A tragic betrayal of democracy plunges nation into violent chaos,
A22
Canada is one of the few nations that bluntly called Egypt’s political convulsion last month for what it was: a military coup that deposed Mohammed Morsi, a duly elected president. That tragic betrayal of democracy has now plunged the Arab world’s most populous nation into violent chaos, exploding the fiction that the army stepped in to preserve stability and heal the country.
With cover from Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s troops, helicopters and armoured vehicles, police in Cairo stormed-two Muslim Brotherhood protest campsites on Wednesday, triggering horrific clashes. Protesters attacked police stations while people on opposite sides of the political spectrum battled in the streets with firebombs, guns and other weapons. By dusk 280 people were credibly reported dead and more than 2,000 injured. It was by far the worst bloodletting since the July 3 coup, fanning fears of worse to come.
Interim president Adly Mansour has declared a month-long state of emergency, and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in major cities. He has also named a slew of retired generals to serve as provincial governors. This bid to tighten the military’s grip is dashing hopes for compromise. Vice-President Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace laureate, has resigned in protest, a discouraging sign that Egypt’s democrats are losing faith in the army’s claim that it deposed Morsi, a ruinously divisive figure, to save democracy and set the country on a better track. Instead, the military have arrested Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders and are trying hard to crush opposition demands that he be reinstated. Meanwhile tourism and investment are suffering and the economy is hurting.
Given the scale of Egypt’s crisis, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government should do more than voice routine “deep concern,” as it did on Wednesday. Ottawa’s call for “meaningful political dialogue” was drowned out by the gunfire. A better approach would be to strongly echo U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Morsi be set free, the state of emergency be lifted, the government stop jailing opposition figures and that it tolerate peaceful dissent.
Canada doesn’t have the U.S. government’s $1.3-billion direct leverage in terms of support for the Egyptian military. But we do $1 billion worth of trade with Egypt and have some $400 million invested there. Cairo needs to understand that the chaos imperils this relationship. At the same time Harper should press the United Nations and our allies to hold the Mansour regime accountable for rights violations, and lobby publicly for a political resolution. Egypt’s deep social and religious divisions can’t be healed at gunpoint. The Mansour regime needs to feel more sting of opprobrium. It must find a way to include Egypt’s Islamists not only in the drafting of a new constitution but also in the promised return to elected government next year. The generals will not restore the “confidence and stability” they claim to represent by criminalizing Morsi and other Islamist figures and killing their supporters. The world needs to say all this, in the plainest terms.