Since the government announced a state of emergency on 14 August following the violent dispersal of the Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins during which hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed and thousands arrested, local and international human rights groups expressed concern over serious human rights violations committed by both the security forces and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. But as the tense atmosphere was ratcheted up, not least by a state and private media determined to tar all Mohamed Morsi supporters with the same terrorist brush, local human rights groups have appeared increasingly divided in their response to events, with some seeking justifications for the blanket security crackdown. On Monday representatives of 24 local human rights groups met with Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim. “He provided us with facts of which were unaware,” says Negad Al-Boraai, a leading human rights activist. “He told us that many of the bodies piled up in Al-Eman Mosque [on the day the Rabaa sit-in was broken up] had been brought from nearby cities in order to gain the sympathy of the international media.” Claims that Brotherhood supporters transported bodies to display in front of cameras have been circulating in social media since 14 August. This was the first time, however, that an official has repeated the claim. “The interior minister said they had seized 30 bodies in three cars coming from Beni Sweif, and 10 bodies from a car coming from Fayoum,” says Al-Boraai. “The Brotherhood intended to pile them up in Al-Eman Mosque.” General Ibrahim, added Al-Boraai, did not dispute that around 300 people were killed in Rabaa. Asked whether he believed the interior minister's claims that bodies were deliberately piled up for the cameras, Al-Boraai responded: “I believe the Brotherhood is capable of anything. The interior minister also spoke of official police complaints and suspects held and as a human rights activist I need to investigate those claims first.” Hafez Abu Seada, director of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, is critical of those advocating reconciliation with the Brotherhood or a halt in the campaign to arrest its members. “We are facing terrorism. We don't have a political dispute in Egypt,” he said in a recent television interview. “What we are facing is a plot to hijack Egypt and turn it into a safe haven for terrorism and terrorists. That's why the Egyptian people rebelled against the Brotherhood on 30 June.” At least 19 local human rights groups have signed a statement declaring support for the Interior Ministry's “war on terror”. On Sunday the Ibn Khaldun Centre, headed by Saadeddin Ibrahim, a pioneer of human rights in the Arab World, issued a report praising the performance of the Interior Ministry in breaking up Rabaa. “The break-up of the sit-in was done according to the highest professional standards, and with the minimum losses considering the police were facing armed people,” said the report. Local human rights groups that do not share Ibn Khaldun's estimation of the Interior Ministry's actions now feel forced to identify themselves as “independent”. International groups, including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, have condemned the actions of the police. “Egyptian security forces' rapid and massive use of lethal force to disperse sit-ins on 14 August 2013 led to the most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history,” said HRW in a statement issued on 19 August. “The decision to use live ammunition on a large scale from the outset reflected a failure to observe basic international policing standards on the use of lethal force and was not justified by the disruptions caused by the demonstrations or the limited possession of arms by some protesters. The failure of the authorities to provide safe exit from the sit-in, including for people wounded by live fire and needing urgent medical attention, was a serious violation of international standards.” Nine key local human rights groups issued a statement similar to HRW's on 15 August under the title “Non-peaceful assembly does not justify collective punishment”. The groups — Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, the Arab Penal Reform Organisation, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, Nazra for Feminist Studies, and The Human Rights Association for the Assistance of the Prisoners — condemned “lethal violence against those in the sit-in and terrorist acts perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood”. “The [police] actions left hundreds dead and thousands seriously injured… dozens of bodies were burned in still unexplained circumstances. We believe the security apparatus could have avoided this human tragedy if it had complied with international rules and standards for the dispersal of assemblies,” said the statement. Bahieddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, attended the same Interior Ministry meeting as Al-Boraai. “It was the worst meeting at which I have been present since I started human rights activity in the early 1990s,” he says. According to Hassan the majority of those invited “were there to cheer-lead the Interior Ministry and its actions… there was hardly time to talk let alone raise serious concerns”. Local human rights groups, says Hassan, are “facing the same pressures and threats as other independent voices… we are all fifth-columnists, foreign agents and homosexuals”. What makes Hassan even more worried is that “we feel the worst is yet to come unless a miracle, which we don't expect, happens.” Hassan's only hope is that “independent voices will rise out of the current atmosphere of sharp polarisation, especially in the media”. “We are seeing unprecedented calls for violence and revenge and a fascist discourse in the media that bodes ill for human rights in Egypt,” he says. Independent human rights groups that have criticised police tactics in dispersing the Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins also condemn Muslim Brotherhood leaders for their involvement in violent acts and the incitement that led to attacks against scores of churches across Egypt. For supporters of the current crackdown on the Brotherhood, merely to suggest that the manner in which the police acted on 14 August was unlawful and led to the unnecessary deaths of many innocent victims is tantamount to treason. “We now have two kinds of human rights groups in Egypt: independent human rights groups and the Interior Ministry's Public Relations Department human rights groups,” a leading human rights activist who requested that his name be withheld told Al-Ahram Weekly.
