Below is the full text of a cross-party statement issued by the Egyptian opposition on the anniversary of the Rabia massacre.
The second anniversary of Rabia massacre has arrived to remind every Egyptian that our bloods are equal and our lives are linked and that maintaining silence toward the killing of any Egyptian grants licence to the regime of repression to kill any Egyptian irrespective of his or her opinion, affiliation or religion.
At Rabia, the authority of repression killed thousands of Egyptians in a known location, on a witnessed day inside the Cairo of Al-Mu’izz. Today, we pledge to make its anniversary a day for life on which the blood of any Egyptian is proclaimed sacred and on which we repudiate a regime who made lawful the spilling of our blood under the pretext of lies it fabricated, legislations it created and conspiracies it hatched. Rabia will remain a symbol for the right to life and the regime of repression, which has come to represent the symbol of murder in our history, will come down.
We call on all the sons and daughters of our people to mark this occasion and remember the thousands of martyrs, of girls and boys and of men and women, who expired defending our collective demands, which every Egyptian in the January revolution voiced (life, freedom, dignity and social justice) without discrimination between one day and another or between one square and another or between one faction and another. The whole of Egypt is today suffering as a result of repression, the violation of rights, the loss of dignity, the usurpation of freedom and the ease with which murder is perpetrated.
On this occasion, we promise our people that their revolution will continue and that it will remain so long as a single revolutionary remains hoisting the legitimate demands of its people on its chaste soil and so long as an oppressor continues to violate rights, murder the innocent, fill the graves, build prisons, close factors and squander resources spending over pompous parties and festivals from the wealth of a trodden nation and families that can hardly earn a living.
We salute our people on the day of life, we salute the martyrs, the detainees, the tormented, the toiling labourers in their factories and the farmers in their fields and the clerks in their offices, and we salute those who remain steadfast in their places and in their positions.
We look forward to a day, soon, when the will of the people is victorious, when the repression machine is broken and when the lies fabricating machine goes silent.
On that day every Egyptian will rejoice celebrating the victory of life over oppression.
Long live Egypt as a free country
Long live its people as honourable and proud nation
Issued on Wednesday 12 August 2015
Signed by:
Ayman Nur, Tharwat Nafi, Hatim Azzam, Seif Abd Al-Fattah, Tariq Al-Zumur, Abd Al-Rahman Yousef, Amr Darrag, Muhammad Mahsoub, Maha Azzam and Yahya Hamid.