• EGYPT
  • October 18, 2013
  • 18 minutes read

Marking 100 Days of Traitorous Coup, Egypt Pro-Democracy Alliance Calls Huge March Friday

Marking 100 Days of Traitorous Coup, Egypt Pro-Democracy Alliance Calls Huge March Friday

More than a hundred days have passed since the launch of the treasonous military coup, during which most Egyptians have reaped a bitter harvest at all levels.

Mostly-forced demonstrations that lasted about five hours, like a fast food order, were filmed from aircraft – with some cinematic tricks – and used as justification for a coup d’etat pretending to be a popular revolution.

The coup leader thought he would steal this homeland in hours or days at the most. However, throughout Egypt, the proud people have been in continuous nonviolent protests, rejecting the coup, aiming to defeat it completely.

These protests have evidently turned into a popular revolution now in its fourth month, never slowed by Ramadan fasting or intimidated by Egypt’s scorching summer sun, nor by the putschists’ murderous mad military machine, the cold-blooded heavily-armed security forces or their banned bullets and armored vehicles.

This is the true Revolution of the patriotic people struggling for the sake of their homeland, the people determined to challenge and break the coup. For one thing, if this coup is accepted, any commander-in-chief of the armed forces will do the same again.

Thus, convinced his will is certainly greater than that of the people, such a military general will not hesitate to repeat the coup trick, if at any time he does not like the results of legislative or presidential elections.

The following is a summary of the bitter harvest of the coup in one hundred days:

First – Suppression of anti-coup demonstrations and sit-ins:

– Egypt has lived one hundred days of oppression under the rule of coup leader General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. One hundred days of repression, lying, deception, forgery and fabrication. One hundred days of killing, burning, sedition, bloodshed, use of live ammunition, bullets and gases forbidden internationally against unarmed civilians, use of military aircraft in the killing of peaceful protesters, torching of vigil tents packed with protesters, dead and alive, scooping the smoldering bodies with armored bulldozers to hide the evidence, impeding the issuance of permits to bury dead anti-coup protesters in the hope of escaping justice, and violating the sanctity of mosques by shooting people inside them, and even burning and badly damaging places of worship.

– Six thousand people are dead or missing, no-one knows the real figures – under the military junta, people are so cheap in Egypt – while tens of thousands have been wounded.

– Over one hundred days of the coup, the security situation has been going from bad to worse. This is no surprise, since the police in charge of security and the army in charge of the protection of our borders regularly rely heavily on the brutal support of thugs and other criminals. How can they, then, stand in the way of those who disrupt security when they gave them the weapons to wield in the face of the people? And how can they stand against them when they bless their savage work terrorizing and extorting the people?

– All this is only possible in a corrupt societal environment contaminated by military-led media through relentless campaigns of lies, disinformation and deception, and a corrupt judicial environment dominated by prosecutors and judges who messed up the revolutionaries’ lawsuits, allowing all the old regime’s criminal senior officials to be released, despite all the crimes they committed against the people and the families of martyrs and the wounded, in what is described as ‘festival of acquittals’.

– Those criminals are now intent on sabotaging and completely undermining this popular Revolution, as the military junta passes a law to curb demonstrations, gag mouths and suppress freedoms.

Meanwhile, the people are determined to continue their peaceful revolt and political defiance until they regain the January 25 Revolution and avenge the blood of martyrs and the injured.

Second – Suppression of freedoms, and human rights violations:

– Egyptians have suffered one hundred days of coup oppression, lies, fabrications, disinformation, humiliation, indefinite detention away from all due process, military trials, arbitrary arrests, confiscated freedoms, and trampling of all values and norms of national and human rights treaties signed by Egypt.

– In addition to the suppression of peaceful protest sit-ins and demonstrations against the coup, Egypt witnessed a clear and unprecedented decline in public and private freedoms issues. Anyone who challenges or rejects the coup, regardless of their political inclination or ideological affiliation, is now considered a terrorist, a traitor or an immoral pervert. A simple comparison shows that the first January Revolution slogan "freedom" has experienced a major setback, or even a fatal blow by coup commanders and collaborators.

