Ten years since Cairo's darkest day: The Rabaa massacre continues to haunt Egypt

With ten years passing since hundreds of protesters were killed by Egyptian security forces at Rabaa and Nadha squares,  the reasons behind the massacre and its consequences cast a dark shadow over Egypt and its political and social life today.

The coup and the sit-ins

On July 3, 2013, after months of protests and instability following the removal of dictator Hosni Mubarak in the January 25 revolution of 2011, Egypt’s first and only democratically elected civilian leader Mohamed Morsi was overthrown in a military coup by then Defence Minister and leader of the Egyptian Armed Forces General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

Morsi’s civilian transitional government was replaced with a dictatorial military junta headed by Sisi, with the then general becoming president one year later, a position he has held ever since.

Immediately after Sisi's coup, a peaceful protest movement emerged in favour of the reinstatement of Morsi and, more generally, the return of Egyptian democracy. The protesters occupied and staged sit-ins ay Rabaa El-Adawiya square in eastern Cairo, with a smaller contingent in Nahda square in the west of the city.

The massacre

The nascent Sisi regime considered Rabaa to be the epicentre of the pro-Morsi and pro-democracy movement in Egypt. They and their supporters launched a media campaign vilifying the protesters as violent Islamist terrorists working on behalf of foreign forces. However, as eyewitness accounts attest, the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, ideologically diverse and unified by support for the reinstitution of democracy.

That’s why when, at 7am on the morning of August 14, 2013, the Egyptian Security Forces, accompanied by bulldozers, stormed the camp firing tear gas and live ammunition, the protesters were stunned.

Despite the coup authorities claiming they opened up safe corridors for people to leave the squares, eyewitnesses say otherwise.

“The security forces blocked the entrances … it was complete chaos, no one knew where to go and people were being shot as they ran for cover,”, a doctor who survived the sit-in at Rabaa told The New Arab under condition of anonymity.

"No one believed the military would let Egyptians be killed like this," he added. 

One year after the massacre, Human Rights Watch issued an extensive report on the events of that day, demonstrating that security forces deliberately blocked entrances to stop people from leaving.  

Bulldozers ran over tents full of people, while APCs, accompanied by masked gunmen, fired on crowds of fleeing protesters. Many of the victims had been shot in the back or through the head by snipers, with videos showing protesters being randomly picked off. Some had even been burned alive, as tents were set on fire.

By the end of the “dispersal”, as the pro-coup Egyptian media called it, Human Rights Watch say that at least 817 people were killed, but the true figure is to likely over 1000. Though the regime have now renamed the square and outlawed public discussion of the massacre, Rabaa is remembered as one of the darkest days in Egypt’s history.

A legacy of violence and fear

Since the massacre, Egypt has become one of the worst human rights violators on earth, with human rights groups documenting a major escalation in arbitrary detainment, enforced disappearances, torture, unfair trials, the destruction of civil society and severe assaults on freedom of speech.

Egypt is now among the top three countries in the world for the number of executions and death sentences.

“Rabaa set the precedent for the near-totalitarian Egypt we see today,” Amr Magdi, an Egyptian who is the Senior Researcher for MENA at Human Rights Watch told The New Arab.

“Rabaa was not just about dispersing a protest, it was about sending a message for what is to come. Not just to the Morsi supporters, Muslim Brotherhood or democracy supporters, but all Egyptians: if you oppose this regime, the price will be prison or death,” Magdi said.  

The future: what about justice?

One of the questions many survivors and families of victims have is whether or not there will ever be justice for the events of that day.

In the decade since the massacre, not a single person has been held accountable for the massacre.  Though human rights groups identify Sisi and then interim prime minister Hezam El-Beblawi as the architects of the massacre, they are obviously both untouchable in Sisi's Egypt.

Globally speaking, far from the Egypt facing any ramifications for the massacre, the Sisi regime has developed a strong relationship with the European Union, with his regime becoming a strategic ally of the bloc and a lucrative buyer of Europe's high-tech weaponry.

The US Congress is now taking a more serious look at Egypt's human rights record in regard to the $1.3 billion in military aid it gives the country, but given an entire decade has passed since the Rabaa massacre, many assume Sisi has simply gotten away with it. 

Magdi agrees that while the prospects for justice are currently “zero” given the Rabaa massacre was “the foundation of the Sisi regime” and that the judiciary has now been reshaped by Sisi into a "tool of repression", he thinks Egypt will have “another democratic moment”.

“I don’t think it will remain this way forever and justice is inevitable and when it comes, there will be a moment of reckoning for those who are responsible for this crime”, Magdi concluded.

In a rare move, 26 human rights organisations within Egypt issued a statement expressing their condolences to the families of victims and call for justice, naming Sisi and Beblawi as the perpetrators.

While this might not seem like much, it echoes Magdi's belief that though Egyptian consciousness about the massacre might seem low due to repression and ideological factors, many Egyptians recognise the scale of the crime and its centrality to crafting Sisi's order of oppression.  

However, the Egyptian doctor interviewed by The New Arab remains more circumspect about the prospects of any recompense for the events he witnessed.

“I will never forget that day [at Rabaa], and I think many Egyptians realise it was a terrible crime. People still weep for their loved ones who were killed, but most are too scared to speak openly. [The regime] are even denying us our chance to remember the dead. I know there won't be justice for the crime under the regime that carried it out.”