Egypt failed to hold anyone accountable for Rabaa massacre 10 years on, says HRW

Egyptian authorities have failed to hold anyone accountable for the Rabaa massacre ten years after almost 1,000 protesters were killed when Egyptian security forces violently dispersed a sit-in on 14 August 2013.

That day, demonstrators demanding the return of President Mohamed Morsi were shot at, burnt alive and suffocated with tear gas. Security forces blocked the entrances to the square so that people couldn’t leave and ambulances couldn’t enter.

The Rabaa massacre is likely a crime against humanity, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said, which “kick-started a mass repression campaign targeting government critics, precipitating one of Egypt’s worst human rights crises in many decades.”

Hundreds of protesters who survived are now in prison; many have been sentenced to death. Others are in exile, yet authorities have failed to prosecute anyone, HRW said.

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The Rabaa massacre preluded a series of grave human rights abuses in the country, including arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearances and torture of critics or perceived critics in the country.

Egypt has also continued to use the death penalty, often after mass trials and trials which do not meet due process.

In 2020, Egypt was one of the top three executioners worldwide, according to Amnesty International. Cairo handed out 538 more death sentences that year, triple the number from the previous year. Of these executions, 28 were political cases.

Adam Coogle, deputy director of MENA at HRW, said: “The Rab’a massacre precipitated a devastating campaign of arrests, sham trials, torture, and exile that has all but removed any space for critical dialogue and pushed many reformists out of the country.”

 “Addressing what happened in Rab’a does not only concern Rab’a victims and their families but is also crucial for the prospect of human rights and democracy in Egypt.”