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Tony Blair backs Egypt's government and criticises Brotherhood
Well, he would side with the army, wouldn't he?
In a television interview on Thursday morning, Britain's former prime minister said Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood had stolen Egypt's revolution, and the army who deposed him last July had put the country back on the path to democracy.
"This is what I say to my colleagues in the west," said Blair, visiting Egypt as a representative of the UN, the US, the EU and Russia in their attempts to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. "The fact is, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to take the country away from its basic values of hope and progress. The army have intervened, at the will of the people, but in order to take the country to the next stage of its development, which should be democratic. We should be supporting the new government in doing that."
...
Rights groups say the government that replaced him has been anything but democratic – with more than a thousand dissidents killed, thousands more arrested, and the right to free assembly and free speech severely curbed. The day before Blair's comments were aired, 20 journalists were referred to court on terrorism allegations – charges a leading rights lawyer said returned Egypt to the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
Blair's office did not respond to a query about how the west could promote democracy without criticising lapses in democratic values.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/30/tony-blair-backs-egypt-military-ruler-abdel-fatah-al-sisi
"This is what I say to my colleagues in the west," said Blair, visiting Egypt as a representative of the UN, the US, the EU and Russia in their attempts to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. "The fact is, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to take the country away from its basic values of hope and progress. The army have intervened, at the will of the people, but in order to take the country to the next stage of its development, which should be democratic. We should be supporting the new government in doing that."
...
Rights groups say the government that replaced him has been anything but democratic – with more than a thousand dissidents killed, thousands more arrested, and the right to free assembly and free speech severely curbed. The day before Blair's comments were aired, 20 journalists were referred to court on terrorism allegations – charges a leading rights lawyer said returned Egypt to the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
Blair's office did not respond to a query about how the west could promote democracy without criticising lapses in democratic values.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/30/tony-blair-backs-egypt-military-ruler-abdel-fatah-al-sisi