An Egyptian
army conscript walks up to 12 year old Omar Salah Omran, a sweet potato seller
- outside the front gates of Cairo’s US Embassy close to Tahrir Square - and
requests two potatoes from the young street vendor. Omar answers, “I’ll do so
after I go to the bathroom”. The allegedly untrained soldier retorts with a mix
of cockiness and jest that he will shoot Omar if he doesn’t comply immediately.
On Omar’s reply, “you can’t shoot me” - the conscript, on the alleged
presumption that his weapon was not loaded, aimed two bullets piercing through
Omar’s heart. He died instantly. (Based on Omar’s father’s television interview with
host Mahmoud Saad. While not present at the scene, he later spoke to
eyewitnesses)
The entire
incident was over in ten seconds. The fallout continues.
Many
Egyptians were humbled and awoken to another Egypt with the release of a gripping video of Omar
speaking to a Life Makers charity member in which he says “I am tired of this
job”: he says he wants to learn to read and write.
There is an
inherently troubling dimension in Omar’s demise that goes beyond the
“accidental” nature of it. It is the callous disregard by the state that
instigated and attempted to cover up the crime, and a society that no longer
gives a second look to the plight of child slavery.
It took the
bravery of activists such as Nazly Hussein, Rasha Azab, May Saad, Ahmed Abdel
Rahman, Ahmad Korashi, and others from the No to Military Trials movement to go
beyond the call of duty (they were basically doing other people’s jobs) to
unearth the details of a broader if clumsy criminal cover-up from Omar’s death
to his final resting place, and the state suffocation of the young boy’s memory
– an all too familiar process in how Egypt’s designated martyrs are midwifed.
When doctors
noted Omar was dead upon arrival, the accompanying police officers in the
ambulance were “under orders” to ensure he was not registered with the Mounira
Hospital if it was confirmed that he had died. The ambulance paramedics were
complicit in this by insisting that the corpse be taken straight to the morgue,
against the doctor’s orders for an investigation to take place and to file an
“accident” report with the courts. The result was Omar Salah’s case was not
registered in hospital records, therefore no age, no location, no forensic
report and he was simply named the “unknown corpse.” Once at the Zeinhom
morgue, the army personal “assisted” the family in undertaking “silent” burial
procedures, and made the illiterate father waive his rights to seek redress by
accepting that the incident was “unintentional.”
The case of
Omar becomes more bizarre when you consider the information vacuum on the
corpse: it was a chance accident that brought his case to the attention of the
activists.
As Hussein
noted in the same interview panel with Saad: “We arrived to find Omar’s corpse
by chance, his photo by chance, Omar’s father’s story of his son by chance.
When we found Mohammed El-Gindi [prominent
activist tortured to death], we found Omar in the bed next to him. When we were
looking for Mohamed El-Shafie [a missing activist], we came across Omar’s
story… Nobody told us about any of them.” As Omar’s corpse had no medical
report, age, etc.
Hussein asks
if this lamentable omission has become the standard procedure to resolve every
matter mired in confusion, so that people can operate only by relying on
probability, suspicions and hunches. The lack of transparency and information
makes her wonder what else is happening out there.
In short,
these are the accomplices in Omar’s death and cover-up: ambulance services,
ministry of health, ministry of interior, and military. All feeling threatened
by the corpse of a poor 12 year old street vendor. The ill-conceived cover-up,
in an Egypt that no longer fears to question authority, has exposed everything
wrong from the lack of (or sinister) cross-ministerial cooperation to
accountability procedures.
On the other
hand, it is to be hoped that Omar’s demise will trigger higher social awareness
of children’s rights and the relationship of street vendors to the public
space.
Omar comes
out staggeringly alive in his death. A spectrum of colours is added to his
socially-perceived black and white life. We now know Omar worked his cart for
two years, has five sisters and one brother, was adored by those in the
district where he worked, had a loving honourable father grounded in his Sa’idiroots
from Sohag (Upper Egypt). The father in the interview narrates a story of his daughter
being taken critically ill and Omar sensing his father did not have money for
her treatment went out to borrow five pounds to buy tissue packets to sell. His
father and uncles went out searching for him, only for Omar to come back at 2
am that night with 60 pounds which he handed to his father saying, “I know you
didn’t have any money. So this is why I did this.” A selfless child that always
put his family first, with only two pounds in his pocket, would go and get a
little food and force his father to eat: “No father, I am insistent on this.
Please eat. You are so worn out. I swear to God I am not leaving until you
finish eating.”
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