UN Rights Chief: Egyptian Army Making Things Worse

The Egyptian military’s crackdown on demonstrators is further destabilizing the country ahead of its landmark election scheduled for next week, says the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. 

In a statement today, the UN rights chief called on Egypt’s military leaders to stop operations against demonstrators and conduct an impartial investigation into the violence that has left at least 30 people dead and injured thousands more over the past five days.

“The actions of the military and security forces, instead of improving security and helping Egypt’s difficult transition to democracy, have once again simply served to inflame the situation, resulting in huge numbers of people taking to the streets to demand their rights. The more they see fellow protestors being carted away in ambulances, the more determined and energized they become.” Pillay said in the statement. 

Pillay says Egyptian protesters have good reason to be angry at the country’s military leaders, who have been slow, and in many cases failed, to implement reform measures they had promised. 

“The lifting of the state of emergency, the implementation of an effective monitoring system during the elections, the full eradication of torture and ill-treatment, the adoption of a comprehensive approach to transitional justice and a comprehensive reform of the security sectors, are among the key future steps identified by the fact-finding mission I dispatched back in April,” she said.

Rights group Amnesty International released a report yesterday detailing actions taken by Egypt’s military leaders, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, since taking over from deposed President Hosni Mubarak’s government in February.

In its report, “Broken Promises: Egypt’s Military Rulers Erode Human Rights”, Amnesty says SCAF has maintained many of the Mubarak regime’s policies and ignored promises to lift the country’s 30 year old emergency law, instead expanding its reach to cover even more potential offenses.

Amnesty International also says the Supreme Council of Armed Forces has continued using arbitrary arrests and torture as a means of intimidating its critics, even hiring groups of “thugs” to attack protesters.

“The Egyptian military cannot keep using security as an excuse to keep to the same old practices that we saw under President Mubarak,” Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa  Philip Luther Director said in a statement posted on the group’s website. “If there is to be an effective transition to the new Egypt that protesters have been demanding, the SCAF must release their grip on freedom of expression, association and assembly, lift the state of emergency and stop trying civilians in military courts.”