WATANI International
1 August 2011
For three days since last Friday, the Muslim villagers of Ezbet Yacoub in Samalout, Minya, Upper Egypt, waged attacks against the village church of Mar-Girgis (St George), on account of the installation of a church bell. Eight Copts were injured during the hostilities. Mar-Girgis’s was built some 100 years ago and was undergoing direly needed restoration and renovation, all of which was officially licensed.
The violence was only brought under control when police and army units surrounded the church for protection and camped in the village. The Muslims who attacked the church then started throwing stones at the police and army men, who fired in the air to disperse the crowds.
Father Stafanous Shehata of Samalout bishopric told Watani that official preparations were underway to hold a traditional ‘reconciliation session’ between the Coptic and Muslim elders of the village in order to contain the matter.
Rights activists, however, among whom was Mamdouh Nakhla of Al-Kalima (The Word) Centre for Human Rights, denounced the ‘reconciliation’ move, saying that it relinquishes the right of the community instead of implementing the law and penalising the culprits. He demanded that the law should be applied indiscriminately to achieve justice, and that there should be no ‘balancing acts’ such as detaining numbers of Copts and Muslims in order to pressure their communities to sit down and ‘reconcile’.