Egypt’s June 30 Movement is calling for big demonstrations on Sunday, saying “no” to “terrorism” and “yes” to the “gains of the Revolution.”
The movements appears to be identifying elements of the deposed Muslim Brotherhood government as ‘terrorists’ (as far as I know it is mainly the Sinai Muslim radicals that fit that bill, not the government of deposed President Muhammad Morsi and his circle).
In keeping with this sentiment, Egypt’s public prosecutor announced that it is investigating Morsi and other senior Muslim Brotherhood figures for “spying, inciting killing protesters, attacking military barracks and damaging the economy.”
The secular elite’s obvious determination to criminalize the Muslim Brotherhood, which is supported by millions of Egyptians, is a very bad sign for civil liberties in Egypt.
Euronews has video on the Muslim Brotherhood supporters’ insistence they’ll continue their sit-in until Muhammad Morsi is restored to the presidency:
Egypt’s media have been putting ou non-stop pro-military, nationalistic, anti-Brotherhood messages. The young protesters in Tahrir also seem to be fervently pro-military, patriotic, and anti-Brotherhood. And the government is cracking down on the group seen as “the enemy within”. This is the recipe ror either civil strife or an ugly “cleansing” of the Brotherhood. The atmosphere seems a bit like the Balkans in the nineties
The June 30 movement seems different from the April 6 movement (the original Tahrir protesters) as well as from Gezi Park in Istanbul. Where are the calls for pluralism, democracy, and individual liberty? What the young, twittering secularists are asking for at this time is the forceful silencing of their political opponents.
If “damaging the economy” is a criminal offense that justifies a purge, I suspect most rulers and parties would be guilty of that somewhere along the line. Not a particularly encouraging development at all.
So the fork’s prongs are civil liberties vs. individual freedoms?
>> The secular elite’s obvious determination to criminalize the Muslim Brotherhood, which is supported by millions of Egyptians, is a very bad sign for civil liberties in Egypt.
Unfortunately it is too late to save any kind of “democratic” and “free dispensation in Egypt now. The time to hold the hands of the coup plotters and their sympathizers is gone. They will now do what they had been planning to do since the democratic forces were able to come to the front a year ago. Such commentary should have been done when it was needed.