15th August 2013
The Muslim Council of Britain today urged our government to condemn the Egyptian coup leaders for the brutal massacre of civilians that took place in Cairo yesterday. While it is commendable for the Foreign Secretary to condemn the violence, our government must censure, in the strongest possible terms, the perpetrators for this shocking violence. By the Egyptian authority’s own conservative estimates, some 200 have been killed. The dead includes men, women and children: unarmed protestors, and those reporting on the massacre, including a British national working for Sky News.
Many British Muslim Egyptians will have family who are affected by this violence, and it is crucial for our government to step up the pressure on those who deposed Egypt’s first democratically elected leader. We need a forceful response from our government, just as it would respond to any regime that has seized power and killed and imprisoned the people they have deposed.
In a speech delivered in Munich in 2011, our British Prime Minister set a litmus test for those who shared our values and aspirations: these include democracy, the right for people to elect their own government and universal human rights. It is time for our government to apply this test rigorously for those seeking British aid and British patronage. The current Egyptian government does not, and we owe it to the victims of yesterday’s massacre to condemn the leaders of the Egyptian coup in the strongest possible terms.
These are grave times for Egypt and the rest of the region. The promise of freedom is now giving way to a new-found authoritarianism which will embolden once again extremists on all sides. Accordingly, we also condemn reported attacks on Coptic Christians and other minorities in Egypt. Such retaliatory attacks serves to strengthen the hands of the coup leaders and the former Egyptian dictatorship who themselves stoked sectarianism to keep themselves in power.
May Allah bring peace to the people of Egypt and the Middle East, and may the souls departed find just recompense in this world, or the next.
[ends]
Notes:
The Muslim Council of Britain is the UK’s largest Muslim umbrella body with over 500 affiliated national, regional and local organisations, mosques, charities and schools.
For further information please contact:
The Muslim Council of Britain
PO Box 57330
London
E1 2WJ
Tel: 0845 26 26 786
Fax: 0207 247 7079
[email protected]
Follow MCB Interactive
Twitter: www.twitter.com/MuslimCouncil
Youtube: www.youtube.com/MuslimCouncil