student civil disobedience, Part A

Here is the statement from our students about the planned upcoming strikes:

AUCians Strike Statement

On February 11, 2012 AUC students will join millions of Egyptian students and workers in an open strike against an unjust regime. The death of our colleague Omar Ali Saad Mohsen confronted every AUCian with a fundamental fact about the current political moment in Egypt: people died in Port-Said not because they went to a football match but because we live under a regime that is capable of murder without accountability. If we do not stand firm now, there will be a day the regime will murder us here, inside the walls of this university.

We will stop attending classes starting February 11, 2012 and will mobilize students, faculty, and staff to join the strike. We will demonstrate inside AUC Campus and will join other Egyptian students who are on strike in the students’ demonstration organized nationally on February 21, 2012.

Our strike is a non-violent political action. It is the first step towards a mass strike involving all sectors across Egypt and aiming to reach a civil disobedience. Our enemy is political oppression, lack of accountability and social injustice. We have no issue with the AUC. We are striking in solidarity with millions of Egyptians who refuse to live under the threat of military trials, arbitrary arrests, and lack of accountability for those responsible for the senseless murder of Omar and hundreds of Egyptians since February 11, 2011.

The nationwide strike that we are part of has two demands:

1. Swift measures to prosecute and punish those responsible for the Port-Said massacre, the torture and killing of hundreds of Egyptians over the past year and for the crimes of the Mubarak regime.

2. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (“SCAF”) to immediately hand over executive powers to the elected civilians.

We call on all AUC students, faculty and staff to participate in the strike because murder without accountability must stop; because our education has no value when our lives have none; because our individual silence and in-action will make every one of us complicit in reproducing injustice. We strike to uphold the goals of the January 25 revolution of building an Egyptian society of dignity and justice.