What had started on Thursday afternoon as a peaceful march to commemorate the arbaeen of the Maspero martyrs and to end in a Nile felucca parade to Maspero where candles would have been lit and wreaths and bouquets of flowers cast into the water, ended tragically.
WATANI International
18 November 2011
What had started on Thursday afternoon as a peaceful march to commemorate the arbaeen of the Maspero martyrs and to end in a Nile felucca parade to Maspero where candles would have been lit and wreaths and bouquets of flowers cast into the water, ended tragically.
While yet at its starting point in Shubra, the march, the members of which were in the main part Copts, was attacked with stones, bottles, Molotov cocktails, and bullets by troublemakers. Besides commemorating 40 days since the death of 26 Copts and two Muslims during the infamous attack against the Copts at Maspero, Cairo, on 9 October, Thursday’s march was calling for civilians to be tried before civil not military courts.
According to Coptic activist Saïd Fayez, some 40 were injured and moved to hospital, among them one young woman who suffered brain hemorrhage and lies in hospital in critical condition. There was wide disagreement as to the number of the injured—estimations run from 29 injured to as many as 200, with no official figures. One activist who preferred to remain anonymous told Watani that the discrepancy stemmed from the fact that many of the injured rushed home once they had been given first aid, in fear of being arrested by the police while yet in hospital, then being detained and charged as happened with the Maspero victims.
The police stepped in to stop the violence and protect the marchers. According to Father Filopatir Gamil, a Coptic activist, the scene would have turned much more bloody were it not for the police intervention.
Those marchers who were able to finally reach their destination at the Nile bank found that the felucca owners who had been hired to host the Nile parade refused to do so, fearing that their boats would be assaulted. The Nile parade was thus practically cancelled.
On Dream Channel’s Cairo time talk show in the evening, Coptic activist Sally Toma gave an eyewitness testimony on the attack against the Copt’s peaceful march. She said that, as the Copts started moving from Dawaran Shubra on Thursday evening they were met with another group of marchers carrying the flag of the Kingdom Of Saudia Arabia and shouting “Islamiya, Islamiya” referring to their demand that Egypt should be Islamist. The Coptic marchers responded by shouting “Madaniya”, meaning “civic” [State], and that was when, Ms Toma said, the clashes started. She said attacks were also waged atop nearby buildings, one of which houses the headquarters of the election campaign of the MP candidate of the Salafi Nour Party Shiekh Gamal Saber. Some of the Copts, she said, retaliated by pulling down and destroying his election campaign banners. The consequent mutual attacks with bottles and stones resulted in a large number of injured. Ms Toma said that Shiekh Saber later carried a loudspeaker and kept shouting that “Christian and Muslim are one hand”, but this was taken as an attempt on his side to make believe that he had nothing to do with the attack.
For his part, Shiekh Saber denied all allegations that the Salafis had anything to do with the attack against the Copts. The attack, he said, took place some 600 metres away from his office, and the Copts ran to his office for shelter. “Salafis are kind, tolerant people,” he said. “They even helped protect a church from being torched by some racist young people on the 9 October.”
The actual date for the arbaeen of the Maspero martyrs, most of whom had been crushed to death by military armoured vehicles or shot while holding a peaceful demonstration to protest the burning of a church in Merinab, Aswan, on 9 October, is today, 18 November. The occasion is being celebrated in churches across the country with prayers; the names of the martyrs are mentioned in Holy Mass, asking the Lord to rest their souls in peace. The arbaeen, literally, forty, is an age-old Egyptian tradition of celebrating 40 days since the death of a person, and has its roots in the Pharaonic custom of mummification. Last Friday, a 50,000-strong funeral march that started at St Mark’s cathedral in Abassiya, Cairo and ended in Tahrir Square took place in their honour.
Worth noting is that the number of those who lost their lives in Maspero has not been confirmed. The Church says the Coptic martyrs number 23, the National Council for Human Rights fact-finding report placed the numbers at 26 Copts and two Muslims, while no official figures have been released. The Military Council has said it would not reveal the number of those who died or were injured from among the military.