Center for Trade Union & Workers' Services

CTUWS activist has been persecuted in Qenah

 Security and administrative harassments, from which CTUWS and its activists had been suffering for the last three years, are still continued. Such harassments were started for the first time by colonel, El Sherbine Hashish, president of Nagh Hamady city council (Qenah governorate), when he issued, on 29th of March 2007, the administrative decision No.44 to shut the CTUWS branch in the city. Afterwards, severest decisions had been taken, led to shutting CTUWS and all of its various branches. After reopening by a court decision, we thought that these harassments are over and our role, as a civil society organization, is finally respected. However we were mistaken. Yesterday, on 14th of February, we got surprised that Mr. Atef Mahmoud Mohammed Esmael, a teacher in El Hibalat primary school, and one of our most active members in Qenah governorate, has been transferred, without a specific reason, to Abu Shosha School, three hours distances from his house, according to a decision issued by the director of Abu Tesht Educational Administration. El Hibalat primary school's head master, Masoud Atia, and his deputy, Abd El Moneam Kamal, refused to give Atef a copy of the decision, and told him that he has to be transferred immediately without a word. They prevented him to clock in or out, while they were talking in the telephone with an unknown person, telling him what was going on in details.

This action, which is taken against a nongovernmental organization activist, reveals how the state and its government select the severest administrative and security ones, as the only method to deal with all classes and groups of civil society, making any development or serious democratic reform impossible, and leading to a desperate status pushes the people towards violent trends.