Furthermore, the freedom of the media has all but disappeared from the Egyptian scene since the coup. Media professionals and journalists who have dissenting opinions are now detained, hunted, banned or missing.

Just as they announced the coup, the junta closed several satellite TV channels opposed to the coup, storming their offices, seizing their equipment (even their furniture in some cases) and arresting and assaulting their employees and guests.

Coup forces also arrested and fabricated charges against political symbols who condemned the coup. There are approximately ten thousand such politicians detained, or remain in custody while cases fabricated against them by the security services are supposedly being investigated.

Coup forces further raided the homes of anyone who dared voice opposition to the brutal putsch, destroying the contents of their homes, stealing and looting all valuables, taking their women hostage, fabricating charges against them, and killing dozens in prisons, with the return of the notorious State Security apparatus and the ‘visitors of dawn’ once again to hunt and arrest rights activists and detainees’ lawyers.

Third – Egypt’s national security threatened:

– The coup commander pleads with the US to interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs!

– Egypt’s military-appointed Foreign Minister makes outrageous threats against Palestinian Hamas

– Coup mishandling leads to serious deterioration of the situation in Sinai

– Coup commanders allow foreign military aircraft to penetrate Egyptian airspace and kill Egyptians

– Putschists and subservient media stir and instigate internal strife

– The military-installed government has sold lands in the east and west of the Suez Canal to Zionists and the United Arab Emirates in order to put an end to the Suez Canal corridor project

– The so-called interim government has ignored the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which deals a fatal blow to Egypt’s vital water security

– The putschists have damaged Egypt’s status, on both the regional and international levels.

Fourth – The political situation in a dark dead-end tunnel:

The behind-the-scene traitorous conspiracy in Egypt since the January 25 (2011) Revolution dragged the country ferociously back to the repression and corruption of pre-revolution era, contrary to the putschists’ claims of progress.

The oppressive iron-grip of military control has returned, grabbing the reins of power and dominating all aspects of the state, as the Police State emerges with all its ugly features – totalitarian rule, corruption, stagnation and social injustice.

The military coup aimed to execute a heinous counter-revolution plot to replicate the Mubarak regime in full detail, as evident in giving Mubarak’s top aides and officials full control of the so-called transitional government, the provinces, and the 50-member charter-writing committee (headed by Amr Moussa), in addition to their control of the media.

The putschists claim that their ‘roadmap of the future’ was approved by all political forces, forgetting that only their collaborators agreed on that roadmap which usurped power from the elected president and suspended the constitution approved through a credible referendum by the majority of the people, and also forgetting that more than half of the people reject their roadmap – which forces Egypt into dangerous uncharted waters.

The putschists think that they can exclude Islamists from the political process. However, knowing that Islamists still prevail in the political street, especially after the treasonous kidnapping of President Mohamed Morsi, the coup masterminds are trying all illegal tactics to exclude Islamists, fabricating farcical charges against them, arresting their leaders, and adding text in the Constitution to reject what they call religious parties, by which they mean parties with Islamic reference, then preparing to rig the next elections, if the putschist path had to resort to the ballot box.

In the international arena, the world does not recognize the coup, as all the putschists’ desperate attempts failed to beautify the ugly face of their coup or to convince the world that what happened was a popular revolution.

The African Union rejected the authority of the coup. In the past week, the International Parliament decided to drop Egypt’s membership, during its conference in Geneva, due to the absence of a legislative institution in Egypt at the moment.

Fifth – Features of amendments to the Constitution by the military-appointed committee:

Features of the putschists’ amendments to the Constitution have emerged, and can be summarized as follows:

– Perversion and defacement of the Egyptian identity; abolition of the community’s role in protecting the family and women; encouraging anti-religion anti-morality phobias; covering up corruption and protecting the corrupt; shunning the January 25 Revolution; absolving the state of its obligations towards workers, peasants and nomads; corruption of the Egyptian political system; and putting the armed forces and the judiciary above the state and above the law.

Sixth – Deterioration of economic conditions:

One hundred days of the coup have caused a collapsed economy, as tourism is suspended, security is non-existent, and the government is neither qualified nor accountable. The military coup has destroyed the Egyptian economy even before one hundred days are out.

