Demo - Irresistible

The riots
Feeling that their livelihood was callously being withdrawn from their hands, the pig breeders at Manshiyet Nasser hurled stones and bottles at the police, who responded by charging armoured trucks and firing tear gas. The neighbourhood was surrounded by a half dozen police trucks; a state of terror prevailed as the policemen fanned along the streets, entering homes and dragging people from inside, hitting and abusing them, and detaining some at random. A short, frail, 65-year-old man, was dragged from his shirt as he helplessly cried: “I have no business with this; I am a poor man.” Without any mercy, the policeman hit him on the head.
The women and children were screaming while some young people ran away looking for shelter in higher grounds.
I was an eyewitness to the brawl; I walked along the street and the police did not know I was a journalist. They went about their business of spreading terror, destroying the windshields of the few cars parked in the streets, bashing doors, and I saw them pull one young man out of his home and arrest him even though he had nothing to do with the rioters.
When the security forces failed to enter the district of the pigpens, they asked the help of the local clergy and Coptic politicians to placate the garbage breeders. They promised to release the detainees, many of whom are students and may miss end-of-year exams. They also promised that compensations will be paid for the culled pigs.

Brutal
Come Monday, however, all these promises were thrown to the wind. The police surrounded the area in full force; anyone leaving Manshiyet Nasser or wishing to go in was beaten and held. The pigs were lifted with loaders and dumped onto trucks and carried away where they were executed in a brutal manner, being cast off in a pit, strewn with quicklime, and buried.
By Tuesday, the chief of the pig breeders Israel Ayad told Watani, 2000 pigs from Cairo and Giza had been killed. In Giza some 40 Copts were arrested and detained in the camps of the central security forces, and in Cairo 15 Copts from Manshiyet Nasser were detained. The locals insist that most of those detained had nothing to do with the riots and raise no pigs; the two brothers Shahid and Adel Uweida were doing some work outside the area and were caught as they were returning home in the evening. When their uncle Zarif Fikry learnt they had been caught he headed to the police station to bail them out, but he was detained too.