Egypt:
Establish International Inquiry Into Rab’a Massacre.
No Charges 2 Years After Security Forces Killed At Least 800
Protesters.
(Beirut)
– Egyptian authorities have held no government official or member of the
security forces responsible for the mass killing of protesters in Cairo’s Rab’a
al-Adawiya Square two years ago. On August 14, 2013, security forces killed at
least 817 people and most likely more than 1,000 at a mass sit-in in what
probably amounted to crimes against humanity.
Given the Egyptian government’s refusal to properly
investigate the killings or provide any redress for the victims, the United
Nations Human Rights Council should establish an international commission of
inquiry into the brutal clearing of the Rab’a al-Adawiya sit-in and
other mass killings of protesters in July and August 2013. The African
Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should establish a similar
investigation.
“Washington and Europe have gone back to business with a
government that celebrates rather than investigates what may have been the
worst single-day killing of protesters in modern history,” said Joe Stork,
deputy Middle East director. “The UN Human Rights Council, which has not yet
addressed Egypt’s dangerous and deteriorating human rights situation,
is one of the few remaining routes to accountability for this brutal massacre.”
The United States
and Egypt’s European allies,
rather than seriously addressing the rank impunity of President Abdel Fattah
al-Sisi’s government, contend that it is a national security priority to
resume their relationships with Egypt,
including providing Egypt
with military aid and hardware.
The dispersal of the Rab’a al-Adawiya sit-in occurred on
August 14, 2013, a little more than a month after the Egyptian military – under
then-Defense Minister al-Sisi – removed Mohamed
Morsy, Egypt’s
first freely elected president and a former high-level official in the Muslim
Brotherhood. Morsy’s ouster followed mass protests against his rule. Afterward,
Brotherhood supporters and others opposed to the military’s actions held
protests throughout Egypt.
Security forces systematically confronted the protests with deadly force.
Between Morsy’s ouster on July 3, 2013, and August 16, 2013, Human Rights Watch
documented six instances when security forces unlawfully
killed protesters, leaving at least 1,185 people dead.
The dispersal of the Rab’a al-Adawiya Square sit-in, where
the crowd reached 85,000 at its height, was the worst of these incidents. The
government announced its intention to clear the sit-in but did not announce a
date. At first light on August 14, security forces using armored personnel
carriers and snipers fired on the crowd with live ammunition shortly after
playing a recorded announcement to clear the square through loudspeakers.
Police provided no safe exit and fired on many who tried to escape.
Authorities had anticipated a high number of casualties;
both Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim and Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawy said
publicly after the dispersal that they had expected that more protesters would
have been killed. A year later, al-Beblawy was quoted as saying in an interview
with al-Masry al-Youm, an independent newspaper, that “all options were bad”
for resolving the sit-in and that anyone who “committed a mistake” should be
sent to court.
*******
Washington and Europe have gone back to business with a government that
celebrates rather than investigates what may have been the worst single-day
killing of protesters in modern history. The UN Human Rights Council, which has
not yet addressed Egypt’s
dangerous and deteriorating human rights situation, is one of the few remaining
routes to accountability for this brutal massacre.
Joe Stork, Deputy Director, Middle East
Division
Earlier, Egyptian military and police killed 61 protesters
outside the Republican Guard headquarters on July 8 and 95 protesters at Cairo’s Manassa Memorial
on July 27. On the day of the Rab’a dispersal, police killed at least 87
protesters while clearing another Cairo
sit-in at al-Nahda Square. On August 16, police killed at least another 120
people who continued to protest Morsy’s ouster in Ramsis Square in downtown Cairo.
The widespread and systematic nature of these killings, and
the evidence Human Rights Watch collected, suggests that the killings were part
of a policy to use lethal force against largely unarmed protesters, making them
probable crimes against humanity.
In December 2013, the Egyptian government established the
June 30 Fact-Finding Committee, named after the date on which protests against
the Morsy government began, to look into the killings and the events that
precipitated and followed them. The government released an executive summary of
the committee’s findings on November 26, 2014, that did not recommend charges
against any government official or member of the security forces.
The government has not released the full report and has not
signaled any intention to do so. The Prosecutor General’s office, which has the
prerogative and responsibility to open criminal investigations, has not
announced any charges. On July 16, al-Sisi’s cabinet approved renaming Rab’a
square after Hisham Barakat, the prosecutor general who gave legal approval to
the 2013 dispersal and who was assassinated in June.
The only prosecution to emerge from the mass killings of
July and August 2013 concerned the suffocation deaths of 37 protesters on
August 18, 2013. The men, who had been arrested at the Rab’a dispersal, died
after a policeman fired a teargas canister inside the overcrowded prison van
where they were temporarily held. On August 13, 2015, a court reduced a 10-year
sentence for a police lieutenant colonel involved in the deaths to 5 years
following a retrial. The case could still proceed to Egypt’s highest appellate court.
Three lower-ranking officers have all received one-year suspended sentences.
Police arrested hundreds of protesters during the Rab’a
sit-in dispersal and held them in pretrial detention for nearly two years. On
August 12, prosecutors referred the case to trial, accusing the protesters of a
number of crimes, including blocking roads and harming national unity. Al-Shorouk,
an independent newspaper, reported that prosecutors have not disclosed the number of protesters
being sent to trial, though lawyers believe that more than 400 are being held.
US
officials have refrained from characterizing Morsy’s removal as a coup, which
would have triggered the immediate halt of military aid. But after the Rab’a
killings, the US cancelled
planned joint military exercises with Egypt and announced a review of
“further steps that we may take as necessary with respect to the US-Egyptian
relationship.”
In October 2013, the US
suspended the delivery of four major weapons systems to Egypt. In
August 2014, it lifted that suspension and delivered 10 Apache attack
helicopters. In March 2015, the administration lifted all suspensions, allowing delivery of 12 F-16
fighter jets and up to 125 M1A1 tank kits, while also announcing plans to
tighten restrictions on Egypt’s
military aid buying power. In August, Secretary of State John Kerry went to Cairo to lead the first Strategic Dialogue with Egypt since
2009.
European governments – particularly France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – have embraced
al-Sisi’s government. Al-Sisi met President Francois Hollande in France in November 2014, and France
subsequently sold Egypt 24 Rafale fighter jets and delivered the first 3 on
July 21. In June 2015, al-Sisi met with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on the same day that the German industrial company
Siemens signed an 8 billion euro deal to supply gas- and wind-power plants to Egypt. The
government of UK
Prime Minister David Cameron has also invited al-Sisi to meet.
“The lack of justice for the victims of the Rab’a massacre
and other mass killings is an open wound in Egyptian history,” Stork said.
“Addressing this crime is necessary before Egypt can begin to move forward.”
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