Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

With UN Quiet On SCAF Crackdown in Tahrir, Protest at Egypt NY Consulate

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 21 -- Amid the continued army crackdown in Tahrir Square in Cairo, a protest was held on a rainy Wednesday in Manhattan, ten blocks north of the United Nations.

  In front of the Egyptian consulate on Second Avenue, a chant went up, "Hey Obama, can't you hear, people are dying in Tahrir." A young woman told the story of a 20 year old engineering student with three sister, who was shot by the SCAF and after 30 hours in intensive care, died. Click here to view short video on Inner City Press channel, & below.

  At the UN, surprisingly little is being said about this round of violence in Egypt. Visible senior UN officialdom contains a number of former Mubarak cronies; the Permanent members of the Security Council seem to have little interest in raising the issue of Egypt as some are, for example, Syria.

  The Permanent Representative of a non-permanent Security Council member approached Inner City Press and said he'd raised Egypt in the Council, and at the members' lunch with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

  But Ban Ki-moon has employed, and as reported yesterday defended, Shaaban Shaaban who worked for Mubarak, click here for that story. The UN just moves on to the next issue. Watch this site.

Footnote: the protest at the Egyptian consulate had some support from activists from Occupy Wall Street. An earlier OWS "mission" to observe the elections in Egypt got canceled after Mayor Michael Bloomberg's and Brookfield Properties' eviction of Zuccotti Park (or "Liberty Square"). But OWS continues to look globally, and at banks, to it credit.