trucks by the security services.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and the Independent Committee on Election Monitoring confirmed reports of widespread violence in the nine regions where the second stage of the election is taking place to choose 144 candidates for the 454-seat parliament.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed but has been tolerated in recent years, announced that 400 of its followers had been rounded up in 24 hours, and the Alexandria office said 42 had been wounded in clashes at polling places.
The governing National Democratic Party has long controlled parliament, which has served as a rubber stamp for the autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak for 24 years. But following the first presidential elections allowing a choice this year, the ruling party also seemed to be giving a freer hand to candidates in elections for the parliament.
These elections are considered particularly significant because this parliament and the next are expected to play a significant role in rewriting the constitutional rules that will determine how the successor to the 77-year-old president is chosen.
The Muslim Brotherhood, whose members run as independents, won 34 seats out of the 164 that were up for election in the first round, doubling the number of seats its members held in all of the last parliament, elected in 2000.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS