Egypt In The Balance: Tyranny

Showing posts with label Tyranny. Show all posts

Monday, November 2, 2015

EGYPT: The Egyptian president, El-Sisi gives his nation the lazy eye.

From Muhammad Nassir to El-Sisi

After a harsh speech addressed to the nation by El-Sisi

Satire

Good evening, Sisi! I hope you are fine!

My cousins have a message for you.

They are a group of idle young guys.

A half of them is starving.

The other half is scavenging garbage pins.

My friends at the café would kiss your hand.

In fact, they damn the circumstance that brought you to power

A group of revolutionary guysm, they are.

Some belong to 6-April, some are liberal.

Others are Ikhwan recuperating in prisons.

Damn be he who upsets you!

By God, do not be upset.

You look like you have lost weight.

Your suite has become loose and your face looks pale.

Your teeth are shaking as if your heart is aware that something will happen.

Do not worry, it is the cursed nation.

A nation that does not know what is good for her.

A nation that is ungrateful.

A nation that deserves a low-life president.

You are far from being a low-life.

How cute you are though the nation is starving!

I am here just to tell you a few words to make you happy

Words that are like a sickle…cutting through my skin.

When you said, “Have you elected me to torture me?

I am going to complain to the nation.”

Man, complain to who about who?

You were so nervous because you did not like those who are talked about you,

though they were the pupil of your eye.

They have sold out all their principles to support you.

Have they been a bit harsh in their citicism?

May they suffer!

But those were your men.

How many times they applauded for you!

Be careful! Do not let yourself be exposed!

Anyways, do you remember when they ousted Morsi?

Have you forgotten?

What a cruel heart you have.

A bunch of media people upsetting you!

Were you not the lion?

Need you a spell against envy?

Are you forgetting?

Is not Egypt your father’s real estate.

And the nation is but your slaves.

Flog them!

Use your club!

Oh, you look so tired.

Allow me to say a truthful word.

You are right,

There are bad people who want to torture you with their criticism

They blame you for what?

Are you not the brave General?

Do not cry and hush them up with issuance of a presidential decree.

And say to the nation,

“My beloved people who are the light of my eyes,

I have decided to gather your opinions of me in a survey”

The millions may show up singing,

“Come back, our president”

Did not Amr Adeeb ask you to be more abusive so that we wake up and understand?

They say you have sold us an illusion.

So What!

It is not your fault.

The faulty one is he who agreed to buy.

They needed a good dream.

Do the survey.

What nation!

They have no interest in silk but in a cheap fabric.

Have not some purchased apartments in your illusionary one-million-apartment project

And others are now possessing million acres of land?

A nation you made mount a rocket,

And brought to them your illusionary medical shish-kebab project.

Between you and me, let me tell you,

you do not look well.

You look worried like someone who has been exposed for his lies.

If you need to rest for a while, then do it.

And let me tell your people,

“El-Sisi is right. He said that he was of you, that you asked him to be careful.”

He is careful.

Do the survey and show those who are plotting against you how beloved you are.

You were right when you once said that this nation did not have someone to take care for it.

Get closer, then, to your people!

Remember Tamarrud when they stood against Morsi and said,

“We do not want you because the streets are not yet secure,

Poor people still poor, we still beg for funds from foreign countries,

We and the country have lost our dignity,

The economy has collapsed and is now relying on begging,

You have become an American agent,

By God, tell me, is not this what it is right now?

You know what; you have already split the family

Go home, if the burden is too heavy for you to carry

Or be a man and do the survey!

Friday, August 14, 2015

RABA'A: No Charges 2 Years After Security Forces Killed At Least 800 Protesters

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.”

Mass Killing by Security Forces