As 10,000 Egyptians mark the first anniversary of “Friday of Rage,” U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg arrived today in Cairo for a 5 day visit, according to the U.S. embassy reported by Al Jazeera.
The day’s uprising celebrates the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak. One year ago Mubarak’s security forces open fired on protesters who filled Cairo’s downtown Tahrir Square killing and injuring hundreds.
Egyptians fearing for their lives and property took the streets in protest to protect themselves and their neighborhoods.
Some 10,000 Egyptian protesters converged today on Cairo's downtown Tahrir Square to mark the first anniversary of "Friday of Rage," a key day in the popular uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Now a year later, Islamists and liberal, secular-leaning protesters were divided over the message.
The Muslim Brotherhood group, fresh from an overwhelming parliamentary election victory, celebrated the day.
Ginsberg is scheduled to meet with senior court officials, the head of the High Elections Commission and Egypt’s Grand Mufti as part of her visit.
Her visit follows Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner who went to Cairo last Monday. His visit coincides with the opening of Egypt’s Parliament on Monday and the commemoration yesterday of the one-year anniversary of the start of the Egyptian Revolution. During his four days here, he met with government officials, including representatives of the new parliament, as well as civil society activists. He heard a wide range of perspectives from government officials and from human rights advocates, religious leaders, lawyers, journalists, and bloggers. In addition, he also consulted with diplomatic colleagues from the European Union.
The US announced that it would work to establish a comprehensive plan to boost trade with Egypt, as the country moves through a difficult political and economic transition, according to Reuters.
As the Atlantic wrote in it's analysis of what's next for Egypt:
Observers expect the Muslim Brotherhood, which is likely to form a coalition government with the small centrist-secular parties, [...] to focus in the coming months and years on sorting out Egypt's internal problems — consolidating its hold on power, battling the flight of foreign investors, reducing unemployment, shoring up crumbling infrastructure and reviving foreign tourism. Thus, it probably will forego its traditional foreign-policy agenda of breaking with the West and annulling the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. The Egyptian economy can ill afford the loss of the annual American foreign-aid subsidy of $1.5 billion.
In 2011, the US's trade in goods with Egypt was over $3 billion, according to US Census Bureau statistics, reported in global post.
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