The Egyptian government responds
According to Reuters, the Egyptian government is responding to the accounts of violence against demonstrators last Wednesday.
According to the report:
Presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad told Reuters he believed the U.S. comments and media coverage in the United States and elsewhere were “unfair and unjustified”.
“When you have more than 54,000 electoral units nationwide, (and) when you have two sad, unacceptable incidents taking place in the greater Cairo area, this is not something to be exaggerated in the way some circles did.”
Later on, Awad said:
[The] public prosecutor Maher Abdel Wahed was investigating victims’ complaints. Asked if there would be arrests, he said: “This is something to be decided by the judiciary.”
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Rather than condemn what happened, the government is blaming the international media for focusing on the violence rather than the polling stations.
But then, again, it is difficult to do ‘damage control’ with the international press when women working for that press are being groped and kicked by thugs.
This is a case where the government is blaming the messenger rather than the message its security forces were ordered to send.
Categories: Egypt.
The favourite line of all authoritarian regimes….I sincerely hope that some of the journalists who were beaten up testify in the next press conference that there were tens of incidents, backed up by photos and videos, of regime-orchestrated attacks, not just a few bad eggs. Everyone saw the dark grey suited guys with their cell phones directing operations.
i think they shouldn’t of tdone that because if it happened to them they wouldn’y say that. I’m 12 and i’m interested in this stuff everyone else should to.