Rabaa Massacre: A Decade After Egypt Slaughtered 900+ Protesters, No One Has Been Held to Account

As Egyptians mark the 10th anniversary of the Rabaa massacre, we speak with human rights advocate Hossam Bahgat about how the mass killing shaped the country in the ensuing years. On August 14, 2013, Egyptian security forces opened fire on a sit-in where tens of thousands of people had camped out in Cairo to protest the ouster of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 900 protesters were killed, but no one has been held responsible over the past 10 years. The minister of defense at the time, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has since risen to the presidency, ruling Egypt for nearly a decade as a close U.S. ally while jailing tens of thousands of political prisoners. “The massacre established a new normal” and inaugurated “a decade of shame,” says Bahgat, founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which has obtained a leaked copy of a government report on the massacre that implicated Egyptian authorities in the mass killing and found most victims were civilians. Transcript: Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Support independent media: Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: