August 19, 2013–The following is a news summary of the situation in Egypt prepared by myself. I hope it proves informative—Roger Annis
* Mubarak to be released from prison? Incredible, but true. According to The Guardian, Egypt’s military dictators are considering the release from prison from their wayward brother, Hosni Mubarak. A Cairo court (judge or judges) has dropped a charge of embezzlement against the long-time dictator and tyrant of Egypt. (And see a report here from the New York Times.)
In January of this year, another court dropped charges and ordered a new trial over the Mubarak regime’s human rights violations (murders of its citizens and other crimes against humanity). Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison in June 2012 on the human rights charges.
* Egypt’s rulers are getting nervous about their image problem over the rise of fascist gangs (so-called people’s committees) which are in many cases led by the former leaders of the Tamarod protests. The Toronto Star features on page one today an Associated Press article headlined, ‘Egypt lays into vigilante groups’. We are told to believe that Egypt’s military rulers yesterday outlawed vigilante (fascist) gangs. Who are these committees? We learn nothing in the article. It says, “Civilian “people’s committees” armed with clubs, sticks and guns have appeared on Egyptian streets in recent days, in an ominous turn to the bloody saga that has unfolded since president Mohammed Morsi was ousted on July 3” We can expect in the coming days to see more such articles, bolder than this one, presenting Egypt’s new dictators as waging a valiant effort to ‘restore order’ in the country against shadowy gangs and committees waging ‘violence’.
Recall the harrowing story by the Egyptian doctor that I posted yesterday about running the gauntlet of the fascist gangs.
Been there, read that. Recall Haiti following the coup of February 2004–the lurid stories of ‘gang violence’ by the supporters of the ousted President Aristide; meanwhile, the real violence was being meted out by the paramilitary gangs of the coup d’etat. They ran rampant throughout the country, killing anyone who got in their way, with U.S.-supplied weapons.
* In Sinai (the vast desert peninsula that stretches from the Suez Canal on the west to the borders of Israel/Gaza to the east), a busload of Egyptian police was attacked and 25 were killed. Recall that Presidnet Morsi stands accused by he military regime of going soft in responding to the long-standing historical grievances of the Bedouin people of the Sinai. The military has further militarized the region siince the coup. (Moris is also accused by the military of sympathetic treatment of those cursed Palestinians.)
* There is outrage over the massacre of prisoners by police in Cairo. The Anti-Coup Alliance says 37 prisoners being transported by truck to the prison in Abu Zaabal, northern Egypt were assassinated en route. They were part of a convoy of some 600 prisoners being transported.
The Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement on the prisoner massacre. And here is another report.
Egyptian state media and the lapdog El Ahram is reporting that the prisoners were killed during an attempted escape from the Abu Zaabal prison. They say the attempted escape from the convoy happened as it arrived at the prison.
* The European Union and the U.S. are being denounced by rightists in Egypt, including leaders of the former, so-called Tamarod initiative, for musing that they may have to restrict aid to Egypt. The big capitalist powers are tossing out empty phrases and gestures of concern about human rights in Egypt in order to placate the domestic critics of their acquiescence to the July 3 coup. A CBC Radio news report this morning reminded listeners that Europe, at least, restricted aid to Egypt during the government of Mohamed Morsi in order to press for “democratic reforms”.
This is a familiar phrase whenever political intervention is undertaken against governments in oppressed countries. Haiti endured a boycott of aid and economic assistance that was imposed the day following President Aristide’s second election as president, in the year 2000. Watch the excellent, 82-minute film Aristide and the Endless Revolution, much of which is devoted to analyzing the aid boycott and its consequences.
* Rabble.ca has published a brief summary of rallies that took place around the world this past weekend condemning the coup d’etat.
One of those rallies took place in Auckland, New Zealand. Below is a statement published by Keith Locke, a former Green Party MP in the New Zealand legislature. It is based on the speech that he gave to the rally. Locke writes that he was particularly touched by one of the signs at the rally held by a young woman. It read, ““I am not from the Brotherhood but they are my brothers”.
Don’t harbour any illusions about Egypt’s military regime
By Keith Locke, The Daily Blog (Auckland, New Zealand), August 19, 2013
It is no longer a question of whether or not we agree with the Moslem Brotherhood. When people are being massacred by a military regime for exercising their democratic right to protest, then we must speak out. We must stand with them.
One sign particularly struck my fancy. It read: “I am not from the Brotherhood but they are my brothers.” It was carried by a young woman at a 200-strong protest rally in Auckland’s Aotea Square yesterday. [See photo at link above.]
The young woman’s message was along the same lines as my speech to the rally, attended mainly by Egyptian New Zealanders, and others from Middle Eastern countries.
It is no longer a question of whether or not we agree with the Moslem Brotherhood. When people are being massacred by a military regime for exercising their democratic right to protest, then we must speak out. We must stand with them.
The brutal military crackdown is sliding Egypt back to the dark days of the Mubarak regime.
Unfortunately, many liberal-minded Egyptians were hoodwinked into thinking that the 3 July military coup would put Egypt on a better path to democracy. They had criticized the Morsi government for being intolerant and exclusive in the way it ruled. However to choose a military regime over a flawed, democratically elected government was a fatal error.
Democracy in all its aspects is fast disappearing in Egypt as the military shoots down Brotherhood supporters outside mosques, manipulates the media, and talks about banning the Brotherhood altogether.
Driving the Brotherhood back underground again (as it was in Mubarak’s time) would be a disaster. In 1992, the Algerian military deposed an elected Islamist government, and thousands were killed in the armed conflict which followed.
There has been an alarming reluctance among Western nations to call the military takeover by its right name, a “coup”. Until this week Western criticism of the coup leaders has been muted. Last Thursday (six weeks after the coup) our Foreign Minister Murray McCully finally put out a media statement expressing his “strong condemnation” of “the use of military force against civilians.” Other Western governments have now done likewise, and the United States has cancelled Bright Star, a joint US/Egyptian military exercise. However, if the US was seriously opposed to the military massacres it would halt its aid to the Egyptian armed forces, presently running at $US1.3 billion a year.
We read in an Israeli media outlet, Ynetnews that “The US is in no hurry to stop its aid to Egypt, which would severely damage its relations with the Egyptian army. The Egyptians allow the Americans to move their military forces, quickly and almost without warning, over Egyptian skies and the Suez Canal, which is a necessity for its activities in the war on terror in the Horn of Africa, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and the area of Israel and the Gaza Strip.” For the Obama administration, its own military interests come before the lives of the innocent people being gunned down in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities.
Keith Locke was a Green Party member of the New Zealand Parliament from 1999 to 2011. He lived in Canada and attended the University of Alberta. He joined the Socialist Action League in New Zealand in 1970 at the age of 26 and remained with it until 1985. In the 1990s, he was part of the Alliance Party, a mass, left wing party founded in a break with the Labour Party.
