In a message addressed to the United Nations Security Council, the President of the International Progress Organization (I.P.O.), Dr. Hans Köchler, strongly condemned the repeated mass killings of innocent civilians by Egyptian security forces and called upon the international community to take immediate action to stop the bloodshed. He urged the member states of the Security Council to order, on the basis of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, an independent international investigation of the atrocities that are threatening regional and international peace.

Under international humanitarian law as under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the deliberate killings of demonstrators in Egypt constitute serious international crimes for which the de facto authorities of Egypt, including the country’s military ruler, must be held accountable. The Council should consider referring the situation in Egypt to the International Criminal Court under Article 13(b) of the Rome Statute, the President of the I.P.O., an international NGO in consultative status with the United Nations, said.

Those who proclaim their commitment to democracy and the rule of law must not tolerate the usurpation of power by the military. The coup d’état against the legitimate government and the elected President of the Arab Republic of Egypt should be condemned by all states that are truly committed to peace and the rule of law. In that regard, Dr. Köchler recalled the swift decision of the African Union, suspending Egypt’s membership because of the unconstitutional change of government. He further referred to the unequivocal condemnation of the coup d’état by the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The President of the International Progress Organization criticized the morally bankrupt policy of the European Union and those Arab rulers who practice a policy of double standards, claiming to be committed to democratic transformation in the Arab region while, at the same time, refraining from condemning the military coup in Egypt. The notion of democracy is becoming utterly meaningless if the military is allowed to be the final arbiter of the political process and to cancel the outcome of elections.

If the constitutional order is not restored and Mohamed Morsi, the elected President of Egypt, is not reinstated, the events that have been dubbed "the Arab Spring” will have come to an abrupt end, with the risk of poisoning Muslim-Western relations and lasting polarization and destabilization in the entire Middle East, the President of the I.P.O. concluded.

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• Hans Köchler: Using History to Understand Muslim-Western Relations and the “Arab Spring”