Egypt: “We will not leave until he goes!”

Eyewitness report from Cairo’s Tahrir Square
[see also: articles in Arabic]

Following huge demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria yesterday, President Hosni Mubarak stated that he would step down in September. Protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square vowed however to continue their demonstrations to force Mubarak to leave office. This afternoon saw dramatic clashes as supporters of the discredited dictator attacked protestors, including with firearms, mounted on horses and camels, in a last-ditch attempt to intimidate demonstrators off the streets. Armed forces have thus far remained “neutral”, issuing an order for the dispersal of the gatherings of both sides.

Below, we publish an interview conducted by socialistworld.net before this afternoon’s events, with a CWI reporter in Tahrir Square, central Cairo.

Read the interview here: http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4820

The CWI calls for:

• For mass workers’ action, including a general strike, for the immediate overthrow of Mubarak and the whole rotten, brutal regime
• For full democratic rights immediately, including the right to assemble, to strike and to organise democratic independent trade unions
• For the creation of democratically elected committees of mass struggle, and defence against state repression, in the workplaces, communities, schools and colleges, linked on local, regional and national scale, to spearhead the resistance
• For rank and file committees of police and soldiers - Side with the masses & purge the officers and hierarchy
• No to sectarianism – For the unity of all workers across religious lines
• No trust in any new ‘national unity’ regime based on the interests of the ruling class and imperialism
• For immediate and free elections to a revolutionary democratic constituent assembly - For a majority workers’ and rural workers’ government
• For a living minimum wage, guaranteed jobs, a massive programme of house building, education and health
• End the Egyptian blockade of Gaza – For self-determination for Palestine and for workers’ unity and mass action to overthrow dictators across the region
• For the nationalisation of Egypt’s big corporations, the banks and large estates and their democratic planning to meet the needs of the masses not an elite
• For a socialist Egypt and a socialist confederation of the region, on an equal and voluntary basis