The Center for Trade Union and Worker Services strongly condemns the break in of the security forces into the press syndicate on the evening of Sunday May 1^st in an unprecedented incidents in our country.

The Center asserts that all the excuses and reasoning that are used to justify this stark attack on freedoms will not be able to decrease the seriousness of this matter or reduce the shock to society as a whole.

In the past decades we witnessed many forms of violations and dodging rights or doing away with them. However no one had previously dared break into professional syndicates and violate their sanctuary as we had witnessed in the past few days. Targeted people sought sanctuary in their syndicates when they had been wanted for political reasons and some of them took refuge there for days until they felt it was safe to turn themselves in and stand in front of the prosecution without being subjected to being subjected to assault by security forces. Tens and hundreds staged sit ins on the premises of their syndicates in objection to certain policies or decisions; organized crowded conferences and loud events and the regime did not break into the syndicate’s premises in this shameful manner. 

As we condemn this blatant assault on the press syndicate, we are not able – and many others like us- to believe or accept that their intention was only to arrest journalists Amr Badr and Mahmoud Al Sakka. We all see further than this in the security crowds that have besieged the syndicate since Sunday morning; in ignoring to communicate with the syndicate; in the way that the break in happened. Maybe this was because the field has no place anymore for this narrow margin of press freedom, and maybe because it rents its halls to events and activities that security apparatus prevent hotels and festivities hall are banned from hosting, maybe because the stairway of the syndicate embraces protestors demanding various rights- despite that the same security forces demand that they organize their protests there rather than any other place they request a permission for.

Maybe because of any of that or because of all of it. Because of all of this, this break in cannot be accepted with all the messages it implies.

CTUWS condemns the break into the press syndicate and rejects all the justifications in this respect. It also holds the prosecution above being forced as a factor in the conflict and get caught up in presenting justifications for attacking freedoms. It also implores everyone in society who has any reason to realize the depth of the crisis that is being driven to and its danger.

CTUWS joins all other democratic forces and parties and announces its solidarity with professional unions in rejecting the break into the press syndicate. This is not only in defense of it or of freedoms and rights that are all being violated by the break into the press syndicate; but in defense of the constitution- the social contract that we have all accepted- and that the state apparatus insist on considering ink over paper despite this contract being the validation of the legitimacy of any regime and the primary reference for every verdict and judiciary.

No for the attack on the press syndicate

Together in defense of the rights without which no society can become settled and balanced.

The Center for Trade Union and Worker Services

Tuesday May 3^rd 2016