Jason N. Parkinson: Video Journalist

The Battle For Cairo

Following three days of peaceful mass protest, which ended in as many as eight million marching across Egypt and President Mubarak announcing he would not stand for re-election in September, Wednesday 2 February became the defining day for the Egyptian revolution.

Thousands of pro-Mubarak supporters massed outside the heavily defended state television centre. All the video I shot of the pro-demonstration was taken from the bridge due to the hostility of the crowd.

When we arrived there I was grabbed by one supporter, who tried to force me to pray to Allah. When I refused he accused me of being Israeli. This drew the attention of other supporters around him and it looked like I was about to be lynched, so we made a swift exit.

And it wasn’t long before the pro-Mubarak supporters were lynching people. As their march reached our hotel we tried to exit to start filming. Within seconds a group of 20 protestors started attacking a small group of women. One woman started running for the hotel door. We were pulled inside by the door security and they locked the door. We saw the woman’s screaming face smash into the glass. Arms and legs lashed out at her and she went down. The punches and kicks continued. The image of her terrified face is something I will never forget.

That incident also led to the initial coverage of this event from the hotel room with a barricaded door, as the area surrounding the hotel was swarming with thousands of Mubarak supporters. And we had already been pointed out as anti-Mubarak at the beginning of the protest, by a gang of what we believed were plain clothes police.

After several hours of fighting the pro-Mubarak protestors were pushed back and the Tahrir Square protestors quickly erected barricades. By nightfall elements, now known to be police, in the pro protestors opened fire with automatic rifles. The all too familiar crackle of AK-47 rounds sounded just 200 metres down the road as the battle went on into the night. More than a thousand were injured. Seven people were beleived to have been killed, all by gunfire.

(c) Jason N. Parkinson/reportdigital.co.uk

Please contact Report Digital to access this material and the extensive six-year video archive.

Battle for the Interior Ministry

Saturday 29 January 2011: Following the Day of Rage the police advanced from the streets surrounding the Interior Ministry into Tahrir Square early in the morning, firing whatever ammunition they had left into the gathering crowds.

This was by no means an attempt to regain the square, the police numbers clearly could not have made a dent in the protestors resilience, as the numbers of the crowds marching on the street after the attack indicated. The more the authorities hit them, the more they massed.

That night I learned the true extent of the secret police operation, according to several local journalists. The morning attack on the square was to direct the same outcome as the plain clothes officers in the square that day – to urge and encourage the protestors up the street towards the Interior Ministry, where police snipers were waiting, overlooking the street.

The bodies of the dead and injured poured into a backstreet mosque that had been turned into a makeshift hospital. By the end of that day local reports said 15 people were killed and the nearest hospital to the Downtown district had recorded more than 550 injuries.

(c) Jason N. Parkinson/reportdigital.co.uk

Please contact Report Digital to access this material and the extensive six-year video archive.