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Christians are Fleeing Egypt By Charles M. Sennot, Boston Globe 18 January 1999 AL KOSHEH, Egypt - On a sweltering night last summer, the bodies of two slain Christian men were dumped in the center of the Christian neighborhood of this remote village on the banks of the upper Nile River. What began as a local investigation into their murders has exploded into a national case that has reopened old and deep wounds for the Coptic Christian minority living in Egypt's Muslim society. And it has become a dramatic example of the religious intolerance that is pushing Egypt's Christians to steadily leave their homeland. In the weeks after the Aug. 14 murder, the victims' families and local Christian leaders presented evidence that the killing was done by a gang of five Muslims. But local police ignored their claims and rounded up 1,000 Christians from the town for questioning. Christians charge that police subjected dozens of people, including women and small children, to beatings and torture to force statements from them to frame a Christian for the crime. He now faces the death penalty. Egyptian officials have reacted predictably, critics say, by concerning themselves more with masking the perception of a Muslim-Christian divide in Egypt than in investigating the case. The government thus far has done nothing to reprimand the local police, all of whom are Muslim. Instead, they arrested a prominent Coptic bishop for speaking out against the alleged injustices and a leading human rights worker for doing the same. Both face charges of fomenting sectarian strife. A five-count indictment against the bishop includes a charge of threatening national security, which carries the death penalty. ''What happened in Al Kosheh is a very sad chapter for our country,'' said Bishop Wissa, the frail, 60-year-old Coptic cleric, on the October night he was arrested. ''We have traditionally got along with our Muslim neighbors. But the situation is deteriorating from bad to worse. We have spoken out and now I may face the death penalty for doing so. How can I say nothing when this is happening to our people?'' Egypt's nearly six million Copts, by far the largest Christian population in the Middle East, have for centuries coexisted with Muslims. But it has never been easy. Today they are an embattled minority, and they are leaving in significant numbers. Their reason is primarily to pursue economic opportunity in the West amid Egypt's crushing poverty, but the rising influence of Islamic fundamentalism has forced an undercurrent of Christian-Muslim tension to surface. And it has accelerated the emigration. The Christian flight has profound consequences for Egypt's secular society. The Coptic minority has served as a firewall against Islamic fundamentalism, a wall which journalists, artists, and academics - both Muslim and Christian - fear has crumbled as the Christian presence shrinks. The Coptic church estimates that more than 1 million Christians have left for the United States, Europe, and Canada over the last three decades. Every week at the American embassy in Cairo, dozens of Coptic Christians wait in line with visa applications to Europe and America. There are 250,000 Copts registered with the North American Archdiocese of the Coptic Orthodox Church. As Egypt's Muslim population expands with one of the world's highest birth rates, the Copts have become a smaller minority. In 1975, according to church statistics, the Copts represented close to 20 percent of the total population. Today they are between 6 and 9 percent of Egypt's 60 million population. Discrimination against Copts is rarely as dramatic as the incident at Al Kosheh. What they claim to face in their daily lives is far more subtle. For example, Copts in recent years have heard their faith denounced by fiery Islamic clerics on government-run television. Copts from Egypt's professional classes are frightened of Islamists who have imposed ''Sharia,'' or Koranic law, on Egypt's legal system, undermining the country's self-image as a secular, and tolerant, republic. Copts feel the discrimination in schools, especially in the poorer neighborhoods of Cairo and small villages of upper Egypt, where Islamist teachers sometimes distort and insult the Christian faith. Only the Muslim faith, not Christianity, is taught in mandatory religion classes in public schools. As their presence dwindles, Copts are being marginalized politically and economically. Of the 26 governors appointed by President Hosni Mubarak, none is a Copt. None of the presidents or deans at Egypt's universities is a Copt. And with the powerful professional syndicates increasingly under the control of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, Copts complain that they are disenfranchised. ''Those who can afford to have left the country,'' says Moris Sadik, a lawyer and director of a Coptic advocacy group called Egyptian Human Rights for National Unity. ''For those of us who stay, life is made very difficult. Opportunities are limited. Discrimination is rampant.'' Church's identity dates to 7th century The word ''Copt'' is derived from 7th-century Arab invaders who used the term to refer to everyone in the country, the vast majority of whom at the time were Christian. As Islam rapidly took hold in Egypt over the following centuries, the Coptic Christians held tightly to their identity. The Coptic church is one of the oldest in Christendom. It was founded by St. Mark the Evangelist, who is said