Tuomioja in Cairo pays visit to Tahrir Square

Finnish Foreign Minister checks area considered core of Egyptian revolution

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A black Volvo S80 stops at a roadblock on the edge of Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The back door pops open and out comes Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs Erkki Tuomioja (SDP).
      Hands are raised to greet the visitor, who is urged to come forward on foot.
     
During his visit to Egypt Tuomioja had about an hour of extra time on his hand Monday morning, and he spontaneously decided to pay a visit to Tahrir Square, one of the hot spots of the so-called Arab Spring.
      The visit took only about 15 minutes – a period of time that had to be a nightmare for security personnel. Tahrir is known as a place where things can happen without warning, and riot police have made attacks on the square in recent days with deadly results.
     
The young people on the square, mostly men, looked on with amazement as a grey-haired European walked about 200 metres toward the central point of the square.
      On his lapel Tuomioja wore a badge with a peace symbol – something which has long been a trademark of sorts for him.
      “Who is he?” asks 23-year-old Amr Sharaf, one of the thousands of demonstrators on the square.
     
It is unlikely that any other foreign dignitaries would have visited the square at such a sensitive moment. Tuomioja rapidly gathers a train of dozens of people, each of whom seemed to have something to say to him.
      The cacophony is so great that it is only possible to make out a few things that Tuomioja says. “It is important to hold elections”, he told the activists.
     
In the 1960s and 1970s Tuomioja was a leading leftist peace movement activist in Finland. In 1970 he was arrested in Helsinki during a demonstration protesting the state visit of the Shah of Iran. He was a Member of Parliament at the time.
      However, Tuomioja did not want to go down memory lane, as Tahrir Square was seen to be too sensitive a spot for that; it was reported on Monday that more than 30 young demonstrators had been killed there in recent days.
      “I am deeply affected by the peaceful determination of the demonstrators”, Tuomioja said. “I have never experienced anything like this. People are moving amazingly freely here. I can only imagine what it would be like in Finland if people had been killed in a location.”
     
Tuomioja is on a fast-paced tour of three Arab countries in the early part of this week. On Monday, in Cairo, he met with the former secretary-general of the Arab League, as well as the likely future President of Egypt, Amr Mussa. He also had lunch with leading Egyptian women activists.
      On Monday evening he moved on to the Tunisian capital Tunis, and on Wednesday he will be in the Libyan capital Tripoli.


See also:
  Israel deplores Tuomioja’s apartheid comments (27.10.2011)
  Amnesty International criticises Finland for its arms deals with countries in Middle East (20.10.2011)

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