Egypt April 6 Movement launches initiative to unite opposition

Egypt's April 6 youth movement has called on all parties that participated in the 2011 uprising which toppled long-serving president Hosni Mubarak to "rise above partisan interests and unite behind the goals of the revolution."

In a statement first published a year ago, Movement Coordinator-General, Amr Ali, said April 6 had prepared a five-point initiative to reunite the opposition, noting that the five points included the need for the public to be part of opposition activities in the days to come, the need for forming a salvation government in Egypt and spreading justice.

Ali urged all those who "participated in the revolution and believed in its objectives to unite once again in order to achieve the dream [of the revolution], now that everyone realizes that the situation is worse than it was before the [2011] revolution."

"Tens of thousands of detainees from all political affiliations are unjustly imprisoned; they are the ones leading the revolutionary movement, after they were brought together by the injustice, killing, torture and arrests, irrespective of their ideological differences."

Twenty Egyptian opposition groups said Sunday that they had been discussing unity ahead of the fourth anniversary of the 25 January revolution that ousted longstanding President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

"The time has come for us to restore popular unity in preparation for a new wave of the January revolution," the 20 groups said in a joint statement on Sunday.

"Everybody must take part in the quest for restoring unity," they added, referring to discussions and workshops being held across Egypt in this regard.

Other than April 6, the groups included the opposition movement, Journalists against the Coup, and the Revolutionary Alliance of Egyptian Women.

Made up of young political activists in the most part, April 6 was at the heart of the anti-Mubarak uprising that erupted on 25 January, 2011.

It had also opposed ousted president Mohamed Morsi, whose rule came to an end last year when the army overthrew him following mass protests.

Movement founder Ahmed Maher is currently serving a three-year jail term for staging an unlicensed protest in November of 2013.

Egypt's interior ministry maintains that its prisons are free of political detainees, and that political figures arrested following Morsi's ouster in 2013 are imprisoned on criminal charges.

Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, a leading Islamist group in Egypt and one of Morsi's backers, welcomed the initiative proposed by the April 6 Movement.

"We affirm that the counter-revolution is still worried about the revolutionary spirit and harmony," Tarek al-Zomor, who heads the Building and Development Party - al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya's political wing – said on Facebook.

"We highly value April 6 group's initiative…And we call all sides to act responsibly so that we can retrieve the usurped revolution and the rights of our people," al-Zomor added.

Several news website reported that the Muslim Brotherhood also welcomed the initiative.

Mohamed Soudan, chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party’s – the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing's foreign relations committee said: “The Muslim Brotherhood has always been called for unifying the opposition groups, but none responded. Nevertheless we welcome this initiative,” reported Alaraby Aljadid news website.

Likewise, a representative of Egypt’s Strong Party, founded by the 2012 presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abulfotoh, said the party will be considering the initiative during an upcoming political bureau meeting, reported Alarby Aljadid.

Mubarak, previously accused of ordering the killing of demonstrators during the revolution, was recently acquitted by an Egyptian court along with several security officials, which increased the anger of revolutionary groups.

Bomb blasts hit Egypt

In the meantime, several blasts exploded across Egypt.

At least two people were injured in an explosion at a building used as a residence by police personnel in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula on Monday, a medical source said.

The two wounded people were rushed to a military hospital in Arish city for treatment, the source told The Anadolu Agency on the condition of anonymity.

A security source said that it is yet unclear what caused the bombing which hit the residential building in Arish in North Sinai.

Eyewitnesses said that the explosion left a yet-to-be-determined number of injuries and caused the partial collapse of the building as well as three other adjacent structures.

Three policemen were also wounded late on Sunday when unidentified militants opened their gunfire on them in a western Cairo suburb, the Interior Ministry has said.

"The policemen were part of a police patrol in the area," Interior Ministry spokesman Hani Abdel-Latif told The Anadolu Agency.

He added, however, that none of the assailants had been arrested. 

A security source said earlier that the three policemen were admitted into a nearby hospital to receive treatment.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Policemen and army personnel are increasingly being targeted across Egypt, while the Egyptian military and police continue to stage a heavy-handed crackdown on militants in the Sinai Peninsula, north-eastern Egypt.