Unbearable silence about death sentences in Egypt

An Egyptian court has sentenced more than 100 people, including well-known fıgures, to death again. The verdicts have surprised no one actually since the perpetrators of the military coup and Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi were oppressing the people of Egypt since the day the coup was staged and were paving the way through a witch hunt and a mockery of justice to mass killings. Until now, we have witnessed quite a lot of unlawful and farcical acts like the Egyptian courts sentencing hundreds to death in mass trials lasting less than 10 minutes or that judges who ignored the requests of lawyers of defendants to call witnesses or provide evidence.

The last tyrannical pharaoh's latest and most prominent victim to be sent to death row of Egypt is the country's first civilian and only democratically-elected president, Mohammed Morsi, who was overthrown in the 2013 military coup. However, we can say that the target is not only Morsi, other members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood or the people against the military coup, but also the notion of democracy. It is now clear that Egypt's new regime has been conducting a total war on democracy as thousands of people have been killed on the streets, tens of thousands are in jail and hundreds have been sentenced to death.

But what makes Morsi so important is that he was the symbol of a possibility of change in Egypt and of a hope to become a democratic country in the future. If he has been sentenced to death, then anyone can be sent to death. It is an intimidation to anyone who would dare to go into politics as a civilian.

Morsi had the majority, 52 percent, of the vote of the Egyptian people. The trials against him and the rest of the anti-coup figures have been declared as farcical by many organizations. The accusations against him and the others have all been politically motivated, but Western countries have been satisfied with being only "deeply concerned" about the verdicts.

Since the coup, the practice of law in the country has been throwing up red flags, and the latest death penalties show that the system has already collapsed. No one has cared since day one and they still don't. Actually, it was obvious that Egypt's history of dictatorship would not stop without taking bloody revenge since the day the brutal dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in, the camp of anti-coup protesters, where more than 600 anti-coup protesters were killed with the whole world watching. But the so-called democratic Western countries have tried not to see it and have chosen to shut their eyes to what is coming next.But what kind of democracy do Western governments talk about? They are unable to call a coup a coup let alone properly condemning and imposing sanctions. For example, the U.S. has recently decided to restore military assistance to Egypt, which was withdrawn after the military coup while Barack Obama also pledged to request $1.3 billion in annual military assistance from Congress for the Sissi regime. And we still cannot forget that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described the Egyptian military coup as "restoring democracy."

We are aware that it is not the first time that democracy has been sacrificed to the regional ambitions of Western countries. But this is the first time it happened so blatantly.