WATANI International 17 January 2010 In Nag Hammadi and its vicinity
It was Christmas Eve. Earlier in the evening I had handed in an urgent assignment to Watani and was looking forward to a quiet, cheerful Christmas. As Midnight Mass drew to an end on Wednesday 6 January—the eve of Coptic Christmas—my cell phone rang. Thinking it might probably be someone wishing me a Happy Christmas I answered, only to hear an anguished cry on the other side screaming: “Help! They have opened fire on us Copts in Nag Hammadi and several have died.”
Horror
The details were horrifying. A masked person in a speeding car had opened fire on the Copts as they left their church of Mar-Yuhanna (St John) in Nag Hammadi, Qena, in Upper Egypt, after Midnight Mass. Seven young men died. Six were members of the Coptic congregation. A young Muslim man died as he was meeting his Coptic friend after Mass to celebrate Christmas with him—both friends were accustomed to celebrate each others’ feasts with their reciprocal families. [First reports on the murders erroneously described the Muslim victim as the church guardsman, but in fact there had been no-one standing guard on the church that evening.]
Eleven were injured and moved to hospital, some in critical conditions. The car fled. The bishop of Nag Hammadi, Anba Kyrillos, escaped unscathed, but there were strong rumours that he had been the one targeted by the attack.
In pained shock, I called my editor-in-chief Youssef Sidhom to inform him of the tragic event. Involuntarily, I found myself writing down: “Christmas Eve massacre”.
Blood in the street
Thursday evening I set off to Nag Hammadi. I was in the company of a journalist colleague who worked for the Associated Press, Abdel-Nasser Mohamed Nuri, as well as a rights activist from the Society for Enhancing Democracy, Ahmed Abdel-Fattah. We arrived at Nag Hammadi in the early hours of Friday to find a town empty of traffic or passers-by since a curfew was in effect till 8:00am. This was due to the violence which had erupted between the Muslims and the Copts the previous day during the funeral of the six who had been murdered. We tried to figure out our way through town since there was not a soul to ask directions from. On 30 March Street we found the blood of the victims still on the ground; the site was fenced with yellow ribbons so that no-one would tread on it.
At 8:00 o’clock we met a friend from Nag Hammadi. Over tea and breakfast he told us of the murders and the violence which broke in front of Nag Hammadi public hospital when officials there rudely refused to admit the injured. Some of these were in critical conditions and thus had to be moved to Sohag public hospital some 100km away. In wrath, a Coptic crowd hurled stones at the hospital windows, burned one ambulance car, damaged another two, and pushed a police car into the nearby canal. He also told us about the funeral of the six young men and their burial in one tomb which was then termed the “tomb of the martyrs”. He had their pictures on his computer and, since several of them were friends of his, sorrowfully told us all about them, stressing that they were marvellous kids who had had plenty of potential.
Our friend also expressed the prevalent bitterness among Nag Hammadi Copts that “Coptic blood is worthless in their homeland”. Nag Hammadis were livid at the pretext volunteered by the Interior Ministry as legitimate justification for the horrible crime, that it came in revenge of an alleged rape of a Muslim girl from a nearby village last November by a Coptic man. Until today that man is detained pending investigation; he has not been charged.
What law?
We then headed to the bishopric to meet Anba Kyrillos, Bishop of Nag Hammadi, who had just arrived from Cairo where he had gone overnight to brief Pope Shenouda III on the details of the Christmas Eve crime. To a host of media people Anba Kyrillos reiterated his accusation that the culprit Hamam al-Kamouni—who had been by that time caught by the police, together with two accomplices—was the protégé of MP Abdel-Rehim al-Ghoul who was notorious for using him to execute outlaw activities in Nag Hammadi and to terrorise people during elections.
At noon, Friday prayers began at the mosque directly adjacent to the bishopric—mosque and church share a common wall. The microphone which broadcast the sermon was—as is common practice—way too loud to allow any conversation in the room we sat in at the bishopric. When a Muslim visitor complained that he felt as though inside the mosque not the bishopric, Anba Kyrillos smiled wryly and explained that the bishopric was built in 1932 but the mosque was only 18 years old. He was of course alluding to the fact that, even though regulations in Egypt allow no church to be built in the vicinity of any mosque, mosques may be built as close as wall-to-wall by a church. The only bright spot was that the sermon condemned murder under any pretext.
