Protesting Jordan by Jillian Schwedler

Author:Jillian Schwedler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

That same month, four phosphate workers, experienced in protest through their professional associations, organized a sit-in in front of the Amman headquarters of the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company.113 They were frustrated not by low wages or long hours, however, but because they felt that their assigned jobs underutilized their skills and experience. When the company had been privatized in 2006, workers complained that Walid Kurdi, who is connected to the royal family through marriage, played a corrupt role in the transaction. The company’s privatization, it seemed to them, merely transferred control from the state to a member of the royal family—a common complaint about Jordan’s privatization process.114 The group gathered thirty phosphate employees, both women and men, and staged a three-day sit-in. They denounced corruption and mismanagement and demanded new bylaws, a transparent personnel system, and fair treatment for employees. But when negotiations produced a deal that disappointed the workers, they announced on May 1 the creation of an independent union (distinct from their official union) and organized strikes in multiple locations in June.115

Other protests also continued around Israel/Palestine, with large demonstrations in Baqaʿa Camp to mark the May 15 anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) and 1967 Naksa (setback). Antinormalization protesters organized a Right of Return demonstration in the town of Karama near the Israeli border. While the police and gendarmerie observed the Baqaʿa protests without intervening, at Karama they were joined by counterprotesters to violently disperse the crowd.116 By early summer, however, most protests had fallen into routines. Hirak groups organized small protests outside of Amman, and one southern Hirak group stamped bank notes with “The people want the reform of the regime.”117 As Ziad Abu-Rish argues, “what remained [of the protests] was much more diffuse and isolated in nature, taking the form of a combination of disparate public sector employee strikes, university campus violence, and confrontations between security forces and either tribal or Islamist groups.”118 The atmosphere resembled that of 2010—pockets of violence and protest across the nation—but not the revolutionary fervor of other Arab uprisings.

In the heat of the summer, however, state violence returned. The Muslim Brotherhood coordinated with some Hirak groups, labor activists, and other leftist activists to mount an event at the Grand Husseini Mosque on July 15.119 Some two thousand protesters gathered with hundreds of security forces. At least twenty veiled women joined the initial march, behind hundreds of male protesters who followed a slow-moving truck from which chants were broadcast from loudspeakers. The assembly moved from the mosque toward the Municipal Complex, following the location’s established spatial routine. The police and gendarmerie, however, moved to block their path, and the confrontation escalated from shouting and shoving to beating protesters with batons.120 Dozens of loyalist counterprotesters, initially positioned on the far side of the police line, joined in beating protesters and journalists alike until they scattered. Troops remained throughout the area into the next day. Some of the protesters regrouped nearby, but they danced and sang a Bedouin wedding song and were left alone by the security forces.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.