Egyptians Rally for and Against Military Rule After 17 Killed
December 24, 2011, 12:32 PM ESTBy Maram Mazen
Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Thousands of opponents of army rule in Egypt held rallies across the capital as supporters of the nation’s military council gathered for counter-protests after 17 demonstrators were killed in clashes this week.
Violence in and around central Cairo’s Tahrir Square began Dec. 16 and raged for five days as troops tried to disperse protesters who have been camped there for about a month. They demand the army hand over power to civilians and that trials be expedited for those accused of killing demonstrators during the 18-day revolt against former President Hosni Mubarak and in the months that have followed his February ouster.
“I wasn’t against the military until June, when they started discrediting the revolutionaries,” 50-year-old Eman Hawash, a doctor, said as she joined the thousands of protesters in the square today and condemned the council for justifying the use of violence. “We’re here because the council must leave.”
Pro-military rallies were also held today, including one in Cairo. They were aimed at denouncing the anti-military protesters who are accused by the rally organizers of claiming the military wants to cancel the elections currently under way, the state-run Middle East News Agency said. A group called the Sound of the Silent Majority Movement organized the rallies on the themes “no to vandalism, and no to foreign guardianship” and urged people to help restore security, calm and stability.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which alleged the violence in Tahrir Square was carried out by people linked to the old regime who wanted to sabotage the elections and the democratic process, said on its website that it wasn’t participating in today’s protests against military rule.
Violence by Troops
Troops were shown dragging demonstrators, hitting them with batons and stomping on them, in videos and photographs carried this week by websites and private television stations. The Health Ministry has said most of the deaths were from gunshot wounds. The crackdown by the security forces has been criticized repeatedly by the U.S. and the United Nations.
The state-run Al Ahram newspaper, citing an unidentified “high-profile official,” said yesterday that there’s a foreign plot that will use “internal elements” to call for a peaceful protest on Jan. 25 that would escalate to a “civil war” between civilians and the armed forces, after which foreign armies would have an excuse to intervene to separate the two sides and impose international guardianship over Egypt.
“It’s a systematic plan to deliberately discredit the protesters in the street so that people hate them,” said Emad Gad, an analyst at the Cairo-based Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and a parliamentary candidate for the main secular alliance, the Egyptian Bloc. “This culminated in the events outside the Cabinet, and therefore for the first time they face that they have been exposed.”
Islamists Lead
Egypt is in the middle of parliamentary elections in which the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliate, the Freedom and Justice party, took an early lead, followed by the Nour party, a conservative religious grouping. Run-offs for the second round ended yesterday. A third and final round of voting begins in early January, while presidential elections are scheduled to be held by the end of June.
It is unclear what power an elected assembly may have. The military council, which took power from Mubarak in February, says it won’t relinquish its authority until there is a new parliament, president and constitution.
The ruling generals “themselves risk future prosecution for complicity in serious crimes” unless they put an end to violence now and bring the perpetrators to justice, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a Dec. 19 statement, describing the crackdown as “vicious.”
Moody’s Investors Service cut Egypt’s rating on Dec. 21 one level to B2, five levels below investment grade, citing the government’s deteriorating finances and the “unsettled political situation.”
Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri, appointed by the army, said yesterday he hoped the trials related to the killing of protesters could be speeded up, a key demand of protesters, and urged people to “forget the past” and move forward in a dialogue with all parties that would restore calm.
--With assistance from Caroline Alexander in London. Editors: Heather Langan, Karl Maier
To contact the reporter on this story: Maram Mazen in Cairo at mmazen@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Louis Meixler at lmeixler@bloomberg.net
