Many Egyptians hoped the first post-revolution president would work to bring about a democratic State ruled by law, but as the weeks go by it looks more like the same old story.
For years on end, rights activists and politicians have been calling for the Coptic file to be prised out of the grip of the State Security apparatus. In the Mubarak days, Coptic grievances were tackled between Church leaders and the presidency, and most Coptic ailments found a solution through the personal relations and sympathy of the clergy on one hand and the president himself or heads of security on the other. No wonder then that most answers to Coptic grievances came more in the form of tranquillisers than cures for the wrong.
When Copts were faced with injustices—which ranged from the minor or personal to the major or life- or community-threatening—Copts headed to their church leaders for intervention or their church grounds as venues for protest. That was, in the majority of cases, until 2010.
Leaving the safety of the church walls
January 2010 saw the first incident of street protest by Copts in the wake of the Christmas Eve (Copts celebrate Christmas on 7 January) shooting of Coptic worshippers as they left church after Midnight Mass in the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi. Six Copts and a Muslim friend lost their lives. Since the culprits of the hate crime were known but no official move was taken to catch any of them, the Copts wrathfully took to the streets. The culprits were later caught, tried, and one convicted and executed.
In November 2010 the Copts of Umraniya in Giza were galled when a promise by the then Giza governor Sayed Abdel-Aziz to their church leaders securing their safety and the safety of a church they were building was brazenly broken. The painful ‘treachery’ drove the Copts into the streets; they marched to the governorate building demanding audience with the governor. They were attacked by the security forces; one Copt died and some 100 were injured.
But the most vociferous Coptic protests took place in Alexandria in January 2011, in the wake of the infamous bombing of the Church of the Two Saints in Alexandria on New Year Eve. The grotesque attack took the lives of some 25 Copts who were blown to smithereens; their blood spattered on the church building some 12 metres high and their body parts scattered around and caught in the nearby tree branches. Fearing unrest because of the Coptic pain and anger, the authorities held the funeral of the victims at Mar-Mina Monastery south of Alexandria, but this did not deter the Copts from making their voice heard. Their loud, concerted cries of “No, no, no” to Bishop Yu’annis’s official thanks to Mubarak for his condolences was then unheard-of.
Hopes for a State of law
In the wake of the Revolution which erupted on 25 January of the same year, the Copts refused to remain, on the civic level, any longer under the wing of their Church leadership. They formed Coptic civil rights movements that embraced their demands, and aspired for a new era that would be governed by concepts of citizenship and the supremacy of the law. Copts assumed that under such a State of law they would be automatically granted their legal rights through legitimate channels, without having to resort to the extraordinary moves of deals between the authorities and Church leaders.
After Mohamed Mursi won the presidential race, however, his declarations regarding Copts and his attempts to pacify them with such broad, none-binding statements as: “What Coptic problems? The Copts are living in their country”, reflected intentions that the Coptic file would still be restrained within the clutches of Security, the presidency and Church leaders.
In Amriya: No visitors, or else…
An incident which took place last June in the village of Bassra in Amriya, south of Alexandria and was once again solved between the new President and the Church. Bassra boasts one of two churches across Egypt dedicated to the Luxor saint Anba Wannas, the other being in Luxor itself. The small Bassra church of Anba Wannas regularly receives visitors as they stop for blessing on their way to the Western Desert monastery of Mar-Mina.
On Friday 22 June, the Salafi village Muslims surrounded Anba Wannas’s as Holy Mass was being celebrated inside. They demanded that the priest, Fr Sawiris, should turn away a group of Copts from outside the village who had come in buses to visit the church. They threatened they would burn down the church if Fr Sawiris did not oblige.
When Fr Sawiris called the police for help he was advised to do as the Salafis wished in order to ‘solve the problem’. As the visitors boarded their buses to leave, however, the Muslim villagers hurled stones at them and renewed their threats to destroy the church.
Once the matter came to the attention of Coptic activists in Cairo, they rallied for a high profile visit to Bassra under the theme: “I’m going [to Bassra] to visit the house of God [the church], and have lunch with my fellow Muslims [the Muslim villagers]”. It was hoped the visit would bring to light the discrimination against the Copts, and spur an end to the divisions and a peaceful coexistence between the Copts and the Muslims in the village. But the visit had to be called off in the wake of a telephone call by the then president-elect Mohamed Mursi to the acting patriarch, Anba Pachomeus, in which Mursi said the Bassra crisis had been brought to his attention by the intelligence authorities, and that he had given his orders to resolve the crisis.
Noteworthy, however, is that the situation has not changed: no visitors to Anba Wannas’s are allowed into the village, and no investigation was conducted about the threats to burn down the church.
…And in Dahshur: The Copts leave town
Last month saw the Dahshur incident which began as a dispute between a Muslim and a Copt over a burnt shirt, and culminated in one Muslim dead and the eviction of the Copts from town, for fear of their safety, while their homes and businesses were looted and torched.
Several of the Muslim elders of the town attempted to contain the matter but did not succeed. Copts and rights activists organised several protests and demanded that the law should be enforced and the Copts’ rights should be secured.
State authorities, however, had no comment and took no move in the direction of resolving the crisis till Dahshur was one full week into the unrest. The Interior Ministry made no official statement on the incident; some papers and news sites circulated stories about Dahshur Copts and Muslims being caught, without giving any names, but the Ministry remained mum.
President Mursi only acknowledged the incident a week after it had began, and then it was to assure that the law would be enforced and the Copts would go back home and be compensated for their losses. Only then did State officials move but, to date, nothing has been done for the Copts.
Back to Square One
According to Coptic activist Hany Bahna, this brings the Coptic file back to the old policies that placed the solutions to Coptic grievances only in the hands of the president. This, he stresses, contradicts the concept of citizenship that grants all Egyptians full rights and duties. Has the State of the law been reduced to the personal relations and sympathy of the president? Is this what we have to wait for in order for ‘justice’ to be applied if Copts are attacked?
This brings us to Square One, meaning that the Revolution toppled individuals rather than a regime. This also makes the President’s promises for an equitable democracy lose credibility, Mr Bahna believes.
Another Coptic activist, Michel Fahmy, says that while the Copts have chosen to wean themselves off the Church where their civic rights are concerned, the presidency is still confining the Coptic file to the realm of Security and the Church. If anything, it denotes absence of a State of law.
Looking beyond the ‘sectarian’
Former MP Ihab Ramzy insists that, as long as no laws are enacted for the building of places of worship, and for non-discrimination, crises will keep on erupting. Once such laws are in place, he says, they will provide the legal ground that would make presidential intervention or traditional conciliation sessions redundant.
In the absence of a State of the law, explains the lawyer and activist Ramsis al-Naggar, Security has not taken any legal measures against the radical Islamists who threaten to burn down churches. They wait for the President’s orders to start applying tranquillisers, without radically solving matters.
For his part, rights activist John Talaat suggests the formation of a national council for citizenship that would deal with all citizenship files away from the Security policies. “It is not acceptable for Coptic rights and crises to be resolved and granted exclusively through the President,” Mr Talaat says.
WATANI International
12 August 2012