Translation of report in Arabic by Hisham Fouad. Original here.

Update: 19 June. Court finds teacher union activists not guilty of incitement to strike and assaulting a police officer.

13 June

Prosecutors in Nasr City, Cairo, ordered the detention of two supply teachers, Atif al-Gazzar, secretary of the Independent Supply Teachers’ Union from Kafr al-Dawwar and Hamada Qurni for four days from 13 June on charges of breach of the peace. The two teachers were arrested on the night of 12 June by the military police in an attempt to break up a sit-in organised by supply teachers outside the administration buildings in Nasr City to demand permanent contracts.

The teachers, who had come from several different provinces, were terrorised and harassed by the military police who fired shots in their direction and surrounded the sit-in, despite the participants’ insistence that their action was peaceful.

According to supply teacher Anwar Muhammad, hundreds of his colleagues had gathered to demand the implementation of decision No. 75 issued by the Minister of Education on 2 March which decreed that those on temporary contracts should be made permanent after completing three years’ service, and contracts issued to those who had not yet completed this term. “Some of us have been working on temporary contracts for twenty years”, he added.

Add your name to the statement in protest at the Egyptian government’s attack on the right to strike and protest here:

To send a message of solidarity to Atif al-Gazzar and Hamada Qurni email menasolidarity@gmail.com