From Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, for CNN
October 10, 2011 -- Updated 0855 GMT (1655 HKT)
Cairo (CNN) -- Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said Monday that clashes hours earlier between army forces and pro-Coptic Christian protesters had "brought us back" to the tense, violent period at the onset of the recent revolution.
"Instead of going forward, we found ourselves scrambling for security," Sharaf said on state television in an early morning speech, noting that the incident had produced "martyrs, both civilian and from the military."
The bloodshed in Cairo occurred just over a week after the burning of a Coptic Christian church in southern Egypt. The burning prompted the Sunday protest demanding equality and protection of Coptic places of worship.
Dr. Sheriff Doss, the head of Egypt's chief association of Coptics, said 17 civilians died and 40 were injured.
An additional 12 army troops were killed and over 50 were injured, according to Lt. Col. Amr Imam, an army spokesman.
Meanwhile, health ministry spokesman Adel Al Dawi said late Sunday that there were a total of 23 people dead and more than 180 injured.
The protesters -- many of them Coptics or supportive of their cause -- said they had been marching peacefully toward the Egyptian state television building when the violence erupted.
"Suddenly, we were attacked by thugs carrying swords and clubs," one protester, Magdi Hanna, told CNN.
According to Alla Mahmoud, an interior ministry spokesman, some protesters began "firing live ammunition at the army."
"This is the first time protesters fired at the army," added Imam, the military spokesman. "There must be a hidden hand behind this. Egyptians don't do that."
Mohammed Abdel Jabaar, a spokesman for the Egyptian Rebels Coalition that claims to have been part of the movement that led to former President Hosni Mubarak's ouster, blamed "interference from outside" for spurring the violent chain of events.
The January 25 youth revolution coalition, which has been involved in various anti-government protests including Sunday's demonstration, denied that any participants shot at the Egyptian forces.
Samir Bolos, one of the demonstrators, added Sunday that "some unknown people may have fired at the army, but not us."
Witnesses said the army forces fired on the protesters near the state television headquarters. Meanwhile, military trucks could be seen burning on the street.
Hundreds of demonstrators also went to Tahrir Square, the hub of the revolutionary movement earlier this year, according to Bolos. He claimed military police stormed the square with sticks, while protesters fought back with rocks.
A curfew has been imposed for between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. Monday around Tahrir Square and central Cairo, said Imam.
Egypt's National Justice Committee also plans to hold an emergency meeting Monday involving representatives from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the al-Azhar mosque and the Coptic church to discuss the developments, prime ministry spokesman Mohamed Hegazy said. Those talks will be held in the prime minister's building.
Meanwhile, state TV reported Sunday night that Ahmed al-Tayyeb, a prominent Egyptian Muslim leader and grand imam of Al-Azhar, has been reaching out to Coptic church leaders in hopes of containing the crisis.
The protests and clashes follow the September 30 burning of the Mar Girgis church in Edfu, a city in Aswan governorate in southern Egypt.
That attack marked the latest of several examples in which Coptic Christians have been targeted in the North African nation.
About 9% of Egypt's 80 million residents are Coptic Christians. They base their theology on the teachings of the Apostle Mark, who introduced Christianity to Egypt, according to St. Takla Church in Alexandria, the capital of Coptic Christianity.
The religion split with other Christians in the 5th century over the definition of the divinity of Jesus Christ.
In Egypt, they have been targeted of late, including the New Year's Day bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria that left 23 people dead. There have also been sectarian clashes, including one in Cairo on May 7 in which at least 12 people were killed.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent bipartisan federal agency, earlier this year added Egypt to a list of countries named as the worst violators of religious freedom.
Sunday's incident also marks the latest skirmish between protesters and government forces.
An incident last Tuesday outside a military court in Nasr City resulted in the arrests of two protesters. Journalists covering the demonstration were assaulted, according to witnesses.
The same day, military police fired shots into the air to disperse about 400 pro-Coptic demonstrators who had attempted to stage a sit-in in front of the state television building after marching through the streets of Cairo.
http://edition.cnn.com/
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/09/world/meast/egypt-protest-clashes/index.html
Updated October 10, 2011 14:27:00
Source: The World Today | Duration: 7min 19sec
ELEANOR HALL: But we go first today to Egypt's capital Cairo which is in the midst of some of the worst violence since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak in February.
At least 24 people have been killed and more than 200 injured in clashes between Coptic Christians and security forces. And as we'll hear, many died from horrific injuries that suggest they were run over by armoured vehicles.
The Christians had been demonstrating about a recent attack on one of their churches by Islamic extremists.
The Egyptian cabinet has now called an emergency meeting for tomorrow, vowing the violence won't derail next month's parliamentary elections.
I spoke a short time ago to our Middle East correspondent Ben Knight who's in Cairo.
Ben, just update us on the situation there now. The government has imposed a curfew. Has that calmed the violence?
