Over 600 people killed, over 3,000 injured, and the number continues to climb! This carnage of innocent people in Egypt is a worsening of the human rights situation! It is a blatant attempt to put the people back into submission, as it was in the time of Mubarak.
Egypt’s military junta has turned the country into a war zone with the July 2, 2013 overthrow of the elected government of President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party government, followed by the August 14, 2013 deadly assault on those who protested against the coup.
The coup and subsequent slaughter of Egyptian citizens, led by General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, has signalled a new phase of liberation struggle for power in Africa.
Masses opposing the coup had been assembling for weeks in two main camps on either side of the Nile River at Cairo and other cities demanding the reinstatement of Morsi’s government.
There are not yet a definite number of casualties, but there is a consensus that several hundred have been murdered and several thousand injured!
The Egyptian neocolonial military’s brutality was in full display: snipers on top of buildings shooting people in the heads and chests, helicopters dropping tear gas canisters on the camps, journalist being shot at.
“There are now too many bodies to count,” said Dr. Amr Gamal in a phone interview with the Guardian from inside the hospital after patients being treated there were evacuated under gunfire. “This is a crisis, it is an emergency situation. They started shooting at around 6am, so we have had nearly six hours of continuous gunfire. Any doctor who can should come here.”
In the meantime, Mohamed Morsi is detained with other leaders of his Freedom and Justice party while there is talk of releasing former president Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak was an illegitimate U.S. puppet, but Morsi was elected on the back of one of the most powerful mass mobilizations to emerge in Africa, which makes Muslim Brotherhood forces, in particular, believe that their leader has the legitimacy to rule Egypt.
The mass mobilization of the people of Egypt two years ago allowed Mohamed Morsi to access power. The uprising against Mubarak’s rule was not orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood, but they were the main beneficiaries.
This was because they were the most organized forces next to the military, having gained experience in the long history of resistance against the Egyptian military rule, going back to the time of Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Nasser who seized power in July 1952.
Not everyone who is opposed to the coup is a Muslim Brotherhood member or supporter. There are those who disagree with Morsi’s policies but are resisting the military’s brutal attempt to stop the forward motion of the democratic process in Egypt.
Military leaders must face people’s justice for crimes against the people
The bloodbath created by this ongoing brutal military crackdown against coup opponents and the Muslim Brotherhood may come as a shock to the masses of the people of Egypt and of the peoples of the world who still vividly remember when, not so long ago, the same soldiers being adored or given flowers tenderly by the people.
It is indeed an attempt to clamp down on people’s resistance in Egypt, regardless if one agrees with the Muslim Brotherhood or not!
The African Socialist International condemns the coup and the cowardly military assault that the army would aim at the people of Egypt, while Israeli jets are bombing Gaza, and U.S., EU and UK funded mercenaries are killing the people of Syria.
We condemn the arrest of President Morsi and all other leaders of the brotherhood movement as well as the abrogation of basic national democratic rights in Egypt by the military regime of Abdul Fattah Al Sisi.
We equally condemn the U.S., EU and UK governments’ intervention in Egypt through military, political, diplomatic and media support for the putsch, or coup, leaders in Egypt.
We are appealing to any poor and progressive soldiers in the Egyptian army to stop killing their brothers and sisters, and to instead turn their guns on the leadership of the Egyptian army, police and security to stop their brutal war against the people.
We are calling on Egyptian workers to organize independently of all compradors and bureaucrats and struggle for power in own hands.
We are calling on all African workers around the world to mobilize everywhere against the coup and in support of people’s struggle in Egypt for national liberation against U.S., EU and UK imperialist intervention.
Egyptian army lost any progressive character
The Egyptian army just like any other army in this world capitalist parasitic economy cannot be neutral. It is either with the people or it is with the imperialists.
The Egyptian army, at the Camp David peace accord in 1979 between U.S. president James Carter, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, made a decisive turning to the side of imperialism.
It is a tool to maintain the current imperialist socio-economic order. It is an apparatus of violence to maintain the status quo; to keep things as they are with suffering, poverty and hopelessness for the millions of masses of the people and wealth, power and security for the white imperialists and Arab petty bourgeoisie.
The Egyptian army has lost what little progressive character that it gained in defending Egypt’s sovereignty against French and British invasion in 1956, or in fighting the U.S.-funded settler Israeli army in 1967 and 1973.
The Egyptian army had some progressive character when, under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Nasser, they ran the government of Egypt that was characterized by support for anti-colonial struggles throughout Africa and that implemented the nationalization of most of key sectors of the Egyptian national economy.
Under the slogan “intifah”, which means “openness” Sadat, Mubarak and others ended any pretense of playing any progressive role in Africa and in the Middle East.
