WIKIPEDIA
2013 EGYPTIAN COUP D’ETAT
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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
EGYPT: RAB’A KILLINGS LIKELY CRIMES
AGAINST HUMANITY
12 AUGUST 2014
(Cairo) – The systematic and widespread killing of at least 1,150 demonstrators by Egyptian security forces in July and August 2013 probably amounts to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today in a report based on a year-long investigation. In the August 14 dispersal of the Rab’a al-Adawiya sit-in alone, security forces, following a plan that envisioned several thousand deaths, killed a minimum of 817 people and more likely at least 1,000.
The 188-page report, “All According to Plan: The Rab’a Massacre and Mass Killings of Protesters in Egypt,” documents the way the Egyptian police and army methodically opened fire with live ammunition on crowds of demonstrators opposed to the military’s July 3 ouster of Mohamed Morsy, Egypt’s first elected civilian president, at six demonstrations between July 5 and August 17, 2013. While there is also evidence that some protesters used firearms during several of these demonstrations, Human Rights Watch was able to confirm their use in only a few instances, which do not justify the grossly disproportionate and premeditated lethal attacks on overwhelmingly peaceful protesters.
“In Rab’a Square, Egyptian security forces carried out one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “This wasn’t merely a case of excessive force or poor training. It was a violent crackdown planned at the highest levels of the Egyptian government. Many of the same officials are still in power in Egypt, and have a lot to answer for.”
The authorities have failed to hold even a single low-level police or army officer accountable for any of the killings, much less any official responsible for ordering them, and continue to brutally suppress dissent. In light of the continued impunity, an international investigation and prosecutions of those implicated are needed, Human Rights Watch said. States should further suspend military and law enforcement aid to Egypt until it adopts measures to end its serious rights violations.
Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 200 witnesses, including protesters, doctors, local residents, and independent journalists, visited each of the protest sites during or immediately after the attacks began, and reviewed physical evidence, hours of video footage, and statements by public officials. Human Rights Watch wrote to relevant Egyptian ministries soliciting the government’s perspective on these events, but received no responses.
The report includes a detailed examination of the planning and execution of the dispersal of the protest at Rab’a al-Adawiya Square, where from July 3 to August 14, tens of thousands of largely peaceful Morsy supporters, including women and children, held an open-ended sit-in demanding Morsy’s reinstatement. Human Rights Watch used satellite photographs from one night of the sit-in, August 2, to estimate that approximately 85,000 demonstrators were in the square that night.
On August 14, security forces attacked the Rab’a protest encampment from each of its main entrances, using armed personnel carriers (APCs), bulldozers, ground troops, and snipers. Security forces gave little to no effective warning and opened fire into large crowds, leaving no safe exit for nearly 12 hours. Security forces fired on makeshift medical facilities and positioned snipers to target whoever sought to enter or exit Rab’a hospital. Towards the end of the day, the central stage, field hospital, mosque, and first floor of Rab’a hospital were set ablaze, probably by security forces.
One protester, a businessman, described the scene:
They immediately fired tear gas and live fire. It was so intense; I can’t even describe it. It was not like the other times before, one or two at a time. It was raining bullets. I smelled the gas and immediately saw people being hit and falling down around me. I have no idea how many people were hit. We didn’t hear any warnings, nothing. It was like hell.
Human Rights Watch documented 817 people killed in the Rab’a dispersal alone. Given strong evidence of additional deaths compiled by Rab’a survivors and activists, additional bodies taken directly to hospitals and morgues without accurate record or known identity, and individuals still missing, it is likely that more than 1,000 were killed in Rab’a. Police detained more than 800 protesters from the sit-in, some of whom they beat, tortured, and, in several cases, summarily executed, six witnesses told Human Rights Watch.
RAPPORT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
ALL ACCORDING TO PLAN
THE RAB’A MASSACRE AND MASS KILLINGS OF
PROTESTERS IN EGYPT
ZIE OOK
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WORLD REPORT 2025
EGYPT
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government entered its second decade in power by continuing wholesale repression, systematically detaining and punishing peaceful critics and activists and effectively criminalizing peaceful dissent. Authorities detained and prosecuted dozens of protesters and activists, including at Palestine solidarity demonstrations. Thousands of detainees remained locked up in dire conditions in lengthy pretrial detention or on sentences stemming from unjust trials.