BEN KNIGHT: Well, yeah. The violence did calm down probably about an hour or so before that although as we were making our way back from the Coptic hospital towards the hotel, it was a pretty long trip because the roads were being blocked by sometimes by police other times in one instance by a very large mob of young men carrying homemade weapons.
So look, it is calm but it is certainly still very tense.
ELEANOR HALL: We're hearing reports of horrific injuries suggesting that some people were crushed by tanks. When you were at the hospital earlier, from what you saw, was that possible?
BEN KNIGHT: I would say it was very possible. We went inside the morgue at the hospital where I saw 17 bodies and I saw the injuries and without getting too graphic, the faces that were caved in, trauma to the body that was caused by not just a blunt instrument but a very large blunt instrument.
Now it is not my place to speculate but before we actually went down to see the protest for ourselves we were watching live pictures on Arab TV of military vehicles, police or army vehicles driving through the crowd of protesters.
ELEANOR HALL: Why do you think the army has cracked down so heavily on these protests?
BEN KNIGHT: Well, there is a bunch of conspiracy theories running around Cairo at the moment. First of all the army promised that it would maintain the security and the safety of Egyptians. You know, the safety and security of the country while it oversaw the transition to democracy. So any kind of protest is a challenge to that and it doesn't like them.
Now having said that there are a number of protests going on pretty much every day around this city but this was a protest by an extremely angry group of Coptic Christians for the attacks at their churches and that their members have come under.
So not only that but it was a march on the offices of state television. Now that's significant because this is seen as a real symbol of the old regime and also of the new one. State television is still functioning as state television and still operating very much in the mould that it was under Hosni Mubarak. It is still toes very much what the government tells it to.
I was watching state television as the protests were going on and it was talking about the number of security forces that had been killed - three at that time. Not a single mention of any injuries, not a single mention of any deaths among the protesters and the broadcasters blaming foreign provocateurs and all those sorts of things.
So the march on state television was significant and that is a building that the Mubarak regime and the army have been very, very careful to protect all the way through.
There aren't many buildings in Cairo that are still surrounded by machine guns but that's one of them.
ELEANOR HALL: Now you say that state television was reporting that three soldiers were killed. What have you been able to confirm about the casualties?
BEN KNIGHT: Nothing on the police or the military side but when I was at that hospital there were 17 bodies in that morgue and I don't know how many people were injured in the emergency room and other parts of that hospital.
Now I don't know if that is the extent of the casualties because while we were there the military came to the hospital and it was impossible for anyone to get in or out and there were clashes going on in the streets outside the hospital.
Now I should point out that this hospital is not near where the protests were. It is about four or five kilometres away, a different part of Cairo so the injured and the dead were taken there then the army went to, it went to the hospital.
So before that happened there were 17 bodies in that morgue that I saw myself. I don't know if there will be any more turning up.
ELEANOR HALL: How destabilising is this sort of thing for the government as it prepares Egypt for its first post Arab Spring parliamentary elections next month?
BEN KNIGHT: Well, look there are some people who would argue that this was in fact instigated by the government. As I said there are a lot of conspiracy theories running around and while I don't normally entertain those, that is something that is very much being discussed here. There is a view that the military does not want to pass on power. It is not serious about taking the country to elections and that this kind of instability is being ignited by the military itself so it has an excuse to crack down and to hang onto power and to push the elections out.
Now there is no evidence of that but that is something that a lot of people here are talking about. Now it has to be pointed out that this is not necessarily violence between Muslims and Christians in Cairo itself although that is not unheard of but this sort of thing tends to happen in the more rural areas but what the Christians have been saying is that it has been incited, that particularly the governor of the province of Aswan has been inciting this violence against them and the military council is doing nothing to stop it.
They want the governor removed, they want the military council to protect them and they say that they are not doing that and that's why you are seeing these very angry protests this week. One of the churches was burnt down last week and that's what sparked this.
ELEANOR HALL: Well, the Egyptian cabinet has called an emergency meeting. If what you're suggesting is that there is a lot of concern that it is the government in fact inciting this violence, what is that emergency meeting likely to achieve?
BEN KNIGHT: Well, I don't know but I think it will be very interesting to see what happens on the streets of Cairo tomorrow morning local time which is some hours from now. Are there going to be more Coptic Christians out there protesting on the streets? I wouldn't be surprised. There was a lot of anger at the hospital that I was at.
I think you are going to find a very strong security presence but also, it will be I think, don't be surprised to see Egyptian Muslims out there marching alongside the Christians as well because that is certainly what we saw earlier in the week at the other protest.
There are a lot of people in this country who don't like the sectarian violence, don't like the sectarian divisions that are sort of bubbling to the surface at the moment. Look, it is impossible to tell but I can tell you that there are going to be a lot more police and military police on the streets tomorrow than there were today.
