Egypt Junta Crackdown on Protesters Expected Monday

Police Plan to Surround Protester Camps at Dawn

Repeated threats of a bloody crackdown on protesters against Egypt’s military junta stalled over the past week over the reality that such a move would be particularly unseemly during the post Ramadan holiday Eid al-Fitr.

Monday is the day though, according to officials who say that the police are planning major operations to end the anti-coup rallies beginning at dawn, when they will surround the sit-in camps around the capital city of Cairo.

In a little over a month since the coup, Egypt’s police have already shown how they end sit-in protests, conducting two major massacres in Cairo that involved surrounding camps and shooting at everyone within. The last time they killed 120 and wounded 4,500.

That’s the casualty toll from a crackdown on just one sit-in camp. If the junta indeed decides to move wholesale against protesters citywide, the situation will almost certainly spiral out of control in short order.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.