Perhaps the most shocking finding of the Human Rights Watch report is that senior Egyptian leaders anticipated and planned on the mass casualties. Interior Ministry officials told human rights workers nine days before the operation that they expected up to 3,500 deaths. A year later, authorities deny any wrongdoing and have not charged a single police or army officer in connection with the killings. On the contrary, a monument celebrating the security forces has been erected in Rabaa Square. Human Rights Watch’s lawyers believe that more than a dozen senior officials who ordered or oversaw the operation should be investigated for crimes against humanity, including Gen. Sissi. More people died on Aug. 14 in Rabaa Square than in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 or in any mass killing of protestors since then, the human rights group reckons. In the last 12 months the most repressive regime seen in Egypt in decades has taken hold; thousands of members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood have been handed death sentences, while secular journalists and leaders of Egypt’s pro-democracy movement have been imprisoned on trumped-up charges. The Obama administration nevertheless treats the architect of the slaughter, Gen. Sissi, as a valued partner rather than the pariah he should be. The White House seems to believe that its unprincipled embrace of the regime and cynical promotion of the falsehood that it is “restoring democracy” will advance broader U.S. interests in the Middle East. It’s a bad bet.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 03:27:01 +0000
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