We are publishing this as a 101 guide for those who don't know all about the massacres and the military coup. Most of the English articles we come across are reductive, biased, or and inaccurate but this article was closer to the truth and to what we have experienced and what our friends and family members have seen.
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Five years ago, Egypt witnessed the Rabaa massacre, often described as the end of the Arab Spring.
On 14 August, 2013, Egyptian security forces conducted a brutal operation to clear thousands of protesters, killing at least 1,000.
Many call it the worst mass killing of demonstrators in modern history, with its death toll surpassing the Tiananmen Square massacre in China in 1989 and the Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan in 2005.
What led to Rabaa?
On 30 June 2012, in the aftermath of the pro-democracy 2011 Egyptian revolution, Mohamed Morsi, the chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party and high-ranking Muslim Brotherhood member, became the first freely-elected civilian president in Egypt’s modern history.
Morsi’s tenure was short-lived, however. Exactly a year after his election victory, Morsi's opponents staged nationwide protests, blaming him and his party for the deteriorating economic and political situation the country was in.
The protests were backed by the army, and on 3 July, 2013 Morsi was deposed by a military coup by his defence minister, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is now president.
In response, Morsi's supporters and critics of the coup, including Muslim Brotherhood members and pro-democracy civilians, staged nationwide protests demanding he be reinstated and a return to democracy.
The largest sit-in was held in Rabaa al-Adaweya Square in the northern Cairo district of Nasr City. Some 85,000 protesters camped there for six weeks until they were violently dispersed, in what became known as the Rabaa massacre.
Was Rabaa the only massacre?
All major protests demanding Morsi's reinstatement were crushed by brutal force.
In July and August 2013, five separate mass killings took place, as Egyptian security forces killed at least 1,150 protesters in what were widely considered crimes against humanity. Investigations by independent rights groups reported that the killings were intentional and systematic.
Who were the protesters?
Estimated to be nearly 85,000 people strong, protesters at the Rabaa sit-in were overwhelmingly peaceful, middle-class Egyptians. Many were said to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood, but many others were non-partisan civilians opposed to the coup. They included women, children and elderly people.
What happened in Rabaa?
Egyptian authorities promised a gradual dispersal of the protest, and said they would provide safe exits for people to leave the square.
The actual dispersal, however, was the opposite of that. In the span of 12 hours, from sunrise to sunset, security forces fired live ammunition on large crowds of protesters in intense fusillades.
The security forces used armoured personnel carriers (APCs), bulldozers, ground forces and snipers. They were covered by army tanks deployed outside the square.
Then-Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim later admitted in a TV interview that he had anticipated at least 2,000 fatalities among the protesters during the dispersal. This was echoed by then-Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi, who also said in an interview with the press that “the final outcome was less that we expected”.
The square was besieged for most of the day. Attacks were carried out from all the five entrances to the square, making it lethal for trapped protesters to try and leave the square or for the wounded to be transported to hospitals. Many of those who tried to escape were shot dead.
