Ten years since the Rabaa massacre

If you search the German media for news about Egypt, you will find endless articles about new archaeological findings, about the history of the pharaohs or about mummies.

However, if you search German-language media for reports on ten years since the Rabaa massacre, you will only find inaccessible information.

On August 14, 2013, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who came to power in a military coup on July 3, 2013, ordered the storming of two protest camps in Cairo. At the two protest camps on Rabaa al-Adawiyya Square in Cairo-Nasr-City and on Nahda Square in Giza, supporters of Mohammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was ousted on July 3 and was the first democratically elected president in the history of Egypt, gathered. 

Under the orders of putschist Sisi, security forces stormed the protest camps and shot at the protesters. Thousands of protesters were killed, mostly at the Rabaa protest camp. Thousands more were injured. All over the country, the state cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood and many more were killed.

Eyewitnesses speak of a bloodbath. Ten years later still no one has been held accountable.

To date, the Egyptian state stylizes the massacre as a legitimate measure in the “fight against terrorism”. 

There are around 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. They are imprisoned, tortured and killed in the name of “state security” and “counterterrorism”. Similar arguments have been used by the US to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq or to put Muslim men in the Guantanamo torture camp, and similar arguments are used by European states to surveil and racially profile Muslims.

In truth, the Egyptian military dictatorship under Sisi wishes to silence any opposition – be it from supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, socialists or liberals – to consolidate his absolute rule.

The military dictator Sisi, who has been in power for ten years, is not only courted in Germany and seen as an ally, first by the Social Democrat (SPD) and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) government and now by the coalition government of Liberals (FDP), Greens (Grünen) and SPD. The German state continues to export arms to the Sisi dictatorship while the EU makes deals with Egypt to fight against refugees.

By working closely with the Sisi dictatorship, the German state is showing that any language of “human rights” is mere lip service intended to distract from its political and economic interests.

Ten years after the Rabaa massacre, it must be made clear that the Sisi regime has been a murderous regime stained with blood since the beginning. Terror comes from the state.