Riots in Egypt

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1025, 16 July 1930, Page 11

Riots in Egypt

POLICE QUELL ANGRY MOB Dead Removed in Carts REPORTS OF WAFD UPRISING DENIED IN quelling a general strike at Alexandria, Egypt, the police fired on a riotous mob and inflicted many casualties, the dead being carried away in carts. British troops are being brought from Cairo to suppress the rising, which caused Europeans to seek safety in the Stock Exchange. Reports of a Wafd revolution plot have been denied.

United P.A.—By Telegraph Copyright Reed. 10.25 a.m. CAIRO, Tuesday. A general strike at Alexandria which was instigated as a sympathetic demonstration with the victims of the riots at the Mansurah billets, got out of hand. Youths broke shop windows and stoned the police amid cheers and cries of ‘‘Dong live Nahas Pasha!” Europeans took refuge in the Stock Exchange. The police fired on the mob from the roof of the law court, inflicting heavy casualties. The dead were removed in carts. It is reported British troops have been summoned from Cairo. A London message says Makram Ebeid Bey, Minister of Finance in Nahas Pasha’s late Egyptian Cabinet, is at present on a visit to London with other Egyptian members of Parliament. He denies a report to the effect that the Wafd or Nahas meditate a revolution and the establishment of a Republic or Regency. It was reported on Monday that the ’’Daily Mail’s” diplomatic correspondent declared Egypt is on the verge of a revolution. The Wafd Party, it said, is determined to win supreme power by whatever means it can, and Britain, as

before, will have to clean up the mess. Though the Anglo-Egyptian conference in London broke down, the Wafdist delegates attained their real objective by stretching Mr. Arthur Henderson’s extreme limit of concession. They then went home proclaiming that they had upheld Egypt's rights and gained new advantages as a starting point for negotiations. Wafdism then manoeuvred itself into an unassailable position, directing internal affairs to its own advantage and whittling down British influence in every way. Tho Wafdists, fearing King Fuad would repeal the 1928 coup d’etat and dismiss the Government, swiftly provoked a crisis by Bills for the “protection of the constitution,” which markedly limited the powers of a ruler. Fuad refused to assent and the Nahas Pasha Cabinet resigned. The Wafd action is extensively stirring up trouble and its leaders in London and Cairo talk openly of the coming revolution. The British Union in Egypt in a letter to the Prime Minister. emphasises that generous treatment to the natives is invariably regarded as a sign of weakness, resulting in the replacement of insult for respect of British residents and visitors. Tho Union urges that the majority of Egyptians do not desire the withdrawal of British protection, because they do not trust one another.