Rab'a massacre was too ruthless for— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth)August 11, 2014
"Instead of denying the messenger entry to Egypt, the Egyptian authorities should seriously consider our conclusions and recommendations and respond with constructive action," Roth said in a statement following the incident. "It appears the Egyptian government has no appetite to face up to the reality of these abuses, let alone hold those responsible to account."Roth and Whitson were traveling to Egypt for the report's release — which went on as planned.Egypt just handed out the largest death sentence in its modern history. Read more here.We are all leaving Cairo and safe. Shutting us down cannot erase what happened one yr ago and we will release report on schedule tomorrow
— Omar Shakir (@OmarSShakir)August 11, 2014
The HRW report does actually include reference to security officers killed during the events it documents. "The report also clearly fails to mention the fact that the dispersal came in the failure of all political and popular efforts aimed at persuading the protesters to disperse peacefully," the official statement continues. "The Egyptian government reaffirms its full respect for the promotion and protection of human rights."Yet if the choice to deport the HRW staff brought further attention to the report, for Egyptian authorities it was still preferable to letting them discuss its findings right in the country's capital."Either the government does not realize what kicking out the world's most reputable rights watchdog representative says about its policies or they think that they can contain it," an Egyptian journalist who asked not to be named told VICE News. "But whatever the toll this will take on its already-tainted image abroad, it will be less damaging than having HRW say, from Cairo itself, that Egypt's government has committed a massacre that amounts to a crime against humanity."Here is the Egyptian government's English statement responding to HRW's report on Rabaa — Basil ????? (@basildabh)August 12, 2014
The rights group shut down its Cairo office earlier this year, after its requests for registration had gone unanswered since 2007.The episode was a first for the Egyptian government, HRW said, noting that its staff has never been denied entry before, including under former president Hosni Mubarak.To those observing the Egyptian authorities' crackdown on civil society with growing concern — including on foreign NGOs and journalists — the development was deeply disturbing, though not necessarily surprising.Speaking with VICE News, Shadi Hamid, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, called the report a "devastating indictment" of the Egyptian government's behavior."No one in the Egyptian government wants to touch Rabaa in any serious way, it's the terrible thing that is not spoken of," Hamid said. "Anything that reminds Egyptians of what happened last year is avoided, no one wants to look inward and address what happened that day because it would be very damning of the Egyptian government and military but also of the Egyptian people, many of whom cheered on the massacre while it was happening.'You essentially had Egyptians supporting the mass killing of their fellow countrymen in a way that was really unprecedented in modern Egyptian history. That's a very difficult thing for a country to confront.'
In a single day, August 14, Egyptian security forces shot and killed at least 817 people assembled outside a mosque in Rabaa al-Adawiya, in the Nasr City suburb of Cairo — but that's a conservative estimate, the report found, and the actual death toll was "more likely at least 1,000."Witnesses recounted security forces beating, torturing, and executing several people. They accused officers of deliberately shooting into the crowd, of firing on makeshift medical facilities, and of positioning snipers to target anyone entering or leaving Rabaa hospital. Towards the end of the day, the first floor of the hospital and nearby facilities were set ablaze, the report said.
'The highest levels of government officials in Egypt planned this dispersal… including now president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.'
The report also documented killings by police at five other demonstrations, most of which left dozens of other people dead."This wasn't merely a case of excessive force or poor training," Roth said in a statement at the release of the report. "It was a violent crackdown planned at the highest levels of the Egyptian government. Many of the same officials are still in power in Egypt, and have a lot to answer for."'The Obama administration in particular has kind of gone back to pre-Arab spring business as usual, they're relying increasingly on autocratic regimes.'