to have arrived in Egypt in AD 60. The vast majority of Copts are of the Eastern Orthodox rite, though there are smaller communities of Roman Catholics and Anglicans in Egypt. The Copts of the Eastern Orthodox Church adhere closely to ancient traditions. Most discreetly profess their faith with a small blue tattoo of a cross on one wrist. The clerics wear long beards, black vestments, skull caps, and large leather crosses hanging from their necks. Copts are fiercely proud of their Egyptian identity and generally reluctant to criticize the Egyptian government. This makes the recent voices of protest all the more resonant. Yet they have suffered petty discrimination for centuries. One lingering example is the 19th-century Ottoman empire restriction against the construction and even repair of Christian churches without approval from the highest levels of the government. Today, this law infuriates the church hierarchy that oversees once-grand cathedrals and small parish churches that are crumbling. Bishop Thomas, who oversees a diocese of 21 churches and monasteries, says many of the properties have cracked foundations, broken steeples, and lack plumbing. ''I don't know what kind of danger to the state repairing a toilet poses, but apparently there are security reasons for this,'' said Thomas. During the rise of pan-Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s, the economically prosperous Copts, who then represented 20 percent of the population but held more than 50 percent of the nations's wealth, saw their businesses and factories nationalized under the socialist government of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Many of them left as a result. Through the 1970s, sectarian tensions in Egypt simmered. Sporadic violence occurred, amid bitter complaints by Copts of discrimination. The violence intensified in 1980 as then-president Anwar Sadat courted Islamic fundamentalists to consolidate power against socialist rivals. This further embittered the Coptic hierarchy, especially the church leader, Pope Shenouda III, who charged that Sadat had replaced nationalism with religion. In 1981, Sadat outraged Copts by putting Shenouda under house arrest, where he stayed for four years. The Islamic militant group Gama Islamiya began targeting Copts in 1991, when it launched a terrorist campaign to overthrow the secular government of Hosni Mubarak, which responded with a relentless crackdown that imprisoned 20,000 militants. Still, occasionally spectacular atrocities continue to occur, such as the massacre of 58 foreign tourists in Luxor in November 1997. Throughout the Muslim extremists' 8-year battle against the government, militants have chosen Copts as easy and repeated targets. Militants firebombed churches and gunned down Copts working in the wheat and sugar cane fields along the Nile. Perhaps the most dramatic case occurred on Feb. 12, 1997, in Abu Qurqas, a small town on a wide bend in the Nile River in upper Egypt near Minya. While a Coptic student prayer group was gathering in St. George's Church, gunmen whom police believe to have been Gama Islamiya militants opened fire, killing nine people. The church now has armed guards stationed at a steel gate that leads to its courtyard. On a recent visit, a reporter was permitted to enter the town only with an armored troop carrier flanked by six soldiers carrying automatic rifles. Inside, Emad, 28, an accountant and youth leader of the church, suspiciously eyes the security officials who appeared in the church. The plaster walls of the church are pockmarked with bullet holes. Framed photographs of the nine young faces of the victims adorn the walls with the faces of ancient martyrs. Coptic churches are always filled with images of persecution and martyrdom, first at the hands of the Romans, then by the Byzantines, and later Arab Muslims. Copts define their history in epochs of suffering, such as the 3rd century ''Age of Martyrdom'' and the 7th century ''Era of Great Tribulations.'' ''The killers came in here, right here, and opened fire,'' said Emad. ''Our brothers and sisters were killed while they prayed. They are martyrs.'' When asked about the relationship between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, Emad retreated into an uncomfortable silence. The militants have also targeted wealthy Copts. A recent spate of robberies of Coptic jewelry stores is believed to have been a key source of financing for the Gama Islamiya. And Copts complain they must pay ''gezia,'' a kind of protection tax, which Islamists say is grounded in Koranic law. Copts who have resisted have been threatened with death. Some have been killed. The story of one Christian family from Abu Qurqas in upper Egypt is a dramatic example. Rif'at, who asked that his last name not be used, said that for eight years his family faced threats and ultimately murder by Islamic militants. They burned the family's general store when they refused to pay. In 1996, Rif'at's brother was shot to death by militants. Most of the family has fled to Cairo, and parents are trying to send their children to America. ''We fear for our lives every day. Only because we are Christians,'' wrote Rif'at in a letter documenting the case. Egyptian officials point out that Christians are not the only targets of Islamic militants. Tourists, police officers, prominent secular journalists, and politicians have also been slaughtered by militants. But in Al Kosheh, the problem was the government, not the militants. This is why the case there resonates