veiled4allah: is this the new democracy in Egypt?

Abu Aardvark:

Well. Lovely. Democracy... marching along... and beating the shinola out of anyone who isn't marching in ranks, while groping as many available protesting women as possible.

What's that about? Read on:

Kifaya men were dragged into the crowds of Mubarak supporters, beaten badly about the face and kicked repeatedly when they fell to the ground. In one instance, Kifaya member Ragab Mahdi, a young woman, was trapped against the grate for an underground garage with riot police between her and the pro-Mubarak men.

As the riot police began to move aside to allow the men through, she screamed, "What are you doing, they're going to kill us."

An Egyptian journalist off to the side urged the police to intervene, but was told, "Our orders are to allow this to happen." After the men beat her for a few minutes, older men in suits working with the attackers told them to back off and, her clothes torn and her body bruised, she was bundled into a taxi and taken to safety...

...One woman trying to leave the building was pounced upon by Mubarak loyalists who punched and pummeled her with batons and tore her clothes. As police looked on, the woman screamed, then vomited and fainted.

Another clash occurred when demonstrators placed Kifaya stickers onto placards emblazoned with Mubarak's face and waved them in the air, chanting, "Leave, leave Mubarak!"

An Associated Press reporter on the scene said plainclothes state security investigators were beating, groping and verbally harassing demonstrators, particularly women.

About a dozen people, mostly women, were violently cornered and surrounded by nightstick-toting plainclothes police. Some began beating demonstrators. The AP reporter was grabbed and pulled by the hair...

...Two days after Laura Bush and Suzanne Mubarak held their summit meeting about the necessity of girls' and women's "empowerment" in the Middle East, Mubarak's hired thugs battered and sexually assaulted women protestors and reporters, as they did during the 2003 anti-war protests and during parliamentary elections. AP reporter Sarah al-Deeb is no stranger to Mubarak's thuggery, this is the umpteenth time she gets assaulted while doing her job. Women were pulled by the hair, punched and kicked, and dragged on the ground until their clothes came off, while policemen stood by watching. To all the women and men who had their bodies violated while peacefully demanding self-rule today: your pains are not forgotten, your bravery humbles us, your souls edify us. Your blood is on the hands of this despotic regime, until the day of reckoning

Via Needlenose

Update: Al-Jazeera reports on the reformists' latest campaign, to demand apologies from the Egyptian government for the molesting of the women. The article also describes more about the reformist movement.