WATANI International
24 January 2010
Five Coptic-owned houses in the village of al-Houza in Armant, north of Luxor, Upper Egypt, were set aflame in the early hours of dawn on Wednesday 14 January. The residents had been asleep when they woke up to the fires. The houses burnt belonged to Romani Mounir Fouad, Mahsoub Mounir Fouad, Girgis Mounir Fouad, Mounir Fouad Mansour, and Romani Sami Ghali. Mahsoub Fouad suffered the additional loss of some EGP5000, the value of fodder he had been stocking on his rooftop. The house owners reported the arson to the local police, but made no accusation against anyone in specific.
Security was heightened in the village, but this did not prevent another fire in the house of Shahata Lotfi Fahmi and his adjacent animal farm at 8:00pm on Thursday, and yet another on Friday evening in the house of Anwar Ramzy Azer who was not then in town. Eyewitnesses report fireballs being hurled at the houses that burned.
Luxor governor Samir Farag directly visited Houza, as did several top ranking security officials. Mr Farag called upon the police to exert the utmost effort to catch the culprits but, until Watani went to press, none had been caught.
And another Luxor town, Armant al-Waburat, shop of the Copt Ayad Salib who sells cosmetics and paraphernalia was burnt in the early hours of Epiphany last Tuesday. Salib told Watani that his son Wagih had had a heated discussion on religion with a neighbouring butcher Adel Mohamed Galous a couple of days earlier. But even though Salib reported the fire to the police, he refrained from accusing anyone in specific “We are under intolerable pressure,” he said. “I fear for the safety of my children if I accuse anyone.” He estimates his losses at some EGP40,000.
The Houza and Armant fires come in the wake of the Nag Hammadi shootout which left six Copts and one Muslim dead following Midnight Mass on 6 January—Coptic Christmas Eve. The Copts of Houza had since then been complaining of Muslim harassment and abuses. Samir Ra’fat of the Egyptian Union for Human Rights in Luxor confirmed the mass harassment against Copts in Houza and said that the Copts were living in terror of being the next victims of some unwarranted collective violence. He warned that sectarian inflammation was furiously escalating in the Luxor area following the violence against Copts in Farshout last November and Nag Hammadi earlier this month. Mr Ra’fat warned that, considering the lax security and the fact that the offenders in sectarian crimes were almost never penalised, violence against Copts would very likely spread all over Egypt.
