Egypt Still Cannot Get It Right after Its Revolution

Friday, the Egyptian military tried to clean out a protesters’ camp in Cairo, which ended with more than 300 injured and 8 people dead.

The protesters threw fire bombs and the military fired live ammunition into the crowd. Doctors reported at least 7 gunshot injuries.

The worst confrontations took place around the street leading to the cabinet building, which was on fire for a time.

The military council said in a statement late Friday that soldiers were acting in self-defense against protesters who shot at them and lobbed rocks and Molotov cocktails. It did not explain the deaths of protesters or the injuries attributed to gunfire and blamed the media for stoking the unrest.

Military police appeared to try to disperse the crowd, burning tents of protesters who had been there for 3 weeks in a bid to stop the caretaker government from convening, witnesses said, and soldiers atop nearby government buildings threw rocks and glass at the crowd below.

By late Friday morning, military police in riot gear had rushed into Qasr el-Aini Street, beating protesters with nightsticks. A young woman trying to stop them from hitting a fellow protester and was beaten to the ground by several military police officers, who then detained her. At least six women were among the scores of protesters who were detained and later released, many bleeding and reeling from what they said were shocks from cattle prods.

Also among the dead was Sheik Emad Effat, a cleric from al-Azhar, Egypt’s preeminent religious institution, MENA reported.

Some expressed fears that the next round of parliamentary elections could be jeopardized. The violence comes a day after election judges said they were beaten by military police outside polling stations they were to supervise Thursday and some threatened to boycott the third round of voting, according to local news reports.

Outside the cabinet building, families begged the military to release their relatives.

“The people want the execution of the field marshal,” protesters chanted, referring to Egypt’s top general, Mohammed Hussein Tantawi.

Nearby, young men siphoned gas from cars to make firebombs.

Mohamed El Baradei, a Nobel Peace Laureate and presidential candidate popular among youthful protesters, wrote on his Facebook page, “Even if the sit-in was not legal, should it be dispersed with such brutality and barbarity?”

According to the Washington Post, early exit polls show that the Muslim Brotherhood and extreme right parties are doing even better than they did in the first rounds, with the moderates who began the revolution slipping in the results.

In the aftermath, 2 members of the new military-led advisory council, formed to smooth the transition to an elected parliament and help with writing the new constitution, resigned and apologized for joining in the first place.

Later, the advisory council said at a news conference that it had urged the military council to end the violence against protesters, open an investigation, apologize to the injured, compensate bereaved families and release all those detained. It said all its members would resign if its recommendations were not met.

The protesters are trying to prevent the military from continuing to control Egypt and are angry that the elections appear to be permitting the Islamist factions to gain power in parliament.

So, if Tunisia is the laboratory for the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Egypt has a lot to learn from it.