The Maspero Youth Union (MYU) is planning a march in Cairo next Sunday to protest the official inaction regarding the resolution of the problems of the Dahshur Copts. The march
The Maspero Youth Union (MYU) is planning a march in Cairo next Sunday to protest the official inaction regarding the resolution of the problems of the Dahshur Copts. The march should take off from Shubra after sunset and head to Maspero.
The MYU insists that the demands of justice by some 110 Coptic families which were obliged to hurriedly leave their hometown of Dahshur, Giza, some two weeks ago when the Muslim townsmen started attacking them should be met. The attacks were waged in the wake of a personal dispute between a Copt and a Muslim over a shirt that was damaged in a Coptic-owned laundry, which escalated into a fight during which some 3000 Muslims surrounded the Copt’s house, plundered it, and started torching it. In self-defence, the Copt went up the roof of his house and hurled Molotov cocktails at the crowd. A Muslim lost his life, upon which the Muslims of Dahshur started attacking Coptic homes and businesses. The Copts fled town, only for the attackers to have a free hand in looting their belongings and ruining their places.
The Sunday march will demand that the culprits should be caught and brought to justice; the Copts should be compensated for their heavy losses; they should be allowed to go back home securely under police protection; demands by the Muslim extremists to ban the local priest form going home should be rejected; no out-of-court conciliation that relinquishes the Copts legal rights should be concluded; and other Copts who were forced to leave their villages and towns for various reasons should be allowed to go back safely.
This morning, however, 20 Coptic families were able to go back home under police protection, but without any compensation for losses.
Earlier this week, acting patriarch Anba Pachomeus received at the papal headquarters at St Mark’s cathedral in Abassiya, Cairo, the Interior Minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin and Giza governor Ali Abdel-Rahman. They both pledged to secure the return of the Dahshur Coptic families and promised that they should be compensated for their losses in order to allow them to renovate their homes and restart their ruined businesses. But no serious action has so fat been taken in this regard.
Rights activists have been vociferous in condemning the eviction of the Copts, and have demanded that the law should be implemented instead of resorting to official quick fixes that fail to address the underlying problems caused by a rising fanatic climate.
WATANI International
8 August 2012