Hassan Ibrahim / DNE
Angered by the death of a metro passenger, protesters gathered on the Giza platform of Anwar el Sadat metro station on Monday evening.
A female passenger, Madeeha Saber, was killed on the tracks earlier in the week.
Activist Shereen Badr actively tracks incidents in the metro as part of a group called Monitoring Metro Violations. According to Badr, Saber died after a train stopped in the tunnel halfway between Attaba and Ramsis stations. Badr said that the metro had stopped several times before that day but this time it stopped for over half an hour. Saber attempted to leave the metro and fell. “Eyewitnesses who were there said she was put to the side after she fell but when they transported her to the hospital she had already died,” Badr said.
Other reports said that she suffocated when the metro stopped.
The independent newspaper Dostor Asly reported on Sunday that panicked passengers had exited the train and were walking on the rails in the tunnel when the train started moving again, injuring some passengers.
Badr said there is “no ventilation in the metro, not even fans so imagine what would happen if it stops in a long tunnel for more than half an hour.”
Ahmed Abdel Hady, media official in the state-owned Egyptian Company for Metro Management and Operation, denied that a woman was killed in the metro. He also denied that there was a protest in the metro.
Badr said a metro official told protesters that their action was pointless. “He came along with security who tried to harass us but we told them that we are just citizens standing on the platform,” she said.
“This is not out first protest,” Badr said. “It’s the fourth and the past ones were held to protest the violations but we held this one because of Saber’s death.”
Monitoring Metro Violations was started by Ghadeer Ahmed after she was threatened by a man she confronted entering a female only carriage.
Badr said that previous protests held by the movement were in objection to the “lack of security, and the entry of men into the female carts as well as the illegal vendors. I saw a vendor who almost hit a woman because she told him he was selling empty phone cards.”
In the past, women have been assaulted after trying to stop men riding female only carriages.
