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| Photo Credit: L'Indro |
Dear friends,
This post was written by my teaching assistant. His name is John Ehab. He is a Copt, a journalist, an activist, and a masters student at AUC. It was published in an Italian newspaper. If you read Italian, check it out here. Un Esercito Contro I Copti, L'Indro.
Here it is in English.
After
a deadly evening in Cairo Sunday night, families gathered to bid
farewell to the 24 victims in a crowded mass funeral. The ceremony took
place in Cairo’s central Coptic Cathedral in the presence of thousands
of family members, supporters, activists and politicians. The killings
took place after hundreds of Copts marched to protest the destruction of
a church early last week in Aswan, which has not been resolved by the
state.
Eyewitness accounts say that
they were showered with live ammunition by members of the Egyptian armed
forces. Witnesses added that protestors were literally bulldozed by
Armored Personnel Carriers(APC), leaving behind a number of casualties.
The Coptic Church synod, the highest council of the Coptic Church in
Egypt, issued a statement that was read at the funeral assuring that
violence had come from the side of the Armed Forces, not from the Copts.
“We confirm that violence, with all its forms, was not used (by the
protestors).” The statement also expressed that “Copts feel that the
problems are reoccurring continuously without punishing the
perpetrators”. The church called for three days of fasting and prayer to
show that, for the Christians in Egypt, their only hope is to turn to
God.
Many analysts have pointed out
that the church’s statement reflects a lack of hope in the state. “You
can read between the lines that the church no longer trusts those who
run the state in Egypt, whether from the Security Council of Armed
Forces , or the Cabinet,” said Ahmed Zaki Osman, a reporter familiar
with Coptic issues. “The Christians simply have no hope in the state to
bring them their rights anymore.”
One of those who attended the
funeral, Zachariah Adly, who had also participated in the march the
night before described his experiences to L’indro. Adly, a truck driver,
said that the march had started in the primarily Christian area of
Shobra, and continued several kilometers to the area of the state run
TV, known as Maspiro in central Cairo.
“On the way people started
stoning us from a bridge, until we reached the street leading toward the
state TV building. Armed forces started shooting directly in the air
and then began aiming at us. A few minutes after we saw their tanks
coming towards us quickly to disperse the crowd.” Adly had to jump over a car onto the sidewalk to keep from being run over by the rushing vehicles.
Adly pointed out that the
violence had come from the armed military forces, rather than civilians
or even the security police. “In the same spot there were tens of riot
police standing by and there were no clashes with them.”
That afternoon state TV, the
mouthpiece of the Egyptian army, had announced that the army was calling
for “honest citizens” to go to the streets to help protect security
forces from the Christian protestors.
Witnesses who were at the
Coptic hospital to donate blood for the victims told L’indro that thugs
surrounded the hospital and started attacking the families of the
victims late at night.
Initially, the state-run TV
reported that 3 soldiers had been killed by Copts during the riots,
without mentioning any civilian deaths. However, the SCAF never made an
announcement to confirm or deny this report. Many activists began to
challenge this claim.
Doctor Aida Seif El-Dawla
explained to L’indro, “even the state-run media was unable to fabricate
any photograph of Copts carrying weapons as they have done in the past.”
She explained that usually if any member of the army died, the
state-run news would air extensive coverage including details about him
and his family in order to gain the sympathy of the public. In this case
there was none of that.
Not only the national media,
but other sources including Al-Jazira issued reports accusing “the
Coptic youth” of instigating the violence. However, reports on the ground
show otherwise. According to Seif El-Dawla, the founder of Al-Nadim
Center for the rehabilitation of victims of torture, “it is very clear
that the army is responsible. They are the ones that carry arms, and
they are responsible for this massacre. The army took advantage of
widespread prejudice toward the Copts to defend their behavior.”
The Coptic problem is one of
the most vulnerable issues that has the potential to divide Egyptians,
especially with the recent increase in Islamic fundamentalism.
Al-Nadim was among the
independent human rights organizations in attendance at the Prosecutor
General’s autopsy of the victims. Doctor Magda Adly, manager of the
Al-Nadim Center, attended 7 out of 17 of the autopsies that took place
at the Coptic Hospital in central Cairo. Four other bodies were buried
earlier in the day without autopsies, and another five were reported to
be in other hospitals.
Two of the seven, Adly reports, died by bullets, while the other five had been crushed by military vehicles with multiple fractions throughout their bodies. This confirms what can be seen in videos posted on YouTube of the APCs rushing protestors.
Two of the seven, Adly reports, died by bullets, while the other five had been crushed by military vehicles with multiple fractions throughout their bodies. This confirms what can be seen in videos posted on YouTube of the APCs rushing protestors.
The decision to perform the
autopsies came 20 hours after the deaths, a procedure which is normally
done as soon as possible to optimize the results. The former director of
the forensic medical unit was fired back in March due to similar delays
in investigating the deaths of protestors from the January 25 revolution.
“Field Marshal Tantawi should
face trial like Mubarak,” Zachariah Adly believes. “Demonstrators have
torched a police station and stormed the Israeli embassy, and no one
killed them like what happened with us.”
