Six teenage students detained for protesting for better education

A Cairo prosecution office is accusing six students between the ages of 15 and 17 of thuggery and illegal assembly after taking part in a protest yesterday demanding a better education system.

“They are being accused of illegal assembly, thuggery, attacking security forces, and destroying public property,” said Ahmed Osman, a lawyer at the non-governmental Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, who has been attending the investigations at the prosecutor's office today on behalf of the students.

The students are Mazen Mostafa, Mostafa Ibrahim, Abanoub Atef, Ahmed Khalil, Mohamed Abdel Moneim, and Abu Bakr Ali.

Osman told Mada Masr that a total of 17 students were arrested yesterday in a “random” manner. Eleven male and female students were then released.

The secondary school students were protesting in front of the Ministry of Education in Cairo yesterday with four main demands, including holding those who leaked this year’s exams to account and improving the country’s education strategy, according the General Secondary School Union’s Facebook page.

Students who attend general secondary school, referred to as "thanaweya amma" in Arabic, are pre-university students whose exams determine which university college they will go to.

A scandal was caused last month when a nationwide high school examination was leaked on the Internet using mobile phones illegally allowed into the classrooms, the state-run Ahram Online news website reported, citing Education Minister Mahmoud Nasrallah. Answers were being shared online during the three-hour exam.

The thanweya amma exams are said to be the toughest in the country, in an education system much criticized for its flaws.

The students were arrested after trying to storm the ministry building, according to the state-run Ahram Gate Arabic language news website. When security forces prevented them from entering the building, the students responded with anti-police chants and threw stones at officers. Policemen responded with tear gas to break up the protest, Ahram Gate reported.

The union, however, has a different description of what happened. According to their Facebook page, the people who started throwing stones were unknown to the students. The union was in fact against the protest for fear of what may happen to the students.

Thousands of people have been arrested over the last year, particularly after the implementation of a Protest Law passed last November, which restricts people’s right to assembly without prior police permission.

Education Ministry Spokesperson Hany Kamal accused some of the students of raising the flag of Al-Qaeda, the international Islamist militant network, during the protest. The students denied this.

In a separate incident, two Alexandria University students were arrested from their homes yesterday morning, and their whereabouts remain unknown, Taher Mokhtar, an Alexandria-based activist doctor, told Mada Masr.

It is unclear why they were arrested, but they are active in student protests demanding a better education system and broadly denouncing violations by Egypt’s security forces, he said.