August 14, 2014

One Year Ago: Egypt's Tiananmen

editor:	Murat Suner

Today is a sad anniversary: one year ago, on August 13th, at least 817 people, each of whom has been individually identified, were killed at the Rabaa Square massacre in Kairo by Egyptian armed forces. According to a Human Rights Watch's report it is quite likely that more than 1,000 people died through security forces' excessive fire into the sit-in and even on people who were trying to escape to Rabaa hospital not far from the square.

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, who flew to Kairo to present HRW's report, wasn't even allowed to leave the airport. For a good reason: Roth writes on Foreign Policy that "the slaughter was so systematic that it probably amounts to a crime against humanity under international law."

According to "countless witnesses, including local residents and independent journalists," he says "described security forces indiscriminately mowing down the demonstrators in Rabaa Square.", and concludes "there is every reason to believe that this was a planned operation implicating officials at the very top of the Egyptian government."

In fact this is a quite precarious situation for today's Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi: Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim was the "lead architect of the dispersal plan, and his immediate supervisor, in charge of all security operations, was Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was then defense minister and deputy prime minister for security affairs."