Tomb of an Unknown Voter

Half an hour before Gomaa El-Zeftawy was shot dead by anti-riot police in front of the Kafr El-Sheikh polling station where he had come to vote, Salonaz Sami interviewed the 38-year-old fisherman about his impressions of the day's events.

"Today was the most humiliating day of my life," he said. El-Zeftawy had taken the day off to cast his vote in the third round of parliamentary elections in Kafr El-Sheikh's Baltim constituency. Much to his dismay, however, security forces on the scene prevented him from even entering the polling station.

"I decided not to go to work today, so I could take part in shaping the future of my small town by casting my vote for Hamdeen Sabahi, the candidate I think will serve my town best. But when I got to the El-Mo'asasa polling station west of Baltim, I couldn't believe my eyes." Voters, El-Zeftawy said, were basically not being allowed to vote. "Anti-riot police were blocking the entrance to the polling station and not allowing voters in. When I tried to make my way to the station, the officer in charge insulted me in front of my wife; he also told me that if I didn't leave, he would arrest me." El-Zeftawy told his wife -- who had come with him to also give her vote to Sabahi, the outgoing Kafr El-Sheikh MP representing the would-be Wasat Party -- to go home and stay with their two children, aged three and five.

El-Zeftawy decided to wait and see what was going to happen. Nearly three hours later the scene had not changed; the only difference was that the crowd was losing its patience. "Some of us approached the officer in charge, and tried to find out why they weren't letting us in," El-Zeftawy told the Weekly. "Before we even got close, anti-riot police started firing rubber bullets at us." He said the police were also beating up everyone in sight, including elderly women and children. Eyewitnesses interviewed by the Weekly confirmed that police also used live ammunition as they attempted to disperse the voters.

The crowd, however, was being adamant about refusing to leave. "I only came to cast my vote," El-Zeftawy told the Weekly. "In the presidential elections, I voted for President Hosni Mubarak, because I knew that he was the right guy; today I was trying to vote for Sabahi for the same reason." According to El-Zeftawy, in the lead up to the elections, security forces and supporters of the National Democratic Party had been tearing up any posters of Sabahi they could find; the police were also arresting those of Sabahi's supporters who tried to stop them.

"They have been talking about democracy, and the importance of fair elections, and we believed them, only to find out today that it was all lies," El-Zeftawy said. Half an hour later, he was shot as police again tried to disperse the crowd. El-Zeftawy's death shocked the small town of Baltim. Accompanied by Sabahi -- who lost the race -- hundreds of residents participated in the funeral, marching silently through the streets later that same day.