Editorial
We are aghast
Egyptian military must restore freedom and democracy
WE are aghast at the scale of brutality with which a peaceful civilian demonstration was crushed on the Cairo streets by Egypt's military. We have already expressed our surprise and shock at the high-handed manner in which it flushed out protestors from their encampments Wednesday. But the sheer enormity of the outrage, as it has come to light through further reports, forces us to condemn it again and empathise with the families whose members fell victim to such savagery. The telltale ever-swelling civilian casualty figure says what happened on that day was an outright massacre.
We fail to imagine how a country's army can turn on its own population with such ferocity. We have no knowledge from recent history of any security force descending with this kind of overwhelming force on their own people.
One wonders what prompted the Egyptian interim authority to resort to such unheard-of violence against pro-Morsi supporters who have been only staging a peaceful sit-in programme demanding reinstatement of the deposed former president!
And with this scandalous act by the military, all the dream and hope that January 25, 2011's Egyptian revolution had brought with it has been shattered and turned into a nightmare.
The world should unite in the condemnation of this heinous act by the Egyptian military, create pressure on it to reinstall the elected government and do whatever is necessary to ensure Egypt's peaceful transition to democracy.
At the same time, the interim government should conduct an investigation into Wednesday's excesses and punish those responsible for it, especially court-martial the army officers found guilty.
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