THE KILLING OF A POET …!
On the anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, 32- year -old Shaimaa El Sabbagh, a mother, activist, and a poet, carried a wreath of flowers and went to Tahrir Square to commemorate the victims who lost their lives since the Jan 25th, 2011 revolution. Cairo Rose, as she was named, didn’t know this would be her last walk to Liberty Square. An Egyptian security officer shot Ms. El Sabbagh and left her to bleed to death in the street, in front of her friends. The tragic image of her friend holding her fragile body, as the blood covered her clothes and a beautiful face, was too much to bear for millions of Egyptians. The Egyptian poet was carrying a purse as she was falling on the sidewalk near Tahrir Square. In the purse, they found a poem she wrote … titled A Letter in My Purse : (translation)
I am not sure
Truly, she was nothing more than just a purse
But when lost, there was a problem
How to face the world without her.
Ms. Sabbagh doesn’t have to worry about facing anyone now. The security officer never persecuted or even questioned; he was following orders. “Ms. Sabbagh would not have died had she not been so slender.” The spokesman for the Egyptian Medical Forensics Authority said in a television interview. “ These sorts of ridiculous claims just add a thick layer of absurdity to the government’s endless record of killings and impunity,” said Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch. Cairo Rose became the symbol of what to become of Egypt, a dead poets society. Here in Minneapolis, on Wednesday morning, in a snowy residential neighborhood south of downtown, just a mile from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020, and a few blocks from where my daughter lives, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good. She was in her SUV observing ICE raids on our immigrant communities, an ICE officer shot her in the head multiple times and left her bleeding in her car, and amazingly, denied medical service. In a video, you can hear a bystander asking the ICE officer, If he can check her pulse as the video shows Ms. Good’s bleeding in her car, with her head collapsing on the steering wheel, … “Step back..,” shouted the officer. The bystander identified himself as a physician, to which the officer replied. ”I don’t care.” While another agent is saying, “We have our own medics,” no medics arrived on time for Ms. Good, who died later in Hennepin Medical Center. As a video circulating on social media shows, you can see one officer trying to open Ms. Good’s SUV as she was backing up, trying to leave the scene, and another officer standing in front of her car shot her point-blank in the head. “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you“. Renee Good’s last words, in which the ICE officer replied. “ F@#$% beach” . “She was driving away, and they killed her,” said resident Lynette Reini-Grandell, who was outdoors recording video on her phone. “This could happen to you in your city,” fumed Robin Wonsley, member of the Minneapolis City Council. In the Press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, standing with her oversized cowboy hat, told everyone, “Act of domestic terrorism” carried out against ICE officers by a woman who “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle.”. President Donald Trump made similar accusations against the woman and defended ICE’s work. Homeland Security tweeted, “Serve your country, defend your culture …” One wonders what culture we defend: a culture of corruption and the violations of our constitution, a culture of greed and swindling, a culture of lies and fascism.. Fox News headline flashed “Minneapolis ICE shooting officer followed training as a potentially ‘deadly threat’ drove at him:” Timothy Miller, former agent explained that ICE agents are trained to “respond to a deadly force situation based on the facts” and with “appropriate deadly force.” But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey blasted Noem’s version of what happened as “garbage” and criticized the federal deployment of more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as part of the immigration crackdown. Frey said he had a message for ICE: “Get the f— out of Minneapolis.”. The Trump administration portrays Renee Nicole Good as a “domestic terrorist. “She was a mother of three children who was a prize-winning poet and a hobby guitarist, who city leaders have said was there as a legal observer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities. “ Most of the atrocities around the world are committed by those who follow the law,” Polish Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman explained. … those who follow orders kill our poets, turning America into a Dead Poets Society!
Ahmed Tharwat
Host/Producer of Arab American TV show BelAhdan
Rants at Substack’s
Lives in Minnetonka, MN
612-250-6567