ELEANOR HALL: Ben Knight in Cairo, thank you. That's the ABC's Middle East correspondent Ben Knight speaking at about 2am his time.
http://www.abc.net.au/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-10/cairo-clashes-claim-more-victims/3459396?section=world
Christians in Egypt are used to persecution, but this week's deadly attacks on a Copt demonstration threaten the country’s move from military rule to democracy.
By Con Coughlin
9:17PM BST 11 Oct 2011
In the 19 or so centuries since Christianity first took root in Egypt, the ritual of mourning has become an all-too-familiar experience for the majority of the country’s Coptic community. Egypt’s eight million Copts may claim to be their nation’s oldest surviving indigenous faith, but that has not spared them from prolonged periods of persecution, most recently at the hands of Islamist militants.
In many respects, the tone was set for nearly two millennia of oppression of the Copts, one of the world’s oldest Christian sects, by the martyrdom of St Mark the Evangelist, the disciple who established the Christian faith in Alexandria just a few years after the ascension of Christ.
The establishment of a new religion was bitterly resented by the city’s pagan population, who feared it would turn Alexandrians away from the worship of their traditional gods. They exacted their revenge on Easter Monday in 68 AD when Roman soldiers put a rope around St Mark’s neck and dragged him through the streets of Alexandria until he was dead.
These days the methods used to persecute Egypt’s Copts might not be so primitive, but their overall effect is no less barbaric. During the latest outbreak of Coptic-related violence in Cairo on Sunday night, several Copts are reported to have been crushed to death by the tracks of an armoured military vehicle that ploughed into a group of protesters as they sang hymns and held aloft the Cross.
The roots of the current wave of anti-Coptic violence are murky. At first it was assumed that Islamist militants, who have waged a vicious campaign of intimidation, sparked the unrest by burning down a church in the southern province of Aswan. This attack was the latest in a series of clashes between Muslims and Christians, which began when 21 worshippers were killed as they left mass at a Coptic church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve.
Thousands of Copts descended on the state TV building in Cairo on Sunday to protest against what many Christians regard as the growing strength of ultra-conservative Islamists since the overthrow of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in February. But the uncompromising response of the Egyptian authorities, which resulted in government forces firing live rounds at stone-throwing protesters, has prompted accusations that the army, which has interim control of the country, is deliberately fostering sectarian hatred in order to disguise its own plans to maintain control of the country.
Following the high-profile protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square earlier this year – during which Muslim and Coptic protesters joined forces to demand the overthrow of President Mubarak – the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces assumed responsibility for creating a modern, pluralistic democratic state following decades of authoritarian rule.
But the delays that have hindered plans to hold fresh parliamentary and presidential elections – they are now due to start at the end of next month – have led many to conclude that the military, which effectively ran the country during the Mubarak era, has no real interest in establishing democratic institutions. And what better way to abort the transition from military to democratic rule than to instigate nationwide sectarian violence?
As one Coptic protester commented in Cairo yesterday: “This is not about Muslim-Christian hatred. It is about the army trying to start a civil conflict for its own reasons, and we all know what those reasons are.”
Certainly the vitriolic language used by state-controlled broadcasters during coverage of the protests undermined the interim government’s claim to represent the interests of all Egyptians, Christians and Muslims alike.Newsreaders appealed for “honest Egyptians” to protect their soldiers against Christian “mobs”, while the Copts were denounced as “sons of dogs”, despite the fact many moderate Muslims, who want Egypt to be free of sectarian divisions, supported the protesters.
But then Egypt’s Copts are used to state-sponsored persecution. Tens of thousands of Copts fled the country in the 1950s after Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser nationalised Egypt’s private businesses, most of which were owned by Christians. Today it is estimated that two out of three Egyptians living in Britain are from Christian families. Egyptian communities in northern Europe, North America and Australia are also disproportionately Christian.
Nor is the persecution of religious minorities in the Middle East confined to Egypt’s Copts. One of the more alarming trends of recent years has been the violent persecution of Christians throughout the region.
In Iraq, for example, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 was supposed to herald a new era of sectarian harmony. Instead a wave of al-Qaeda-related attacks has had a devastating impact on Iraq’s once-thriving Christian community, which numbered around 1.4 million 10 years ago, but has now declined to around 400,000.
As in Egypt, the exodus was hastened by a series of grotesque attacks on Iraqi churches, the worst of which was the suicide bomb attack on the Church of our Salvation in Baghdad at the end of last year, which killed 58 people. To mark their contempt for the Christian faith, the al-Qaeda bombers blew themselves up on the altar, together with a child hostage.
Not all the persecution of Christian minorities is as violent as that experienced in Iraq, but the refusal of even pro-Western countries such as Saudi Arabia to tolerate any expression of Christianity has forced believers to practise their faith in private. There are an estimated one million Catholics in Saudi Arabia, most of them guest-workers from the Philippines, but they risk immediate expulsion if they are found observing their religion.
