Some 120 demonstrators gathered in front of the Egyptian Parliament building in Cairo at noon last Wednesday to protest the official reluctance in confronting sectarian strife and the rising number of attacks against Copts. The demonstration was triggered by the most recent attack in Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt, in which the Copts were targeted in a drive-by shooting as they left church following Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve—Copts celebrate Christmas on 7 January. Six Copts and one Muslim died and nine Copts were injured.
The Wednesday demonstration was organised by the independent National Commission for Confronting Sectarian Violence. The demonstrators came from all over the Egyptian political spectrum. Rights activists, political party members, and NGO members took part, in addition to several members of the families of the Nag Hammadi victims.
The commission is a young movement which was launched on 4 January 2010. Its membership includes 44 rights movements in Egypt and 140 independent members.
The right thing
The demonstrators carried banners and chanted slogans that condemned religious discrimination, crimes against Copts, and the fact that more often than not no culprits are caught, let alone brought to justice. They called for equal rights for Copts, a unified law for building places of worship, freedom of belief, and the implementation of the constitutional articles which root citizenship rights and the civic State. They demanded prompt measures to end the propagation of hate culture, fanaticism and sectarianism, warning that granting free rein to that culture can only lead to the ruin of the nation.
Representative members of the commission met Abdel-Aziz Mustafa, deputy to the speaker of the Parliament, together with MPs Said Abboud from the Nasserist party, Abdel-Aziz Shaaban from Tagammu, Hamdi Hassan from the Muslim Brotherhood, and independents Gamal Zahran and Alaa’ Abdel-Moniem. The commission representatives included Mounir Megahed of Egyptians against Religious Discrimination, Hussein Abdel-Razeq from the leftist Tagammu Party, Emad Gad of Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies, political analyst Kamal Zakher, Essam Shiha of the liberal Wafd Party, George Ishaq of Kifaya political movement, and members of the commission Farid Zahran, Ibrahim Nawwar, Abdel-Galil Bassiouni, Emad Attiya, Nagy Artin, and Moatazz al-Hifnawi.
Dr Mustafa began by welcoming the commission representatives and assuring them that they did the right thing to take their complaint and demands to Parliament. The commission representatives talked with the MPs about their grave concerns regarding the unprecedented current escalation in sectarian violence and hate crimes, and the resultant rising division between Muslims and Copts. Turning a blind eye to the problem, they insisted, was bound to lead to more hatred, violence, and division, and stands to wreck the entire nation. The roots of sedition ought to be promptly tackled, and the culprits in sectarian crimes prosecuted. The entire problem, they said, is rooted in legal, security, cultural, media, and social causes, and requires a comprehensive solution.
Memorandum
The commission representatives handed Dr Mustafa a memorandum directed to Speaker of the Parliament Fathi Sorour who could not personally meet them since he was at the time presiding over a parliamentary meeting in session.
The memorandum included specific demands to tackle the sectarian problem. First, legislative reform was required in order to consolidate the citizenship concepts stressed in the first article of Egypt’s Constitution. This requires the passage of laws for equality in building places of worship, equal opportunity, freedom of belief, banning discrimination, and criminalising the propagation of hate.
Second, officials should be taken to account for failing to perform their duties satisfactorily. This should include taking to task the Interior Minister for failing to protect Copts against sectarian attacks.
Third, Parliament is required to live up to its role of confirming the civil nature of the Egyptian State through consolidating equal citizenship rights for all. This involves the legislative purging of laws that may involve religious discrimination or inequality in freedom of belief, the implementation of regulations to insure the non-propagation of hatred or religious discriminatory thought through the media, as well as the reform of school curricula and supervision of teacher behaviour in order to establish concepts of religious equality and a homeland which equally belongs to all.
When the meeting was over, the commission members and the MPs went out to the demonstrators and informed them of what had gone on behind the closed doors. They confirmed that Dr Mustafa had promised to put the memorandum before Dr Sorour.
National anthem
The second article in the Constitution, which stipulates that Islam is the State religion and Islamic sharia the principle source of legislation came under fire from Nagy Artin who called for its abolition. This article, he said, was exploited by many judges to issue rulings which flagrantly violated religious freedom.
Emad Attiya brought up the topic of the interview Dr Sorour had given the BBC, in which he claimed that the Nag Hammadi incident was the outcome of public rage at the rape and consequent death of a Muslim girl by a Coptic man. Mr Attiya said that a man of Dr Sorour’s legal expertise should have known better than to makes unsubstantiated claims; the Copt was charged with molestation not rape, the case is still n court, and the girl is well and alive.
Mr Attiya said Mr Mustafa had promised to talk to the Social Fund for Development to offer financial support to the families of the victims of the Nag Hammadi crimes, since several of them had been the sole supporters of their families.
Finally, the demonstrators and the MPs joined in singing the national anthem.
