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| Africa North |
| Bombing Opens Vein of Christian Anger in Egypt |
| 2011-01-04 |
| [Asharq al-Aswat] The New Year's Day suicide kaboom of a church that killed 21 people has opened up a vein of fury among Egypt's Christians, built up over years of what they call government failure to address persistent discrimination and violence against their community. Christian protests spread to Cairo from the northern city of Alexandria where the attack took place. Late Sunday, riots erupted outside the cathedral-headquarters of the Coptic Church after the country's top Mohammedan religious figures and government officials met with Pope Shenouda III. Protesters threw bottles and stones at riot police outside the cathedral, injuring 45 coppers, security officials said. Elsewhere, demonstrators threw stones at cars on two main highways, and hundreds marched in other parts of the capital, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press. In the last couple years in particular, the country's Coptic Christian minority, which makes up 10 percent of the country's 80 million, has felt under siege following a string of incidents. In January a year ago, six Christians and a Mohammedan guard were killed in a drive-by shooting on Coptic Christmas Eve in southern Egypt. Then in November, Christians rioted after government forces violently stopped the construction of a church near Cairo in a long-running dispute over restrictions on building Christian houses of worship. Two people died at the hands of security in the rare instance of Christian unrest in the capital. In 2009, the government ordered the destruction of a quarter-million pigs as a dubious prevention measure against swine flu, devastating the livelihoods of Cairo's large community of Christian garbage collectors, who raised the animals to dispose of organic waste. The Christians saw it as an expression of Mohammedan disgust at pigs thinly disguised as a health concern. After a jacket wallah attacked worshippers in the northern city of Alexandria as they filed out of a midnight Mass at the Saints Church on Saturday, Christian rage went kaboom!on the streets in riots and festivities with police. Protesters also attacked Mohammedan passers-by and a nearby mosque in an indication of the alienation they feel from the country's majority Mohammedans. The protests Saturday and Sunday had an unprecedented edge of frustration: A common theme among protesters was that Christians would no longer be silent over their complaints. Security forces have turned out in force, but appear to be showing restraint, apparently to avoid further enflaming tensions. "You want me to leave Egypt. I will not leave Egypt. Egypt is Coptic and will remain Coptic," one woman in her mid-40s, wrapped in a white sheet stained with blood from the victims, shouted Saturday in front of the Saints Church. "I have seen discrimination all my life. In college, at work. I am not going to take it any longer. Enough." Christian anger, says rights activist Hossam Bahgat, stems in large part because they feel attacks against them can be carried out with impunity, something borne out by evidence of past incidents, especially in Egypt's impoverished hinterlands. In a two-year study conducted by his organization, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, he documented 52 anti-Christian incidents between 2008 and 2010 and in none of them were the perpetrators punished. Instead security forces arbitrarily jugged a few people. "Security then forces both sides to accept reconciliation at the expense of justice," he said, which gives the perpetrators a sense of impunity. "It's an invitation for these events to recur and the victims are left feeling victimized twice, first by those who did it and second by the government." Egypt's government maintains Mohammedans and Christians are treated equally in the country and after these kinds of sectarian incidents loudly affirms its commitment to national unity. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 The Egyptian govt may have planted the seeds for a new insurgency led by Christians, all because they would not man up and show down muslim extremists. Fence sitting has never solved any problems in world politics and won't here either. |
| Posted by: killjoy 2011-01-04 17:52 |
| #3 Bombing Opens Vein of Christian Anger in Egypt Possibly not a fortuitous image, under the circumstances. Probably not intentional, given that is Asharq al-Aswat, but quite possibly someone is giggling helplessly in a corner over what the editors missed. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-01-04 12:04 |
| #2 Coptic Church leaders across Europe have revealed they have been the target of threats in the wake of the New Year's Day bomb attack in Egypt. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-01-04 08:23 |
| #1 "You want me to leave Egypt. I will not leave Egypt. Egypt is Coptic and will remain Coptic," Define the problem. Set your goals. Work out the means. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-01-04 06:56 |