The killing of two dozen unarmed Coptic Christian protesters by security forces on Sunday has created a crisis point for the military rulers. On Wednesday, as outrage at home and abroad mounted, two generals held a news conference and offered a weak and unacceptable explanation. They said 300 soldiers with no live ammunition faced a large and threatening crowd of 6,000, demonstrating against a recent attack on a church in southern Egypt. The generals said a few in the crowd were armed with swords, stones and Molotov cocktails. They did not admit that some of the dead were crushed by military vehicles and they denied that shots were fired by soldiers. Witnesses and autopsies confirmed that several protesters died of bullet wounds.
The military council needs to begin an independent investigation of the incident. The probe must be transparent and anyone responsible for the deaths must be brought to justice. The army also needs to train its forces in nonviolent crowd control.
The army’s failure to calm sectarianism and spell out clearly when it will cede power to an elected civilian government has eroded its legitimacy. The Egyptian economy is paralyzed and the people are demoralized by the lack of jobs, poverty and corruption. That is a recipe for upheaval.
The Obama administration has expressed concern about the weekend violence but needs to push the army harder to answer to all Egyptians. The case for American assistance to Egypt — $1.3 billion in annual direct aid — will be harder to make with Congress if another repressive regime steals the hard-won chance for democracy.
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New York Times, editorial