Police shoot and kill more protesters in Egypt

Crescent International

Jumada' al-Akhirah 25, 1435 2014-04-25

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

The killing of peaceful protesters continues unabated in Egypt. Every Friday, thousands of people pour out into the streets to denounce the military coup and demand restoration of the first-ever legally elected President Mohamed Mursi. The regime and its thugs respond with bullets, tear gas and other lethal weapons. The people have not been deterred.

Cairo,

April 25, 2014, 17:39 DST

The military-backed regime knows only one thing: how to shoot and kill peaceful protesters. In what has now become routine killings every Friday, today was no exception. A female protester, Reda Ramadan, was killed by security forces using tear gas and buckshot at a rally in Fayoum just south of the Egyptian capital Cairo.

She was shot in the stomach and died as a consequence.

The second victim was a 52-year-old man who suffocated by inhaling tear gas when the security forces fired repeatedly into protesters, according to the National Alliance for the Defence of Legitimacy, a group that supports the ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi.

Despite arresting more than 16,000 people (according to Associated Press figures), killing thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and sympathizers and putting on trial thousands of others, the military has not been able to crush the movement.

Every Friday, tens of thousands of people pour out of mosques and take to the streets to denounce the military regime and demand restoration of the first-ever legally elected president in Egyptian history, Mohamed Mursi.

The former defence minister, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has announced his candidacy to become the country’s president confirming that the July 3, 2013 coup was meant to bring the military back to power. The military had never left; it had only stepped into the shadows while it plotted its moves to return to power with a vengeance.

The military-backed regime, made up of the same thugs that had ruled Egypt during the regime of the ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak, is back at the helm. In fact, despite Mursi’s election, little had changed in Egypt.

The military allowed him to become the president but the quick manner in which it moved against him surprised even seasoned observers. Given the fact that Mursi’s hands were tied and his government would have failed anyway, the military got very impatient perhaps because it had got so used to ruling that it could not wait outside the corridors of power even for a few months.

Since the military coup, protests have continued despite draconian measures that make even peaceful protests illegal. This has not prevented the people as well as students from holding protests. The regime has also sent its thugs into university campuses, including Al-Azhar University in a bid to crush all protests. It seems, the regime is not getting its way with the students.

Egypt has entered the dark age of the pharaohs with el-Sisi playing the role of Ramses.

END