[The following statement was issued on 17 December by the Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt.]
The "Cabinet Office" Massacre: A New Crime by the Sons of Mubarak in Power
9 martyrs … 500 injured … this is the result of confrontations between the Egyptian Occupying Forces and the revolutionaries in a fresh attempt to bring the revolution to its knees and to bring back the Mubarak regime. And why not? After all, the leaders of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces are the sons of Mubarak, and they are loyal to their economic self-interests. The generals of SCAF control around 20 percent of the economy and are completely opposed to the interests of millions of working people who barely scrape a living. Most of them can’t find jobs which offer the chance of a decent life or even offer the hope of changing their lives for the better.
The “valiant” armed forces, members of Military Investigations and gangs of government-backed thugs attacked the peaceful sit-in in the street of the Cabinet Offices. After fabricating an argument Abboudi, one of the young ultras [football fans] who was playing football, they harassed him, subjected him to electric shocks and abuse, and then refused to release him for more than an hour.
This turned out to be merely a pretext for a pre-prepared attack to disperse the sit-in by force and burn the protesters’ tents. The old lies are being circulated that the local residents are offended by the protesters, even though the street where the sit-in is located does not block the traffic, and the area itself is a district of government buildings, ministries and embassies and not a residential area.
Thugs and the commandos of “our” army in civilian clothes took over government buildings which are now effectively under military occupation, including the parliament building itself, in order to throw stones and glass at the protesters and activists who joined them in Qasr al-Aini street to express their anger at the attack on the sit-in. Dozens of demonstrators have fallen to baton charges, water cannons, rubber bullet rounds and live ammunition.
These developments follow a rising tide of workers’ protests, and the announcement by large numbers of workers’ organisations of their intention to demonstrate and occupy in order to continue the revolutionary tasks of cleansing public institutions of the remnants of the Mubarak regime and the redistribution of wealth in society. This is why it was necessary to break up the sit-in by armed force in order to block the possibility of fusion between the working masses who brought down the Mubarak regime by their strikes in the last days of his rule, and the revolutionaries in the sit-in outside the Cabinet Offices. These events also come as the end of the parliamentary elections is approaching, and with it the beginning of demands for the army to return to its barracks and the formation of an elected government.
All this points to a growing tendency within the army which wants to create chaos and panic so that the generals can seize the reins of power by popular demand, or at least to muzzle the revolutionaries until political positions and powers can be divided between the opportunist political forces which consented to enter the battle of parliament under military rule.
There is no alternative to continuing the revolution in the public squares, in the universities and in the workplaces … there is no substitute for working to win the popular masses, and at the heart of them the working class, to the revolutionary camp. If we do not, the Occupying Forces, under the leadership of Tantawi will continue to kill revolutionaries and abort the revolution.
O masses of our people! The massacres of the Cabinet Offices have brought down the government of Ganzoury, who spent his life serving his master, Mubarak, and who wanted to enter the Cabinet over the blood of the revolutionaries. We must fight together for these demands in order to achieve the goals of the revolutions to win bread, freedom and social justice, and so that the blood of the martyrs has not been spilled in vain:
1. A revolutionary government with full powers.
2. Retribution for the martyrs and the trial of the murderers on the military council
3. Reduction in prices and a rise in wages.
4. Nationalisation of the stolen privatised companies to provide work for the unemployed The military council is leading the counter-revolution … but the revolution continues.
- The Revolutionary Socialists 17 December 2011