The Rabaa Al-Adawiya massacre is forever in our memory

Eleven years have passed since the Rabaa Al-Adawiya massacre in Cairo. It remains the massacre of the era. Despite all the oppression, injustice, killings and bloodshed we have seen before and since, which have exceeded even our worst nightmares, the Rabaa massacre stands out. I shudder when I think of it; the memories are still fresh in my mind.

In what Human Rights Watch has described as the world’s worst massacre of peaceful demonstrators, Egyptian security forces under General Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi dispersed crowds of people in Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Nahda Squares in Cairo on 14 August 2013. Up to 1,000 were killed — shot, burnt alive or gassed — as troops fired indiscriminately into the crowd.

Time has not erased the memory of the massacre from anyone’s mind in Egypt. It was a dark incident that has shrouded all involved in its darkness. Those who knew about it in advance; planned it; or pulled the trigger have no conscience. Their hearts have died. Likewise, those who took to the streets gloating over the victims, dancing and singing over their burning corpses had no conscience and no shame.

And as for those who sat and watched it all unfold on their TV screens but did and said nothing about it, words fail me.

The blood and corpses of the innocent did nothing to stir them out of their tacit complicity. In my view, it was a shameful episode on a day when humanity’s collective conscience and awareness about right and wrong took a massive hit.

Official condemnations of the massacre were half-hearted and of little significance. The then King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, supported it from the first moment, having sponsored the 3 July military coup and its instigator Al-Sisi.

How can the people who planned and took part in the massacre of their fellow Egyptians look at themselves in the mirror every morning? How can they forget their deception when they announced a safe corridor out of the squares which was a trap in which they caught the unarmed protesters and killed them? How can they forget how they blocked ambulances from attending to the wounded? How can they forget that they burned the field hospital and the medics and patients inside it? How can they forget that they burned Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque itself with so much malice?

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I can still see the bulldozers scooping up the bodies of the innocent victims to throw them in the garbage wagons. I can still hear the screams of the children when they saw the bullets and the flames. I can still feel the pain of the mother cradling he dead son upon whom she depended. I can still shed tears thinking of the little boy standing by his mother’s body and asking her to wake up. Time has stopped for me on that black day when Egypt witnessed this unprecedented massacre of the innocents.

Those who planned and committed the massacre of the century that took place on 14 August 2013 are still alive and living in luxury. They have not been brought to justice, even though the massacre took place in full view of the entire world and the criminals were caught red-handed committing their crimes and are known to everyone.

Eleven years have passed since the massacre, but many of its secrets remain hidden. Even Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, who was vice president of the imposter appointed by the coup, has not revealed anything that he came across in the closed rooms where the massacre was planned. He merely submitted his resignation afterwards; issued a statement condemning the killings; packed his bags; and left. He wrote some tweets every now and again, and appeared in a number of televised interviews in which he exonerated himself. He never mentioned the perpetrators or what went on behind the scenes, even though his testimony could have led to a criminal case at The Hague given his international standing and status. However, he did not move or take any step that would ease his conscience — assuming he has one — despite trying to exonerate himself.

According to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Khaled Bin Mohammed Al-Attiyah, there were negotiations that ElBaradei was authorised by the coup authority to conduct which were close to reaching a peaceful solution. He claimed to have been surprised to see the massacre take place a day later.

Who, I wonder, obstructed the negotiations and wanted there to be a massacre?

It had to be someone who wanted to demonstrate their power to send a message to political opponents and the Egyptian people: “Stand against me, and see what happens.”

Last year, a documentary film about the Rabaa massacre was shown in London. It was not only heartbreaking, but also a step in the right direction. The film was well received by the audience, who were deeply moved. Everything that happened on that day must be documented with audio and video evidence as well as the testimonies of witnesses who survived it, so that the whole world can see and memories do not fade. How about the UN declaring 14 August every year to be the “International Day for the Victims of the Suppression of Peaceful Protests”?

Rabaa is still a painful memory, not least because those responsible are still at large; justice for the victims has not been served. The demonstration in Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Nahda Squares was the last cry of resistance against the regional project to kill the Arab Spring revolutions, especially Egypt’s 25 January 2011 Revolution. Sitting on their blood-soaked thrones those responsible and their supporters in the region have kept the people enslaved, oppressed, humiliated and in poverty. As the late poet Muzaffar Al-Nawab asked, how could something this clear be so hard to understand?

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.