They cemented an alliance with U.S. imperialism that today is an essential part of the social economic order that must be broken for the revolution in Egypt to march forward.
Power struggle between petty bourgeoisie factions inside the Egyptian ruling class
First of all we need to clarify that the Egyptian petty bourgeoisie, as a class, has been in power since the so-called unilateral declaration of independence in February 1922. First, it was in power in the form of the monarchy, then in the form of the military after the July 1952 coup by the “free officers” that included Abdel Nasser.
The army officers are not just part of the State, they have run the State and all socio-economic life of Egypt since 1952.
A struggle broke out between the military rule of Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood which continues up to this day. One might ask, who should lead the petty bourgeoisie and the country?
African Internationalists are more concerned with the key questions: who are the revolutionary classes, and who should lead the revolution?
The coup clearly showed that the Egyptian State leaders, particularly the army and some comprador elements like opportunist Nobel prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, have refused to submit to the leadership the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Omali Yeshitela, the Chairman of the African Socialist International: “the U.S. saw no way out of the dilemma of the Brotherhood’s electoral success. They won an agreement with the Brotherhood regarding Israel and some other strategic interests. The U.S. may or may not have been involved in the move by liberals to mobilize ‘popular’ opposition to Morsi, allowing the military to do the coup, but what is now clear is they are confronted with a situation none were prepared for in terms of the depth of the popular response to the coup and the tenacity of the opposition in defying the repression.”
The U.S. has used the Egyptian military since 1979 as their main ally in North Africa to maintain the status quo in the region.
The people gained the right to vote but the power remained in the hands of the military. All evidence points to the fact that the liberal forces—opportunist trade unions and particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, who for over six decades were harassed, imprisoned, tortured and killed—still have faith in the Egyptian army and State in general, since they are all part of the petty bourgeoisie institutions.
It was Morsi himself who appointed General Sisi as the minister of defense and chief of staff in his government. It is from this position of strength that he overthrew the man who promoted him.
A national revolutionary program needed to move forward
Revolution is the business of the oppressed, the have nots, the downtrodden masses of people against the vile exploiters and rabid forces of oppression against the people.
Revolutionaries call for the deepening of the revolutionary process by opening all possibilities for masses of workers, peasants and honest progressive forces to get organized to fight for their own power at the expense of the oppressors and exploiters.
Revolutionaries do not call for the military to carry out a coup.
Most elements of the liberal petty bourgeoisie argued in favor of the coup. National and even international media relayed their appeal to stop Morsi‘s government’s worsening of the human rights situation in the country!
And a week before the putsch, there was a mammoth mass mobilization against Morsi that gave the coup a popular character.
This mobilization had the support of the National Salvation Front (NSF), which according to BBC, is one of the “liberal and secular opposition groups which have endorsed a petition organized by the grassroots movement Tamarod (Rebellion), which calls for a snap election” to end Morsi’s rule. They claimed to have collected 15 to 22 million signatures in support of their demands, but this could not be verified.
The opportunist Mohamed ElBaradei, has been one of the leading figures of the NSF.
After the coup, he became a part of the junta as he took the job of Egyptian Vice President for International Affairs only to resign after the August 14 massacre of Morsi’s supporters.
But the fact remains that Morsi won the parliamentary and the presidential elections. He also won the referendum on the constitution. ElBaradei and other opportunists won no elections.
A development of a new dialectic is in play, the neocolonial leaders of Egypt cannot rule as in the old days. More repression means greater people‘s resistance.
Part of this new dialectic is that the people are learning that they have to define what democracy means for the impoverished people in Egypt.
Winning an electoral contest does not guarantee democratic rule or respect for the democratically-elected government ruling the country. Democracy means nothing without power in the hands of the people.
A genuine revolution must identify the U.S. imperialism as the enemy of the people of Egypt
Revolution must be made against the forces of the status quo. The Egyptian prisons, army, police and the security apparatus must be the prime target of the Egyptian revolution.
It must be destroyed and replaced by the people’s State. This is the real guarantee in the short term for any possibilities of going forward and of unleashing the productive forces of Egypt.
There must be an independent proletarian and socialist party to organize the masses of people around a revolutionary national democratic program, which primarily speaks to the fundamentals interests of the vast majority of the peoples of Egypt and organizes them for power against the alliance of the sell-out Egyptian petty bourgeoisie and the imperialism bourgeoisie.
It is in such a party’s revolutionary national democratic program that the rights of women and religious and national minorities would be protected.
That party must also address the Egyptian revolution in the context of the African revolution, which Egypt is part of. The struggle to end parasitic capitalism is the primary strategic objective of the African revolution everywhere around the world.