In spite of all the now-revealed intrigue and conspiracies faced by President Mohamed Morsi, during his one year rule, and the war waged against him by several forces within state institutions, his regime did succeed in reducing Egypt’s foreign as well as domestic debts. By contrast, the military-appointed government increased Egypt’s domestic debt to LE176 billion in less than two months.

Whereas foreign investment before the coup reached a hundred billion dollars, and local investments rose to LE181.9 billion, compared with LE17 billion in the previous year (Ganzouri government), investments stopped completely after the coup, and companies were promptly shuttered.

Thus, most foreign investments were pulled out of Egypt, and most state-owned factories stopped working. Moreover, whereas President Morsi maintained foreign cash reserves, the putschists caused these to fall to unprecedented critical levels.

The tourism sector suffered paralysis in most segments, with occupancy rates never exceeding 10 – 15%, five international airlines stopped flights to Egypt altogether, and many flights coming to Egypt are totally empty.

Furthermore, state debts rose under the military-installed government, which forced the coup masterminds to resort to the policy of borrowing from banks to cover the worsening deficit in the state budget. This puts the Egyptian economy is in a severe crisis, as the government has also failed to find effective solutions and real resources to cover the deficit.

Egypt’s external debt did not escape the fallout of these tremendous achievements, rising to about $45 billion, compared with an estimated $36 billion under President Morsi, thanks to the coup government which resorted to external borrowing to repay obligations and get out of the current financial crisis.

Looking at the issues that directly affect Egyptians’ daily lives, we find that many sectors had witnessed clear achievements under President Mohamed Morsi, with expanded health-care service cover, social security for five million female-headed households, debts dropped for small farmers, and tourism indicators rising.

In contrast, the military junta stopped all bonuses approved by President Morsi, and canceled the cadre of teachers and doctors he approved. The coup has sabotaged all achievements.

In less than two months of military coup rule, the prices of food products, including fruits and vegetables, increased significantly compared to the same period of last year, between 60 and 100%, while construction materials rose by 20%.

Prices are still on the rise every day. Tourism does not exist anymore. In fact countries around the world warn their nationals against travel to Egypt, and cash reserves continue to drop.

With declining wages, coupled with increasing prices, we find putschists doubling the wages of their men in the army, the police and the judiciary, while postponing the minimum and maximum wage limits so as not to turn their own men against them, as they rob the people’s funds.

Unemployment has increased and a lot of factories have ground to a halt, as thousands of workers were dismissed and mega projects were shuttered to satisfy pro-coup states.

Consequently, the dream of social justice we called and chanted for in the January 25 Revolution simply faded away, with the poor getting poorer and the big whales getting even bigger. We cannot even secure our food, fuel or energy reserves.

Now a tiny state like the Emirates launch a campaign to collect donations for Egypt, while the illegitimate president of the country visits foreign States that regard the coup as a savior from the revolution, begging them for financial support.

Seventh – Deterioration of social conditions:

On the social level, sharp division, conflict, ugly discord and incitement to hatred and violence are all prevalent in society. You can hardly find a family whose children do not suffer the hateful disharmony. Further, as the putschists and their supporters celebrated October 6 – with singing and dancing in the most repulsive vulgar ways – a dear victory they never contributed to, their forces were spilling the precious blood of peaceful protesters mere meters away.

Needless to say, the coup’s catastrophic achievements are innumerous. We affirm that nonviolent opposition and peaceful political defiance of the coup will continue. The people will persist in their resistance of the coup, tirelessly, confident that they will defeat the coup.

The Anti-Coup, Pro-Legitimacy National Alliance therefore calls on all free revolutionaries to join the "100-Day Balance" million-man march, to mark 100 days of coup, after noon prayers Friday October 18. The assembly point will be in Roxy Square and Maadi Corniche in Cairo, and at the Station Square in Giza, next to Giza railway station.

Inevitably, the nonviolent Revolution will restore democracy. The coup will be defeated.

The Anti-Coup, Pro-Legitimacy National Alliance

Cairo: October 17, 2013