It has been 10 years since hundreds of protesters were killed in Egypt’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, the biggest massacre in the country’s modern history.
For weeks, tens of thousands of people had staged a mass peaceful sit-in at the square in Cairo, demonstrating against the military coup that had deposed Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.
A sprawling tent city emerged from the sit-in, with demonstrators demanding Morsi’s return. But just as the protest entered its sixth week, Egypt’s military carried out a bloody crackdown.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), at least 904 people were killed by Egyptian forces. The majority– 817–were at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, and 87 others were killed at the nearby al-Nahda Square. But unidentified bodies and missing individuals mean the death toll was likely to be above 1,000.
HRW described the massacre as the “worst single-day killing of protesters in modern history.”
Speaking on the 10-year anniversary of the massacre, Amnesty International said the last decade in Egypt could only be described as a “decade of shame.“
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