[The severity of the military’s crackdown, even as the newly
elected Parliament begins to take shape, has restored a degree of unity that
had been missing among the civilian political factions, liberal and Islamist,
since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February. Perhaps most
significant, Egypt’s powerful mainstream Islamist group, the Muslim
Brotherhood, agreed to join hands with liberals in demanding the prompt end of
military rule.]
 |
| Image courtesy: Daily Mail |
But in a scornful news
conference, Gen. Adel Emara of the ruling military council insisted that the
military had never used violence against peaceful protesters.
“The armed forces and
the police pledged not to use violence against protesters actively or even
verbally,” he said. Instead, he said, the protesters had deliberately provoked
soldiers into clashes as part of a plot “to destroy the state.”
Egypt will never fall,
he declared, “as long as it has heroes from the armed forces.” And rather than
apologize for the military’s violence, he threw back the challenge to the
Egyptian news media: “Why don’t you talk about the excessive use of violence by
the other side?”
His defiant statements
came hours after a predawn military assault on Tahrir Square added three more
people to the death toll, the latest in a series of military attacks witnessed
by journalists, captured on video and broadcast across the Internet and on
satellite television. Activists used circles of bricks to mark the bloodstains
left on the pavement.
Protest leaders said his
remarks were the clearest sign yet of the depth of the military’s determination
to hold on to power even after the new Parliament is seated early next year.
“We are definitely now
living in a military coup,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, a young liberal
organizer. “And the whole world should know.”
Since Sunday, Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations; the European Union’s top diplomat,
Catherine Ashton; and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have all urged
the military to halt the violence, leaving no doubt about the question of
responsibility for keeping the peace.
In a statement issued
late Sunday from Washington, Mrs. Clinton said she was “deeply concerned” about
the violence. “I urge Egyptian security forces to respect and protect the
universal rights of all Egyptians, including the rights to peaceful free
expression and assembly,” she said. “We call upon the Egyptian authorities to
hold accountable those, including security forces, who violate these
standards.”
Mrs. Ashton of the
European Union warned that the fighting threatened to undermine confidence in
Egypt’s parliamentary elections, which are still in progress. “The democratic
electoral process should continue in a safe and transparent environment,” she
said.
The severity of the
military’s crackdown, even as the newly elected Parliament begins to take
shape, has restored a degree of unity that had been missing among the civilian
political factions, liberal and Islamist, since the ouster of President Hosni
Mubarak in February. Perhaps most significant, Egypt’s powerful mainstream
Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, agreed to join hands with liberals in
demanding the prompt end of military rule.
Dozens of newly elected
members of Parliament, most notably the new liberal icon Amr Hamzawy, sought to
capitalize on their new authority as Egypt’s first democratically elected
representatives in more than six decades. They were joined Monday afternoon by
other candidates and political leaders, including Mohamed Beltagy of the
Brotherhood, on the steps of Egypt’s high court to demand that the military
turn over power to the lower house of Parliament soon after its election.
They set a deadline of
Jan. 25, the first anniversary of the protests that began the revolution. And
they called for the election of a president by Feb. 11, one year after Mr.
Mubarak left power.
A onetime civilian
leader of the military-led transitional government, Essam Sharaf, the former
prime minister, added his voice to the calls for the swift end of military
rule. “Away from the language of intimidation and mistrust, speeding up the
transfer of all powers to a civilian elected presidency is inevitable now,” he
said in a statement, noting that the military council has often professed to
want to leave power as soon as possible.
Indeed, since helping to
usher out Mr. Mubarak, the ruling generals have imposed a relatively gentle
martial law with many of the trappings of civilian government. They have let
their appointed prime ministers do most of the talking. They have usually
responded to major street protests with concessions and ingratiation instead of
just bullets.
Most of all, they have
sent criminal defendants to civilian judges who cited legal texts as though
judicial authority and individual rights had not been suspended along with the
Constitution when the generals took over. Most Egyptians seem not to notice
that they have lived under martial law for months, with the generals above the
courts.
On Monday, General Emara
no longer made any pretense of seeking the support of civilian leaders for
military policies. While he boasted briefly of the military’s success in
delivering a transition to democracy, he made no reference to the military’s
recently formed, and almost immediately disbanded, civilian advisory council.
The council suspended its activities until the military stopped the violence
and apologized; about a third of its roughly 30 members have quit.
The general also dropped
the warm, avuncular approach he and others in the council had taken toward the
news media, chastising journalists as though they were naughty schoolchildren.
“When you want to speak, tell me to stop talking!” he said sarcastically. “I
didn’t allow for talking,” he said at another point. “If you talk I’ll kick you
out.”
He stopped a journalist
before she could open a newspaper carrying the most sensational image of the
weekend’s violence: a group of soldiers pulling the abaya off a prone woman to
reveal her blue bra as one raises a boot to kick her. The picture, circulated
around the world, has become a rallying point of activists opposed to military
rule, though cameras captured soldiers pulling the clothes off other women.
“Before you open the
newspaper, fold it; I know what I’m talking about,” General Emara said. “Yes,
this scene took place and we’re investigating it. But let’s look at the whole
picture and see the circumstances the picture was taken in and we will announce
the complete truth.”
He continued, without
explaining, “Don’t take only this shot, you or any other, and cite it to prove
that violence was used.”
Without naming him, the
general also mocked the recent comments of the liberal leader Mohamed elBaradei
that the military’s indiscriminate violence against protesters was “no way to
run a country.”
“It’s strange and
unbelievable to talk about the excessive use of force, distort the image of the
armed forces of Egypt before the world, give speeches and attempt to steer
public opinion by claiming that ‘this is no way to run countries,’ ” General
Emara said.
He implied that the
public faced a choice between the military’s heavy-handed tactics and the chaos
offered by the protesters, including a sit-in that blocked the
military-appointed prime minister from his office.
“Are countries run
through attempting to stir strife and obstructing state institutions?” he
asked. “Is this the way to run countries? What to do then? Do we bring someone
from outside to organize our country for us?”
“The military council
has always warned against the abuse of freedom,” he said. Excessive freedom, he
said, “leads to chaos and the fall of the state, instead of the fall of the
regime.”
