Obama recalls Gandhi, King Jr in welcoming Mubarak's departure

Washington (PTI)- US President Barack Obama
recalled the non-violent methods of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin
Luther King Jr as he praised the people of Egypt for their
peaceful protests and welcomed the end of Hosni Mubarak's
30-year-rule.
"While the sights and sounds that we heard were
entirely Egyptian, we can't help but hear the echoes of
history: echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian
students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down
the path of justice," Obama said in his speech hours after
Hosni Mubarak resigned as President of Egypt.
As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth
of a new nation in Ghana, while trying to perfect his own,
"There's something in the soul that cries out for freedom",
those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the
entire world has taken note, he said.
"Egyptians have inspired us, and they've done so by
putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained
through violence; for in Egypt it was the moral force of
nonviolence -- not terrorism, not mindless killing, but
nonviolence, moral force -- that bent the arc of history
toward justice once more," he said.
Obama said Egypt has played a pivotal role in human
history for over 6,000 years.
"But over the last few weeks, the wheel of history
turned at a blinding pace as the Egyptian people demanded
their universal rights. We saw mothers and fathers carrying
their children on their shoulders to show them what true
freedom might look like.
"We saw protesters chant "salmiya, salmiya" -- we
are peaceful -- again and again. We saw a military that would
not fire bullets at the people they were sworn to protect. And
we saw doctors and nurses rushing into the streets to care for
those who were wounded, volunteers checking protesters to
ensure that they were unarmed," the US President said.