‘Blue bra girl’ atrocity: Egyptian military police more than brutal (VIDEO)
The blogosphere is boiling at the cruel beating of a female protester by Egyptian military police, who continued battling protesters in Tahrir Square on Sunday. The clashes, into their fourth day now, have left 10 people dead and hundreds injured.
The video uploaded on YouTube Sunday reveals the extreme cruelty of the country’s law enforcers during the crackdown on Qasr Al-Ainy Street just off Tahrir Square. The army soldiers in full riot gear have been savagely beating a seemingly unconscious female protester with big sticks, kicking her and stomping on her chest. Moments earlier she has been struck countless times in the head and body with batons, while being dragged by the soldiers. She tried to cover her head from the blows with her hands. Some men were apparently carrying her trying to flee from the military police. But the soldiers caught up with them, knocking down one man, whom they also set upon. All of them and some 150 other protesters were detained and charged with “the use of force and violence against army officers, by preventing them from performing their duties, through assaulting them with rocks, Molotov cocktails, and firearms.” All of the accused appeared before the general prosecution on Sunday – including 9 women, 7 of whom had earlier been hospitalized.
Security forces lashed out ruthlessly on armless civilians and burned down tents that had been put up by activists outside the parliament building to camp in protest against the military rule. Meanwhile Associated Press also reports of military police openly beating women protesters in the street and slapping elderly people on the face.
Witnesses said they beat and gave electric shocks to men and women dragged into detention, many of them held in the nearby parliament and cabinet buildings.Aya Emad, a 24-year-old protester, had a broken nose, her arm in a sling, and her other arm bruised. She told Associated Press that troops dragged her by her headscarf and hair into the cabinet headquarters. She said soldiers kicked her on the ground, an officer shocked her with an electrical prod and another slapped her on the face.Reports suggest the troops swept into buildings from which television crews were filming from and confiscated their equipment and briefly detained journalists.An Al-Jazeera TV crew claims the soldiers threw their equipment from a balcony, including cameras, batteries and lighting equipment, to the street, landing on a sweet potato cart whose stove started a fire.Troops also stormed a field hospital set up by protesters next to a mosque in Tahrir, throwing medicine and equipment into the street, protester Islam Mohammed said.The internet community therefore questions the methods of the military regime who took over power after the ousting of the ex-President Hosni Mubarak in February.Egypt however is in the midst of multistage parliamentary elections, with the third and final round of voting set for next month in nine of Egypt's 27 provinces.The protesters began their sit-in three weeks ago to demand that the nation's ruling military step down and hand over power to a civilian administration. Over the last three days, the protests turned violent, with at least 10 people killed and over 400 detained by police. Eyewitnesses claim most of the victims died of gunshot wounds. Troops have erected barriers to separate themselves from the crowds, but both sides continue hurling rocks at each other. November already saw clashes between youth and security forces which left more than 40 dead. Police then responded with a brutal crackdown. They used water cannons, tear gas and, allegedly, shot live ammunition over the heads of, and then directly at the rioters. Some of the people killed in the clashes have been confirmed by doctors to have died from gunshot wounds.When protesters tried to stop Kamai Al-Ganzouri, the new prime minister appointed by Egypt’s military regime, from entering a government building, one man was run over and killed by a military vehicle.
