Egypt's Brotherhood vows to keep defying military coup
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| Supporters of Egypt’s ousted President Mohammed Morsi hold his portraits and wave Egyptian flags as they shout slogans during a demonstration after the evening prayer in Nasr City. |
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood vowed on Thursday to continue its “peaceful” resistance in defiance of the military's ouster of the country's conservative President Mohammed Morsi.
The statement came a day after Egypt's military-backed government tightened its crackdown on the Brotherhood, ordering the arrest of its spiritual leader in a bid to choke off the group's campaign to reinstate Morsi, now held at an undisclosed Defense Ministry facility.
The Brotherhood is outraged by the overthrow of Morsi and demands nothing less than his release from detention and his reinstatement as president.
“We will continue our peaceful resistance to the bloody military coup against constitutional legitimacy,” the Brotherhood said. “We trust that the peaceful and popular will of the people shall triumph over force and oppression.”
Morsi was Egypt's first freely elected president. He was ousted by the military on July 3, following a wave of protests by millions of Egyptians who took to the streets to call for his removal.
Brotherhood denounces violence
The Brotherhood's statement also denounced the assassination attempt against Maj. Gen. Ahmed Wasfi in the Sinai town of Rafah, near the border with Gaza, saying the group adheres to peaceful measures in line with what it says are the teachings of Islam.Gunmen in a pickup truck opened fire on Wasfi's convoy late Wednesday, drawing fire from the accompanying troops, security officials said. The commander escaped unharmed but a 5-year-old girl was killed in the clashes, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. One gunman was arrested.
The Brotherhood denounced the warrants for the arrest of Mohammed Badie and nine other leading consevatives for inciting violence that left dozens dead in Cairo on Monday, saying “dictatorship is back” and insisting it will never work with the interim rulers.
Leaders of the Brotherhood are believed to be taking refuge somewhere near a continuing sit-in by the group's supporters at the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque in eastern Cairo, but it is not clear if Badie also is there.
Security agencies have already jailed five leaders of the Brotherhood, including Badie's powerful deputy, Khairat el-Shaiter, and shut down its media outlets.
The prosecutor general's office said Badie, another deputy, Mahmoud Ezzat, senior member Mohammed El-Beltagy and popular preacher Safwat Hegazy are suspected of instigating Monday's clashes with security forces outside a Republican Guard building that killed 54 people - most of them Morsi supporters - in the worst bloodshed since he was ousted.
The conservatives have accused the troops of gunning down protesters, while the military blamed armed backers of Morsi for attempting to storm a military building.
The arrest warrants highlight the armed forces' zero-tolerance policy toward the Brotherhood, which was banned under authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak.
“This just signals that dictatorship is back,” said Brotherhood spokesman Ahmed Aref. “We are returning to what is worse than Mubarak's regime, which wouldn't dare to issue an arrest warrant of the general leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Unrest could threaten food security
Meanwhile, civil unrest and dwindling foreign exchange reserves raise serious food security concerns in Egypt, the UN food agency said in a report on Thursday.Cereal import requirements for 2013/14 in Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, will remain similar to last year despite good prospects for its own harvest, the Food and Agriculture Organization said, pointing to an expanding population.
But FAO warned in its Crop Prospects and Food Situation report that declining foreign exchange reserves may result in increased restrictions on transactions by Egypt's Central Bank, thus curtailing the imports.
A week after Egypt's army toppled its first democratically elected leader, bloodshed has opened deep fissures in the Arab world's most populous country, with bitterness at levels unseen in its modern history.
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