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Egypt: Police Day Celebration Story

Egyptian Police Day
Region: Egypt
Created: Jan 25, 2011, modified: Jan 13, 2012, overall rating: 5.000




Today Egyptians around the country have off from work and school in recognition of a national holiday: Police Day.

Any Egyptian policeman would delight at reading The Times of 26 January 1952 in which Egyptian police were portrayed as having led the resistance to British occupation.At that time, four years before the signing of the Evacuation Treaty of British forces from Egypt, anti-British sentiments had reached their peak in the country.

Egyptian historians write about how ordinary Egyptians expressed anti-British sentiments, Egyptian workers boycotted British military bases, and farmers refused to deliver basic foods to British bases near the Canal Zone, which hosted around 80,000 British soldiers and officers.

On 25 January 1952, British forces in the city of Ismailia asked the city’s two principal police stations to evacuate the buildings and surrender their guns. Then Interior Minister Fuad Serag Eddin requested the policemen not to surrender and, if necessary, fight for their dignity as Egyptian patriots.

In a news story the following day, The Times wrote, “British troops yesterday assaulted and took by force the two principal police buildings in Ismailia after the Egyptian police, acting on orders from Cairo, had refused to surrender.The fighting lasted for three hours. Three British soldiers and 41 Egyptian policemen were killed and there was a number of wounded. About 790 police eventually surrendered; of whom not more than 100 were regulars.”

Following the military coup of 1952, major Egyptian newspapers celebrated the policemen’s sacrifice in what became known as the battle of Ismalia and a model of anti-imperial heroism.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who took charge of the Ministry of Interior for four months when he headed the cabinet in 1953, revealed the first sign of the police’s new politicization in a speech on 31 July, 1954. This came in a context where police power paled in comparison to that of the military, especially in the first years after the revolution.

After pointing to the battle of Ismailia, Nasser addressed the police’s role in cooperating with the army to protect “internal security.” He also celebrated police achievements in reducing crime rates following the coup.

Nasser rewarded the police by awarding them new functions such as the issuance of national IDs and passports so that decades later, the police existed as a giant bureaucracy, in which 23 administrations regulated a wide range of activities. Later, 25 January became Egypt's Police Day and in 2009, President Hosni Mubarak ordered that the day become a formal public holiday.

Al Masry Al Youm

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