Several leading human rights defenders were allowed to travel outside Egypt for the first time since 2016. However, civic space remained severely curtailed as independent organizations operating under draconian laws faced continued judicial and security harassment. Since January, Egypt signed bailout deals of about US$57 billion, yet the economic crisis, and the government’s response, hampered people’s economic and social rights, including to food, health, and electricity.
Conduct of Security Forces
Interior Ministry police and National Security Agency (NSA) officers continued to arbitrarily detain, forcibly disappear, and torture critics and dissidents in official and unofficial places of detention.
In July, NSA officers arbitrarily detained political satire artist Ashraf Omar and journalist Khaled Mamdouh and held them incommunicado. Omar’s family said that NSA agents tortured him and threatened to subject him to electric shocks while in secret detention.
Egyptian authorities appear to have made opaque amnesty deals in recent years with suspected members of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) affiliate in Egypt’s North Sinai, without making the criteria public. International laws of war encourage the broadest possible amnesties at the end of non-international armed conflicts; however, this excludes anyone suspected, accused, or convicted of committing war crimes or other serious international crimes. Authorities have not clarified whether they have a plan for prosecuting those suspected of serious abuses such as mass civilian killings and extrajudicial executions.
Despite a relatively calm situation, authorities have continued to treat the North Sinai region as a de facto closed military zone and have prohibited independent reporting. The military continued to prevent tens of thousands of residents, whom it has forcibly evicted since 2013, from returning to their land.
Military Jurisdiction
In January, parliament swiftly approved new government-proposed laws which granted the military sweeping new authority to fully or partially replace functions of the police, civilian judiciary, and other civilian authorities, and to further expand the jurisdiction of military courts to prosecute civilians.
Law No. 3 of 2024 provides military personnel involved in certain operations with the same judicial powers of arrest and seizure as the police. It also stipulates that all offenses against or in relation to broadly worded “vital” public facilities and buildings are to be prosecuted in military courts. In recent years, abusive laws have been used to prosecute thousands of civilians, including children, in military courts.
Freedom of Expression and Assembly
Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP), an abusive branch of Egypt’s public prosecution, is responsible for keeping thousands of peaceful activists and journalists in pretrial detention for months or years without evidence of wrongdoing. It has detained many journalists on spurious charges often related to their work. For example, prosecutors held satirist Ashraf Omar and journalist Khaled Mamdouh in pretrial detention since July without evidence of wrongdoing. Lawyers said they faced charges of “spreading false information,” “belonging to a terrorist group,” and “misusing social media.”
In early July, the SSSP arbitrarily referred Abdelrahman Mahmoud Abdou, a researcher and journalist also known as Abdelrahman Ayyash, to a criminal court. The indictment charged Ayyash alongside four others with “leadership of a terrorist group,” while 41 others were charged with joining or financing the unnamed group. Ayyash, who is living in exile, said he did not receive formal notice of the charges.
On July 16, the Interior Ministry said it detained a man it claimed was responsible for displaying criticism of President Sisi on a billboard screen in Giza, which went viral on social media. Such criticism is protected free expression that should not be penalized.
In July, authorities arbitrarily detained more than 100 individuals amid online calls for protests in response to price hikes and power cuts. The protests did not materialize, and authorities preemptively detained people based on online posts. Authorities have also continued to renew the pretrial detention of protesters including those detained in Palestine solidarity protests in 2023.
Attacks on Human Rights Defenders and Freedom of Association
Authorities allowed prominent human rights defenders, such as Gamal Eid, Hossam Bahgat, and others, to travel abroad for the first time since 2016, when they were prosecuted alongside dozens of other human rights advocates and organizations in Case 173 known as the “foreign funding” case. In March, an investigative judge said that the investigations were closed and charges dropped for lack of evidence. In November, the judge also lifted eight-year-long asset freeze orders imposed on at least four prominent defenders. However, several of the former defendants still face harsh consequences including asset freezes. Nasser Amin and Hoda Abdelwahab, two prominent human rights defenders, remain arbitrarily banned from traveling abroad and continue to face SSSP investigations.
Independent organizations and advocacy work remain severely curtailed under the draconian restrictions of Egypt’s 2019 NGO law. Prominent activists prosecuted in other arbitrary cases, such as Gasser Abdelrazek, continue to face travel bans and asset freezes without trial.