In Egypt, it means the end of the U.S./Egypt relationship as concretized by the $1.5 billion in U.S. “aid” and the Camp David Peace Accord with the Israeli settler regime, the expulsion of all U.S. military personnel from Egypt and the closure of the Suez Canal to any of the U.S. military and commercial Navy.
What does $1.5 billion do for the U.S. government in Egypt? It buys the loyalty of the Egyptian leaders in support of U.S. policies in the region.
The $1.5 billion in military aid is a blatant foreign imperialist intervention in the affairs of Egypt. There cannot be genuine peace, social justice and democratic development as long as the U.S. controls the Egyptian military through this deal, which allows the U.S. not only to train the Egyptian army, but to define their role in world affairs in favor of U.S. imperialist interests.
This means repression of people’s struggle for happiness and national liberation, and it means the pursuit of the status quo at the expense of the liberation of Palestine.
We must also warn all our comrades in Egypt that there is no bourgeois democracy that will solve the problems of the vast majority of the oppressed people in Egypt.
A genuine revolution in Africa must overthrow neocolonialism. That is, the bureaucrats and compradors of the Egyptian petty bourgeoisie must be deleted from power.
The bourgeois democratic revolution was something the European bourgeoisie and socialists alike did without altering the existence of parasitic capitalism.
In Africa and through the African world, every revolution must aim at and must be executed against parasitic capitalism as a condition of its legitimacy.
Egyptian crisis is neocolonialism on its deathbed
This crisis is a direct manifestation of the crisis of imperialism characterized by high cost of living putting everything outside of the reach of ordinary working people and by the people’s struggle to take back control of their lives from the imperialists and their puppets.
It is a struggle to deprive the U.S. of access to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and open up the border between oppressed Palestine and a revolutionary Africa to speed up the downfall of the white settler Israeli regime.
Obama is trying to hide as much as he can by saying nothing and sending mixed signals.
He can’t call a coup a coup. At one time he backs up Mohammed Morsi, then he switches to Al Sisi. He reminds the Egyptian military of the $1.5 billion in U.S. aid, but Qatar and Saudi Arabia are pledging $12 billion to the junta.
Who holds more influence in Egypt today?
One thing is clearer: the influence of the U.S. and of Obama is waning over the military junta! The U.S. cannot alone decide the outcome of the situation that is engulfing Egypt today.
Neocolonialism is in trouble in Egypt and also in Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere.
There are new powers rising on the horizon, notably China, Iran and India.
According to a June 27 report to the U.S. Congress, “Almost three-quarters of Egypt’s national budget is spent on state salaries, subsidies, and interest payments. In its current fiscal year, Egypt’s annual budget deficit could range from $26 billion to $31 billion; the high end of that range may exceed the Ministry of Finance’s projection of a deficit around 10% of GDP. In addition to the government’s domestic borrowing, its foreign exchange reserves are down from $36 billion in 2011 to $13.6 billion as of February 2013—enough for three months of import cover.”
According to Le Monde newspaper, this would represent three months of importation of wheat and fuel. So what is going to happen this summer?
The State is the biggest employer in the country. Tourism which accounts for 10 percent of Egypt’s GDP, has plummeted since most white people—they who love freedom so much—are scared by the struggled for freedom in Egypt.
The return of the military to the government suggests that neocolonialism has run out of options. White power in Arab face has no strategy.
Brotherhoodist Morsi or general Al Sisi: the crisis would only deepen as neither force are revolutionaries.
The reform of colonialism led to neocolonialism, but the reform of neocolonialism would still be neocolonialism, which is a dead end. It belongs to dust bin of history.
Mubarak and Al Sisi are not just individually outdated forces. The entire neocolonialist setup is already a thing of the past, a dead weight on the back of oppressed and toiling peoples of the world.
Egyptian revolution is part of the African revolution
Neither Morsi nor the military can solve the economic crisis. As they operate, they attempt to solve their economic hardship in the context of the imperialist economy, which is the source of all the problems in Egypt right now.
The correct and only genuine solution requires the unification of Africa under the leadership of the African workers in alliance with poor peasants.
Only a revolutionary national democratic program, as part of the all African revolution would begin to unlock the entrapment of the people from this vicious, murderous death grip of imperialism.
The Egyptian call for African revolution is the missing ingredient that will explode the entire parasitic socio-economic powder keg that Africa is.
Imperialism must burn. The African petty bourgeoisie must burn too.
It is up to the workers to build the African Socialist International revolutionary party in Egypt as part of the revolution throughout the African continent.
We demand the end of the state of emergency! Down with the military junta!
Tear up the Israeli-Egypt Peace Treaty and the $1.5 billion neocolonial deal!
Forward with a revolutionary national democratic program!
All power to the people!
