The Free World has an obligation to protect Egypt's
Christian Community and
the Middle East minorities
By:
*Elias Bejjani
April 15/2006
On behalf of The Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF), I strongly condemns the
barbaric, savage and fundamentalist attacks that targeted today three Egyptian
Coptic churches in the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria. The
assailants, three fanatic Muslim extremists who were equipped with swords and
knives, attacked the Christian civil and peaceful parishioners during their
celebration of the Good Friday Masses on Friday. One parishioner was killed and
twenty others were seriously injured. Two of them are in hospital on the verge
of death.
This vicious assault reaches the realm of a series of similar ongoing fanatic
attacks against Egyptian Christians and their churches unveils, without a shred
of doubt, the shameful biased stances and the blind-eye attitude adopted by the
Egyptian authorities against Egypt's fifteen million Christians.
Today's crime in fact uncovers Egypt's harsh, blunt and ongoing anti-Christian
policies, laws and practices that openly infringe on Christian basic human
rights, properties, and freedom of beliefs and expression.
The Egyptian Christian human rights status is extremely traumatizing and
worrisome as well as their physical safety. The same humiliating and persecutory
status is inflicted on the minorities in the majority of the Middle East
countries in general and in the so-called Arabic world in particular (Egypt,
Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, Libya etc). The persecution against Christians and other
minorities in these counties is an official and formal practice legitimized by
biased laws and regulations.
This phenomenon of anti-human rights practices is widely encouraged, nurtured
and cultivated through education of hatred, fundamentalism, rejection of the
other and ignorance. What is unfortunate, pitiful and sad is that the
governments of the above mentioned countries adopt such practices while the free
world keeps a blind eye or in the best scenario limits its condemnation to mere
rhetoric levels.
Our Canadian Lebanese Community and Lebanese members who support the Human Rights Federation
objectives and mission denounce the Alexandria's barbaric
assaults and call on the free world countries, the United Nations, the Vatican
and on all the Human Rights organizations to be loud in their public stances of
condemnation and to develop a world wide plan and strategy to protect the Middle
East Christians as well as all other minorities.
Elias Bejjani
*Human Rights activist, journalist & political commentator.
*Spokesman for the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF)
*Media Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC)
E.Mail phoenicia@hotmail.com
Background
April 14, 2006 UPI -CAIRO -- Muslim extremists posing as beggars attacked three
churches in north Egypt on Good Friday, killing one worshipper and injuring 16
others. A security source told United Press International that the incident
occurred in the morning as worshippers attended mass in the churches of Saint
Georges, the Two Saints and Abu Keer in the city of Alexandria on the
Mediterranean Sea. The source said the three attackers wearing rugged clothes
used swords and knives in their attacks, before managing to flee. Police imposed
a cordon around the churches and began a thorough search for the attackers.
Hundreds of policemen were deployed in Christian-inhabited areas to prevent any
possible retaliation that could lead to sectarian violence. Friday's incident is
the second piece of sectarian violence to rock Alexandria in less than a year.
Last October, sectarian clashes erupted when thousands of Muslims besieged the
church of Saint Georges following rumors about the distribution of video tapes
of a play filmed in the church in 2002 which contained slandering of Islam. A
nun was killed and parts of the church were burned. Muslims constitute the
overwhelming majority in Egypt, which also has a minority Christian Copt
community of no more than 10 percent of the population