In Iran, meanwhile, the persecution of Christians that began with the 1979 Islamic revolution resulted in a Christian pastor being sentenced to death in the provincial town of Rasht earlier this month for refusing to renounce his faith. The ayatollahs’ refusal to countenance any other faith has also resulted in an upsurge in the persecution of the country’s Baha’i sect, the world’s youngest monotheistic faith.
Much of the blame for the deterioration in relations between Islam and Christianity in the region can be laid at the door of the growing legions of Islamist militants who refuse to acknowledge the other main monotheistic faiths. They point to the comment made by the Prophet himself on his deathbed, when he instructed his followers that only one faith – Islam – could be tolerated in Arabia.
This interpretation is disputed by moderate Muslims – such as those who joined the Copts for Sunday night’s protest in Cairo – who argue that Islam is a tolerant faith, which allows for peaceful co-existence with other religions.
Unfortunately for Christians in the Middle East, this is increasingly the minority view among the region’s ruling elites, which are no longer prepared to recognise basic rights of their citizens, such as freedom of worship.
Arguably the most extreme example of this intolerance has been seen in Sudan, where decades of mistreatment of non-Muslims by the conservative Islamic government in Khartoum resulted earlier this year in the secession of the country’s Christian population to form South Sudan. The new state, which is the size of France but has just 38 miles of paved roads, is the world’s poorest, but simply to be free of the tyranny of their former Islamic rulers is reward enough for the new country’s four million Christian inhabitants.
The break-up of neighbouring Sudan will serve as a warning to the military authorities in Cairo, who should be mindful of St Mark’s remark that “Every affliction tests our will”. The current wave of persecution directed at Egypt’s Coptic community constitutes not only a major test of the interim government’s ability to maintain order, but also of its desire to establish a government that represents the interests of all Egyptians, irrespective of their creed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8820550/Islams-war-on-the-Cross-Egypts-move-to-democracy-under-threat-after-latest-attack-on-Coptic-community.html
As violence raged across the Egyptian capital on Sunday night, the photograph of a woman clutching the hand of her dead fiance in a Cairo morgue was the most striking of many portraits of the perils facing the country's Christian minority.
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
6:48PM BST 11 Oct 2011
By on Tuesday, the internet and the social networking site Twitter were circulating before-and-after images of the couple, comparing the picture taken in the morgue with one taken on the day just two months ago when they announced their engagement.
"They were going to get married in two months' time," said Noov Senary, a friend of the couple who identified them to The Daily Telegraph as Michael Mosaad and Viviane Magdy, both Coptic Christians. "Michael died on Sunday. When I got to the morgue, Viviane was already there."
The army, which has run Egypt since the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak, is facing its worst crisis yet over its role in the violence, which began when Christians staged a march to the state television station in the centre of the city.
The station initially broadcast appeals for help for the army, saying it had come under attack from an armed mob of Christians who had killed three soldiers.
Almost immediately that story began to unravel, as it became clear that it was the Christians, protesting peacefully, who had first been attacked by a mob many accuse of being instigated by either the army or supporters of Mr Mubarak.
The army then over-reacted dramatically, shooting at protesters and driving army vehicles over them, scenes caught on video posted online. At least 25 people, mostly Christians, were killed.
On Tuesday, Hazem el-Beblawi, the finance minister and deputy prime minister, resigned in protest at what had happened. The army said it would use the "full weight of the law" against trouble-makers without responding to criticism of its own role.
The violence has outraged the country's Coptic minority. Its head, Pope Shenouda, issued a rare statement condemning the government, while after a midnight funeral attended by 20,000 people mourners marched to Tahrir Square with the body of Mina Danial, an activist who had taken part in the anti-Mubarak protests earlier this year.
He had told friends that he wanted to be buried on the square, the most redolent single symbol of the "Arab Spring".
Mr Mosaad and Miss Magdy were researchers on a project run by the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights monitoring media coverage of next month's parliamentary elections.
Miss Senary, who works for the same organisation, said she and Mr Mosaad were taking part in the march on Sunday, which was being staged in protest at the burning of a new church in southern Egypt.
"I was told on my phone by my manager that Michael had been killed," she said. "I went to the hospital and saw Viviane there." Both he and Mr Danial had been hit by an army patrol vehicle.
Other witnesses said that as the photographers took her picture, Miss Magdy, weeping in a room that held the bodies of five other dead Christians, refused to leave. Yesterday she posted an entry on one of several Facebook pages dedicated to the memories of Mr Danial and her fiance.
"They had known each other for a long time, but they were still so young," Miss Senary said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8820786/Egypt-army-faces-crisis-over-killing-of-Christian-protesters-as-deputy-prime-minister-resigns-in-protest.html
