WATANI International 18 October 2009
It is obvious that discrimination against Copts does not stop at the issue of building churches or restoring existing ones. The building of a new church requires the approval of the president of Egypt, and the restoration or renovation of churches requires the approval of the local governor. Such approvals are not easy to come by; even though some take a year or two to be issued, others—many others—may take as long as 30 to 40 years or may never materialise in the first place. No matter how direly in need of a church, a congregation is confronted with countless bureaucratic or security hurdles intentionally placed in its path, so that the entire process is reduced to one of humiliating, arduous effort. Watani has frequently termed it the Copts’ Via Dolorosa.
Copts frequently face similar hurdles when it comes to places to bury their dead. It is eight years now that the Copts’ cemetery in the village of Hawwara in Fayoum, 100km southwest of Cairo, has been partially flooded because of rising levels of underground and sanitary drainage water. All applications to the authorities for licence to restore the cemetery and build new tombs have gone unanswered. The end result is that the Copts of the village and those of six neighbouring villages and towns, who use the same cemetery, are unable to properly bury their dead.
The flooding
The Copts of the village of Hawwara told Watani that their cemetery dates back to 1913. Ten years ago a preparatory school was built adjacent to the cemetery and secondary schools were built in its southern vicinity. Even though the building law stipulates that a 200-metre distance should be kept between a cemetery wall and the nearest building, the schools were built at much closer distances. A water reservoir erected for the benefit of the schools worsened the situation by helping to raise the level of the water table. The underground water and the sanitary drainage water from the schools rose to inundate the major part of the cemetery. Entire tombs were flooded, coffins floated on top of the water, many of them and the bodies that had been buried inside deteriorated and disintegrated. In 2000 a request to rescue the cemetery was filed to the authorities by those in charge.
Mortifying embarrassment
One of the tomb owners, Saïd Farahat, told Watani that, following the request, the local government sent suction units to draw the water out of the tombs and made some repairs to the sanitary drainage facilities which serve the schools. “These measures, however,” Mr Farahat said, “were insufficient to stop the water overflow, so we sent SOS messages to Fayoum governor and to the ministers of health, education, and environment. To this day no–one bothered to respond. The water now threatens the major part of the cemetery, to say nothing of the damage to the environment. Given that this cemetery serves six towns and villages, it is of utmost importance to do something to rectify matters. All we ask is to be allowed to fill the land and rebuild the tombs at a higher level.”
His family tomb, Mr Farahat said, was flooded five years ago. No efforts at repair worked. When a death occurred in the family last year they had to bury their dead in borrowed space in someone else’s tomb. In rural communities where burying the dead is a means of honouring them and every family takes pride in its own burial place, burying a family member in a strange tomb is a mortifying embarrassment.
No permit
Another villager, Abdel-Sayed Rizq, relates a similar experience. His sister-in-law was terminally ill and the family expected her death any day. Mr Rizq, wishing to avoid any unpleasant surprises once the death occurred, went to check that the family tomb was in good shape. He found it flooded with water, and had to move the coffins that were buried there temporarily to a neighbour’s tomb which had escaped flooding. Mr Rizq then began to repair the family tomb, but was immediately stopped in his tracks by the police who told him he had no permit to carry on any repairs. For nine months Mr Rizq shuttled between the offices of local government officials and security officials to obtain a permit but without success. In the meantime his sister-in-law died and the family had to bury her in their neighbour’s family tomb. Mr Rizq found this so humiliating that he decided to take the coffin and demonstrate silently in front of the security office, but the church leaders persuaded him it would only serve to ignite matters and would not solve the burial problem.
Now, Mr Rizq says, the neighbours are asking him to move his family’s coffin from their tomb since they, predictably, need the space. “And where am I to bury my dead?” he asks.
What and why?
Watani took the problem to Hamdi Abdel-Rahman, deputy to the head of the local government in the village. Mr Abdel-Rahman confirmed that the cemetery is flooded; a field report by the local government head already proves that, he said. The head, however, has been on leave for three months. “The local government has no objection to repairing and restoring the tombs,” Mr Abdel-Rahman said, which implies that the objection is coming from the security authorities. And which still begs the answer why no permit has so far been issued to restore the cemetery?
So until the Copts obtain the required permit, what are they supposed to do when one of them dies?