The whitewashing of the Brotherhood’s bloody history and Islamic supremacist agenda continues. “Egypt: legalize Muslim Brotherhood- US-based group Human Rights Watch,” by Bonny Apunyu for Reuters, with thanks to Morgaan Sinclair:
(SomaliNet) The Egyptian government was on Thursday urged by the US-based group Human Rights Watch to legalize the Muslim Brotherhood, the influential movement outlawed in the 1950s, and stop arresting people for membership.
Meanwhile, Brotherhood sources said government crackdown on the movement continued on Thursday when police made dawn raids in the provinces of Giza and Beni Suef. Seventeen members were detained, including senior figures in the group’s provincial hierarchy.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), like the Brotherhood, linked the recent wave of detentions to preparations for elections on June 11 to the upper house of parliament, or Shoura Council.
“The Egyptian government has never convincingly justified its continued ban of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has renounced violence for more than 30 years. Human Rights Watch called on the government to lift the ban and to cease arresting people solely for their alleged membership in the organization,” HRW added in a statement:
It said 223 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition movement despite its outlawed status, were currently imprisoned.
“In the week Egypt boasted about its election to the UN Human Rights Council, it was arresting scores of people solely for exercising their right to free association and free speech,” HRW Deputy Director Joe Stork said in the statement.
Mubarak is certainly a scoundrel. Of that there is no doubt. But that doesn’t make those who oppose him into angels.