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Africa North | ||||
Protest against Egypt Christian governor | ||||
2011-04-22 | ||||
TENS of thousands of protesters massed in a southern Egyptian city yesterday and cut off a major railway to demand the exit of a Christian governor as the government sought to resolve the crisis, police officials said. The protests began last Friday after Emad Mikhail, a former Cairo police commander, was appointed governor of Qena, the second Coptic Christian governor in a row. The protesters' motivations appear to vary but the presence of hardline Islamists has raised sectarian tensions in the province, which has a large Christian population and a history of religious strife.
Some of the protesters said they should have been consulted in the appointment of a new governor, especially one with a background in the country's vilified police force.
"The protests are sectarian," Bishop Kirilos of the nearby town of Nagaa Hammadi told AFP. "They are led by Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, and they are chanting: 'We won't leave until the Christians leave,'" he said. The bishop, who was present when Muslim gunmen killed six churchgoers after an evening mass in January 2010, said parishioners were fearful of further attacks. But a prominent Salafi cleric in Cairo, Abdel Moneim al-Shahat, denied that his sect, which advocates a return to early Muslim practices, was spearheading the protests. "People object to him because he has a security background, and also because he was appointed as though for a Coptic quota, and Qena always gets the quota Christian," he said. "My religion forbids me from being ruled by a Christian, but if he were popular I would be willing to set aside my religious objection," he said.
State television reported that Prime Minister Essam Sharaf was preparing to head a delegation to the southern city to defuse the crisis. Copts make up about 10 per cent of the country's 80 million people and have been the targets of attacks. The protests in Qena have served as a stark reminder to some of the persistence of sectarian tensions after a popular revolt ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February. Telecoms billionaire Nagib Sawaris, who launched a liberal party after Mubarak's ouster, wrote on his Twitter account that the protests showed a Christian would stand little chance of becoming the country's president. "To those who said I should run for president: if we can't even have a Copt as Qena governor, what about Egypt?," he wrote. | ||||
Posted by:tipper |
#1 The ROPs tolerance on display yet again. This disgusts me as much for the cowardly responses most of thw West provide. |
Posted by: AlanC 2011-04-22 13:55 |