In mid-February 2024, several government and progovernment figures and entities engaged in an aggressive smear campaign on television, in newspapers, and social media against the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, an independent group, and its director Ahmed Salem. Salem, a United Kingdom-based Egyptian human rights activist, said that he received threats through intermediaries close to Egyptian authorities that he “would be brought back to Egypt” if he did not drop his work. One of these threats, through a government-appointed Sinai local clan leader, warned that Salem “is not far from reach even abroad.”
Authorities continued to detain prominent critic and blogger Alaa Abdelfattah, who was unjustly sentenced to a five-year term that should have ended in October 2024. His lawyer said authorities refused to count the two years Abdelfattah spent in pretrial detention before the verdict, and plan to detain him until January 2027. He was previously sentenced in 2015 to a separate five-year term for participating in protests.
Authorities also continued to detain lawyer Houda Abdel Moneim, a former member of the National Council for Human Rights, despite her having served an unjust five-year sentence in October 2023. Instead of releasing her, the SSSP brought charges against her in a new case almost identical to the previous one against her, connected to the peaceful work of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms. This practice known as “recycling” or “rotation” is extensively used to keep critics in detention.
Government Opposition
In February, an Egyptian court sentenced prominent politician Ahmed Tantawy, along with his campaign advisor and 21 of his detained supporters, to a year in prison for alleged offenses associated with his presidential challenge to President Sisi in the December 2023 election. The court also barred Tantawy from running for national elections for five years. The court ruling was entirely based on Tantawy’s peaceful political activism and the efforts of Tantawy’s campaign to collect support statements ahead of the election.
On May 27, authorities imprisoned Tantawy after an appeals court upheld the one-year sentence against him and nearly two dozen of his supporters and confirmed the ban on running in national elections.
Justice System
Authorities continued to use abusive video conference systems to conduct remote hearings for pretrial detention renewal, without bringing detainees before a judge. This system severely undermines due process, preventing a judge from assessing the legality and conditions of detention as well as the detainees’ wellbeing. And it violates several fair trial guarantees including the right to legal counsel.
Parliament’s Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Sub-Committee approved a draft law that would replace the 1950 Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), which would undermine already weakened fair trial rights and further empower abusive officials. The legislation fails to address Egyptian authorities’ widespread use of arbitrary pre-trial detention and enforced disappearance, perpetuates impunity for law enforcement officials who violate human rights, and extends the powers of public prosecutors and law enforcement officers in a manner that could facilitate further violations of defendants’ rights. It also expands the use of video conference systems to conduct remote hearings to involve all types of pretrial and trial hearings.
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
The government’s economic approach, which prioritizes spending on large infrastructure projects including those led by the military, continues to undermine people’s economic, social and cultural rights, particularly in light of the country’s recurring economic crises, including skyrocketing prices of basic commodities, rising poverty, and reduced access to food and electricity.
From February 2024 onwards, Egypt’s donors including the United Arab Emirates, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the United Kingdom and the European Union provided or pledged some US$57 billion in grants and loans. But this did little to help people in a country where nearly two-thirds of the population of over 100 million live in or near poverty, and the social security system provides only small cash transfers to around 21 million people.
Reforms undertaken in the context of different IMF programs also contributed to an increase in prices and a decrease in the value of cash assistance. Following Egypt’s first IMF program in 2016, the national poverty rate reached almost 30 percent in 2019 and average consumer inflation reached 33.3 percent in 2024, undermining the right to food and an adequate standard of living. Egyptians faced rolling electricity blackouts this year amid an energy crisis. And the government has removed many food and fuel subsidies without sufficient measures to scale up the country’s social security system and mitigate the harm. Its spending levels on social protection, health, and education remain inadequate.
Refugee and Migrant Rights
As of November 2024, Egypt hosted over 841,922 registered refugees and asylum seekers from 659countries, including some 565,000 people who fled the ongoing armed conflict in Sudan since April 2023. According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, the Egyptian government said it had received 1.2 million Sudanese people since April 2023, which may include unregistered asylum seekers and others who left Egypt to other countries. Between late 2023 and March 2024, Egyptian authorities arbitrarily arrested and unlawfully expelled thousands of Sudanese asylum seekers despite the risks of serious harm in Sudan, violating the principle of non-refoulement, according to reports by Amnesty International and others. According to UNHCR, access to public schools for refugee children “on equal footing to Egyptians” is only available to nationals of Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, and Syria. However, even children of those nationalities face bureaucratic and other hurdles that deny them access to education