Friday prayers came to an end. Out in the street the security forces had surrounded the area. Satellite channel correspondents stood there talking to local politicians. MP Ghoul was belligerently speaking about ‘honour’ and ‘honour crimes’ in direct allusion to the alleged rape crime of last November. Disgusted, I moved over to another MP, Fathy Qandil, and asked him what he really thought of the Christmas Eve crime. “Maybe the shootout was by someone who is mentally upset,” he said. “We denounce such acts since, in Egypt, we are all brothers.” The flowery rhetoric of Muslim/Coptic brotherhood so commonly used in such occasions that even children know by heart dominated the scene. Not a single politician said anything about law enforcement or bringing the criminals to justice.
Security abuse
Quiet reigned till around 6:00pm when, as we sat inside the bishopric hall, loud voices cheering against Qena governor Magdy Ayoub, himself a Copt, and calling for the return of the previous governor Adel Labib, a Muslim and currently governor of Alexandria, came to our ears. We rushed outside to find some 250 young Coptic men gathered peacefully, even if noisily, in front of the bishopric. Anba Kyrillos attempted to calm them down and persuade them to disperse but they were livid at General Ayoub who, they claimed, never defended the Copts for fear of being accused of favouring them. Many of them were in tears of pain and anguish.
At this moment the head of Qena security apparatus, General Mahmoud Gohar, arrived to visit Anba Kyrillos. The young men received him with questions of: “Why was there no security on Christmas Eve?” and “Why can’t you protect us, General? Our brothers were slaughtered as though they were chicken and no-one defended us.” The only reply they got, however, was: “I understand how you feel, and the culprit will be penalised. But we shouldn’t forget the horrible rape crime.” Predictably, the official justification of the murders did nothing to calm the demonstrators. When finally Anba Kyrillos persuaded them to go home the security forces allowed them to cross through the cordon which by now surrounded the bishopric. When some 200 of them had crossed, the security forces closed the cordon and caught the others. The scene turned bloody as they tried to escape but were harshly beaten and dragged on the ground by the security forces. When a priest tried to go to their rescue the security members had no qualms whatsoever about pushing and beating the priest.
The fires
We all went back into the bishopric building. Silence reigned. The utter, unjustified cruelty we had just witnessed and been helpless to stop held us tongue-tied.
But it was obviously not the end of the violence. A telephone call informed us that the Copts of the Nag Hammadi districts of Sahel and al-Suq east of the bishopric were under attack. These districts lay in Ghoul’s constituency. Abdel-Nasser and I rushed to the scene, accompanied by a Coptic friend, Mina, who was familiar with the area, on motorcycle. The security forces had surrounded the area, but Mina managed to squeeze in through a lesser-known alley which had escaped security attention. The district was a web of narrow alleys that would not accommodate any vehicle. Once in, we found ourselves mired in a scene of rioting, fires, water and mud as the residents tried to put out the fires. A Muslim mob was running about wielding clubs, machetes, and gasoline bottles, attacking Copts and their homes. The Copts tried desperately to put out the fires.
We were viewed with suspicion. It was obvious we were strangers since everyone there knew everyone else. And it was obvious we stood no chance of escaping intact if anyone got wind of the fact that Mina and I were Copt. Our Muslim friend began mouthing in a loud voice typical Islamic linguo as we shot through the area and out to safety.
By that time the rioting and fires had spread to other areas in Nag Hammadi and in the neighbouring village of Bahjoura. The police resorted to using tear gas to dissipate the violence. A feeling of suffocation caught us unawares—Abdel-Nasser especially was on the verge of actual suffocation—so we drove away for dear life.
Do something!
