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| Africa North |
| UN rights chief calls for Egypt prosecutions |
| 2011-12-20 |
| GENEVA: The UN’s human rights chief has called for the arrest and prosecution of members of Egyptian security forces involved in the crackdown on protesters that have left 14 people killed and hundreds injured. UN and ICC types have been particularly loud, and particularly useless, lately... Navi Pillay called the graphic images of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square being hit on the head and body with clubs long after they stopped resisting “utterly shocking.” Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Monday that “these are life-threatening and inhuman acts that cannot possibly be justified under the guise of restoration of security or crowd control.” She said “there must be arrests and prosecutions” and repeated her demand for a full investigation into all killings, torture and use of excessive force in Egypt in recent months. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the "excessive" force used against the demonstrations that have widened a rift among Egyptians over the role of the army and cast a shadow over the country's first free election in decades. The UN secretary-general's office said in a statement that Ban Ki-moon "is highly alarmed by the excessive use of force employed by the security forces against protesters, and calls for the transitional authorities to act with restraint and uphold human rights, including the right to peaceful protest." Soldiers have been filmed beating protesters with batons even after they have fallen to the ground. A Reuters picture showed two policemen dragging a prostrate woman by the shirt, exposing her underwear. Another showed a policeman stomping on the chest of an exposed woman protester. Now that the UN has weighed in we all now know this is wrong... Gen. Adel Emara, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, interrupted a live news conference to say that he had "received a call now to say that a plot was uncovered today to burn Parliament and there are now large crowds in Tahrir Square ready to implement the plan." Kristallnacht in Cairo? However, a reporter in Tahrir Square said several hundred protesters were in the square attending an orderly funeral for one of the protesters killed in clashes. On the outskirts of Tahrir, where a historic building containing national archives was destroyed in the clashes, protesters were trying to save any surviving documents, the reporter said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 "UN rights chief calls for Egypt prosecutions" And how many divisions does the U |
| Posted by: Barbara 2011-12-20 18:20 |
| #1 Words fail. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-12-20 02:21 |