Cairo's Rabaa Massacre: The Smell of Death Still Lingers

Viral graphic commemorating the third anniversary of the Rabaa massacre. Shared on Facebook by Peter Youssef.

Written by Salma Essam

I studied at a campus where I used to hear gunfire more often than the hustle of freshman students. The sight of army snipers with their firearms is as familiar to me as the loud chants of protests under the dome of Cairo University.

I entered the Faculty of Economics and Political Science eight months after the start of the Egyptian revolution. At a time of historic change, Cairo University had been home to a large and diverse politically-oriented student body. It was a maquette of the tense political scene in the land of pharaohs.

Never had I witnessed such a wrathful atmosphere of political tension and student-driven protests as the one that prevailed in the aftermath of the Rabaa el Adaweya sit-in dispersal, now called the Rabaa Massacre. I saw live bullets being fired at the main gate, ambulances on campus, and massive amounts of tear gas thrown at the marchers condemning the Egyptian security forces’ bloody actions at Rabaa el Adaweya Square.

Early on the morning of August 14, 2013, a state of emergency was declared across Egypt as security forces violently broke up sit-ins organized by Muslim Brotherhood supporters protesting the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a former high-level official in the Muslim Brotherhood, leaving up to 1,000 people dead in one day. The sit-in at Rabaa el Adaweya Square was the largest sit-in to be raided. As the shooting took place, armored bulldozers were on site and helicopters circled over the scene.

Read the Full eye-witness account at Global Voices.