so powerfully among Copts. Based on dozens of interviews with victims, police ran roughshod over the Christian part of town from the morning the bodies were found last Aug. 15 through to the end of September. Victims claim that police threatened to rape several women. They described in chilling detail being subjected to electric prods, of being hung from window grates and in some cases a ceiling fan for hours during questioning. Evidence of rope burns, bruises, and small red scars from the prods were visible on the bodies of more than a dozen victims interviewed by the Globe. Boctur Abu Yameen, 60, was the first arrested as a suspect. He said the police also detained members of his family, including his 11-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, who were threatened and beaten while police tried to force them to confess that their father was the killer. Yameen was held for 34 days without any formal charges before he was eventually released. ''They began shocking my ears first, and then I was stripped and the prods were placed on my genitals,'' he said. ''They said things I cannot repeat about the Lord Jesus.'' A Copt, William Artori, has been convicted of the murder and is sentenced to death. The church and human rights activists say Artori was wrongly accused and that the only two witnesses against him were tortured into making statements that they have since recanted. The five Muslim men whom the Christians suspect of carrying out the murder - one of whom is reportedly a relative of a high-ranking officer in Egypt's intelligence agency - were briefly questioned and remain free. The Egyptian government has found no wrongdoing by police, according to press reports. Officials say claims of torture were exaggerated and that they have convicted the right man. Osama El Baz, a senior adviser to president Mubarak, adamantly denies that Christians face discrimination. In an interview in his elegant Cairo office, El Baz cited Egypt's ''proud history of religious tolerance.'' ''I confess that the Copts are claiming they are treated unfairly as a minority, but they are wrong,'' said El Baz. El Baz typifies to many Copts the Cairene elite whom they consider dismissive and largely ignorant of the difficulties they face as a religious minority, especially in the more lawless reaches of upper Egypt. El Baz believes the case has attracted interest because of an orchestrated effort by conservative American Christian groups and Washington lobbyists for the Israeli government to draw attention to the ''persecution'' of Christians in many Muslim countries and China. Leading the crusade has been Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former Reagan administration official. He, along with conservative Christians, successfully lobbied for passage last year of the US Freedom From Religious Persecution Act, which can carry economic sanctions for any country that violates it. As an American ally receiving $2 billion a year in aid, Egypt has been targeted by Washington activists as a potential violator of this law because of its treatment of Copts. This has infuriated the Egyptian government. Even prominent Copt leaders, such as Yusef Boutros-Ghali, Egypt's finance minister and the son of the former United Nations chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali, have been critical of the new American law. The younger Boutros-Ghali has said it could in fact intensify discrimination against Copts. Critics say law being used as wedge Secular Muslim critics, such as the director of Cairo's Al Ahram Strategic Center, Abdel Monem Said Ally, see the new American law as a shameless attempt to foster divisions between Christians and Muslims. ''These are American forces tied to Israel who are intent on demonizing Islam and hurting the interests of the Arab world,'' said El Baz. Nevertheless, a report by the respected Egyptian Organization for Human Rights found that the Al Kosheh case ''constituted grave violations of the rights, freedoms, and human dignity of the people.'' In an October interview, the group's secretary general, Hafez Abu Seda, qualified his findings: '' Police brutality is widespread against Muslims and Christians, even if this is an exceptionally dramatic case. Systematic police brutality...has been an issue for all of Egypt.'' Still Seda, who is Muslim, sharply criticized the government for doing too little to respond to the events in Al Kosheh. His criticisms of the government landed him in one of Egypt's worst prisons in the weeks after the Globe interviewed him. The government charged that his report was an ''act harmful to Egypt.'' The International Commission of Jurists has come to his defense, calling his detention ''an attempt to silence the voice of a major and internationally recognized human rights group.'' If the Egyptian government is in fact trying to silence those who speak out against police brutality, it is not working in Al Kosheh. On a Sunday afternoon last fall at the Church of the Angel, the Christian families of Al Kosheh gathered in the courtyard behind a huge steel gate. Some 400 angry parishioners clamored to tell a reporter their stories of torture, arbitrary arrest, and vicious attacks on their faith by police. ''The police want us to be afraid. They don't want anyone to know what is happening here,'' said Shawki Shenouda, 59, who added that he spent 10 days detained and tortured by police. As he warily eyed police officers stationed in front of the church, he whispered, ''But we're not afraid.'' |
