Supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi prepared for confrontation yesterday, and the US said Egypt’s military had been “restoring democracy” when it drove him from office.
Thousands were gathered in two Muslim Brotherhood camps in Cairo, defying warnings from the new army-backed government to abandon their protest or face action from security forces.
At the main Rabaa al-Adawiya camp yesterday morning, young men wearing crash helmets and brandishing sticks mounted a first line of defense behind barricades of sandbags and bricks.
International diplomats, rights groups and Egyptian religious leaders appealed to authorities to avoid bloodshed.
Political sources said there had been intense debate within the Cabinet on the wisdom of the security forces taking action.
Almost 300 people have died in political violence since Morsi was overthrown on July 3, including 80 of his supporters shot dead by security forces in a single incident on Saturday last week.
Morsi, an Islamist who became Egypt’s first freely elected president in June 2011, had faced weeks of street demonstrations against his rule. Many Egyptians were frustrated by his failure to get to grips with social and economic problems and feared he was leading the country towards stricter Islamist control.
He is now being held by the military at a secret location.
The turmoil has left Egypt more polarized than at any time since US-backed former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011.
The new civilian government installed by the military received a boost on Thursday from the US, which had previously given mixed messages about events in a country that has long been a bulwark of Washington’s Middle East policy.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Pakistan that Egypt’s army had been “restoring democracy” when it toppled Morsi.
“The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a desendance into chaos, into violence,” he told Pakistan’s GEO TV. “And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment so — so far.”
The US has avoided calling Morsi’s overthrow a “coup” — a move that would have triggered a cut-off in the US$1.3 billion of US aid the Egyptian military receives each year.
However, Kerry has called on Egypt to respect the right of peaceful protest, including the pro-Morsi rallies.
EU envoy Bernardino Leon, who is in Cairo trying to defuse tensions, said on Thursday the EU would not easily accept the use of violence to break up the protest camp.
Efforts should be made to reach a political solution by involving moderates on both sides, he said.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the government should halt any plans to disperse the Muslim Brotherhood camp by force.
“To avoid another bloodbath, Egypt’s civilian rulers need to ensure the ongoing right of protesters to assemble peacefully, and seek alternatives to a forcible dispersal of the crowds,” said Nadim Houry, HRW’s deputy Middle East director.
It criticized security forces for using excessive force.
Army spokesman Colonel Ahmed Ali said the military wanted no political role but was acting “to support the Egyptian people in their revolution.”
In an interview with al-Sharq al-Awsat Pan-Arab newspaper, he said people had the right to demonstrate peacefully.
“But these demonstrations have departed from a peaceful context and tend toward violent acts in many cases,” he said.
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
RSS