The road to Bahjoura, which lies some 3km away from Nag Hammadi, was clear, and we were there in no time. The first thing that greeted us was the smoke of the fires. A decent security officer tried to dissuade us from entering, saying it was too perilous in there. As we stood, more security forces arrived from Assiut and Sohag to help bring the situation under control. I then sneaked in to find men and women rushing about trying to put out the fires. We later knew that some 20 houses and shops had burned. One woman in her twenties who was busy hurling bucketfulls of water on the fire realised I was a journalist and stopped to say: “They killed six of us, plundered and destroyed our homes and shops, and now they are burning them. Where is Security?” She noticed I was on my cell phone with a renowned human rights activist, so snatched my phone and cried out to him: “Do something for us, please!”
Many Copts were immersing their roofs in water to protect themselves against possible fires.
Rejoicing
Back in Nag Hammadi we were greeted with—of all things—ululations and sounds of joy. We discovered the Copts were claiming there was an apparition of the Holy Virgin around the steeple of her church. We rushed to the scene and indeed saw a luminous pigeon circling the steeple. The Copts were almost delirious with joy, and began singing praises, while Muslim passers-by were sceptic. But the clerics at the church quietly persuaded the Copts to go home lest the scene turn violent. Many Copts, however, went out into their balconies and continued their praises.
Besieged
Again, a phone call carried news that attacks had erupted against Copts in the village of Rahmaniya, 7km from Nag Hammadi, and that the police was using tear gas and water jets to disperse the rioters. We tried to go there but the security forces had blocked all the roads leading to the village.
Until 1:30am we were receiving SOS calls from neighbouring villages in which the Copts were coming under attack. The only thing we could do was report it to the police which either could not or would not enter these villages, and the Copts were left to fend for themselves.
By 3:00am we were almost unable to keep our eyes open and had to go to bed at the bishopric guesthouse. Abdel-Fattah had left to Cairo earlier, but Abdel-Nasser and I spent the night in Nag Hammadi. I remained wide-awake long after Nasser’s regular breathing indicated he had finally slept. The anguished cries of the victims of the day’s violence drove all sleep away. I prayed hard that events such as today’s would never occur again, until slumber finally crept in.
Locked up
On Saturday I decided to go attend the funeral of a Coptic woman who had suffocated by the smoke of the fires at Bahjoura. Since we were heading to the house of the deceased Copt I was recognised as a Copt and Abdel-Nasser taken to be one—every time we passed a Muslim passer-by be it child or adult we were heavily abused.
Back in Nag Hammadi I discovered that a Nag Hammadi friend had got wind of my being in town and insisted that I should visit him. I went, and was warmly welcomed by all the family. His mother especially insisted that, as a stranger in town, I should be treated to a hearty repast which she hastened to prepare. They kept on asking me whether quiet had returned to town and, observing my stupefaction at the question, explained that they had locked themselves up in their home, keeping all windows shut and lights off for fear of being attacked.
It was evening as I approached the bishopric. The security trucks at the gate indicated that someone important was visiting the bishop. Indeed, there stood Qena Governor General Ayoub and the head of Qena Security with Anba Kyrillos. I was stunned to know this was the first-ever visit to the bishopric from the governor during his four-year term in office. I hoped it would turn a new leaf in the relationship between State and Church in Qena. Anba Kyrillos appeared content with the visit and asked for the picture of General Ayoub to be hung at the bishopric. So far, the only pictures hanging there were of the previous governor Adel Labib.
Beginning of the end?
Following that visit, Anba Kyrillos has been observed to use much milder language when talking of the security role in the crisis, even to the point of saying they had performed their duty. This brought on surprised remarks from the Coptic public who know very well the bishop’s fearlessness. But Anba Kyrillos said that the State officials had demonstrated their goodwill and that he was after the welfare of his congregation. Anba Pimen, bishop of the neighbouring parish of Qous, who had staunchly stood by Anba Kyrillos all through the crisis and who is also known as a bold person, commented that it was wise to calm matters down.
As I headed back to Cairo I hoped against hope that this crisis would have seen its end. Any beginning to the end of violence, however, can only be achieved if an end is put to the culture of hate, to religious intolerance, and to the trampling of citizenship rights.