One Christian is dead, several others were wounded and a fire gutted a church building, after Muslims across Egypt waged a weekend of violence against Copts in July.
In Tahana El-Gabal village in Minya Governorate on 17 July Fam Mary Khalaf, 27, was overpowered by a group of Muslims who stabbed him repeatedly in the chest. One of the knife stabs went directly into his heart, killing him instantly, a statement from the local parish reported.
Three others were seriously injured in the attack: Nagib Hanna, father of the Revd Metaous, a local Coptic priest; Malak Aziz, brother of the Revd Boutrous, another local priest; and Azza Jouma, a Christian neighbour of the three victims, who was stabbed in the face.
Harassment
The attack started when four Muslims began harassing Metaous’s primary school-age son as his grandfather was looking after him outside his home. The men threatened to run the boy over, witnesses told human rights activists investigating the incident. Once the stabbing began, the group of four quickly grew into a mob of more than two dozen screaming ‘Stand by your Muslim brother!’
The assault was one of numerous cases of violence against Copts in Minya Governorate over the past few months, including an attack in May in which an elderly Coptic woman was stripped, beaten and paraded naked through her village streets because of a rumour, later shown to be false, that her son was having a romantic relationship with a Muslim woman.
Ishak Ibrahim, a human rights researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the attacks in Egypt and specifically in Minya continue because no one is being punished for committing them.
Rumour of church building
The Tahana El-Gabal stabbing death came about a day after a mob of Muslims, enraged over a rumour that a church building was being constructed in the governorate, attacked Copts in their village. Starting shortly after 9 pm on Friday 15 July , groups of Muslims set upon the Copts in the village of Abu Yacoub, causing minor injuries and torching five homes.
The attack lasted into the early morning hours of Saturday 16 July. Firefighters showed up several hours after the structures had been destroyed.
The Bishop of Minya, identified according to tradition only by his consecrated name, Makarious, said in a press statement that the rioting mobs were in complete violation of the law and that there was no excuse for the violence. ‘Nobody has the right to attack others and kill and destroy their property, no matter what’, he said.
Second incident
The Abu Yacoub riot was the second such incident in 15 days to take place in Minya Governorate over a rumour that a church building was being constructed, and the third in the country in 30 days. In a surprisingly similar incident, on 30 June another mob rioted in response to a rumour of the building of a church in Kom El Loofy village in Minya Governorate. The 300-strong mob torched four Coptic-owned homes and otherwise harassed or assaulted Copts.
On 17 June in Amriya, a village south of Alexandria, local Muslims accused area Copts of building a church on a Copticowned construction site and began rioting. The mob assaulted Coptic men in the village and then attacked and looted several Christian-owned homes and a Coptic community centre.
In the Amriya attack, police later arrested six Muslims and six Copts, including the owner of the construction site. The Muslims were released with no charges, in time to break the Ramadan day-time fast, but the Christians were charged with holding prayers without permission and building without a permit, then released the following morning.
The EIPR’s Ibrahim said the anti-church riots pose a dangerous problem for Copts, because they indicate that even if laws in Egypt change to allow them to freely construct church buildings, certain elements of Egyptian society still wouldn’t allow it. ‘The government is not strong enough to protect the Copts from all these attacks’, he said.
Inequitable process
Authorities are now trying to force Coptic communities in all the cases into what is known as a reconciliation process. Instead of criminally charging the perpetrators of Christian persecution, the government seemingly does everything it can to force victims into ‘Reconciliation Committees’.
Reconciliation Committees are based on traditional tribal councils, where two equal entities come together to solve a dispute. The committees are supposed to lead to equitable justice for all parties, but because Copts have significantly less power coming to the table than members of the Muslim majority, they are often victimised a second time instead of receiving justice. In some cases, Copts have been made to pay damages to attackers who destroyed their property in unprovoked incidents.
