[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 193 (Thursday, December 15, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2272-E2273]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     COPTIC CHRISTIANS UNDER ATTACK

                                 ______
                                 

                              HON. TED POE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, December 15, 2011

  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, Christians in Egypt are under attack. 
The revolution may have overthrown a longtime dictator, but it has not 
freed Christians there from decades of persecution. In fact, it may 
have made matters worse.
  Christians in Egypt are a deeply rooted minority of about 10 million 
in a largely Muslim society of 81 million. Prior to the revolution, 
they had a hard time. Discrimination was not an official policy of the 
Mubarak regime--he didn't want to lose his aid dollars the U.S. was 
giving him--but he sure made it hard on Christians. When Christians 
wanted to build a new church or renovate their own, they had to get a 
permit. That's fine, except for the fact that the Mubarak government 
intentionally delayed the permitting process. Churches would have to 
wait years for permits--some churches are still waiting. Mubarak 
pretended to fix this problem when he handed permitting control over to 
the 28 regional governors, but wait times for a permit didn't get any 
better.
  They were also discriminated against when it came to appointments to 
high-level government and military posts. There were only a handful of 
Christians in the upper ranks of the security services and armed 
forces. There was one Christian governor out of 28, one elected Member 
of Parliament out of 454 seats, no known university presidents or 
deans, and very few legislators or judges. According to the State 
Department, public university training programs for Arabic-language 
teachers exclude non-Muslims because the curriculum involves the study 
of the Koran.
  Other discrimination was official for everyone to see. Under Egyptian 
law, Muslim men can marry Christian women but Muslim women are 
prohibited from marrying Christian men.
  And sometimes discrimination progressed to outright violence against 
Christians. In September 2010, in the Omraneya district of Cairo, 
Egyptian authorities reportedly used excessive force and live 
ammunition on peaceful demonstrators protesting the government's 
continued refusal to approve a license to build a local church 
extension. Two people, including a teenager, were killed, and dozens 
were wounded. No one has been brought to justice.
  When the government was using excessive force, it was radical 
Islamists. On January 1, 2011, a bomb detonated in front of a Coptic 
church, Al Qiddissin (Two Saints), in Alexandria, where a New Year's 
prayer service was being held. At least 23 Christians were killed and 
nearly 100 wounded in the worst sectarian attack on Christians in Egypt 
in more than a decade. On January 23, then-Interior Minister Habib El-
Adly asserted that conclusive evidence pointed to a militant group, 
Army of Islam, as responsible for the attack.
  On January 11, 2011, an off-duty police officer opened fire in a 
train in Minya province, killing one Christian and injuring five 
others. The shooter, a Muslim, was charged with murder and will be 
tried in a state security court. The Ministry of Interior denied the 
shooting was sectarian.
  When the revolution came, thousands of Christians fueled the 
protests, yearning for a new government that would respect the 
religious beliefs of its own people. But just a few weeks after the 
revolution, it became clear that Christians were actually in more 
danger.
  During the revolution, a bunch of bad guys escaped prison. To protect 
themselves, monks at the Anba Bishoy monastery north of Cairo built a 
security wall. Well, the Egyptian military didn't like that very much, 
so in late February they tore down the wall with machine guns and 
bulldozers. You can see video online of monks running for cover as the 
military is opening fire with heavy machinery. A monk and six church 
workers were injured in the process.
  In February the governor of el-Minya, demolished 10 Coptic homes 
because the owners of those homes refused to contribute one-fifth of 
their property to build a mosque.
  In early March in Cairo, 13 people were killed and nearly 150 wounded 
in clashes that erupted during large-scale demonstrations by Christians 
protesting the destruction of a church in the provincial town of Sol. 
The demonstrators called for the rebuilding of the church, punishment 
of perpetrators, and better treatment by Egyptian authorities. Some of 
the demonstrations reportedly blocked major highways. According to some 
accounts, the Egyptian military stood by for as long as four hours 
without intervening in the clashes.
  On March 20, in Qena, Salafists, including an off-duty policeman, 
accused a Copt named Ayman Mitri of renting an apartment to a 
prostitute, cut off one of his ears and mutilated his other ear. The 
attackers then informed the police that they had carried out the 
punishment required by Islamic law. As was usual under Mubarak, the 
police refrained from pressing charges and called for a 
``reconciliation'' meeting between the religious communities. The 
Christian man agreed to compensation during the reconciliation session 
instead of pursuing criminal charges because the extremists allegedly 
threatened his family.
  Also as under Mubarak, the authorities' refusal to punish attacks on 
Christians has led to more attacks. On March 23, Salafists surrounded 
St. George's church in Beni Ahmad and successfully demanded that a 
church expansion approved by the government be stopped. On March 27, 
they blockaded St. Mary's church in Giza, saying it did not have a 
permit. After yet another ``reconciliation'' meeting between Copts and 
Muslims, services at the church were forbidden until it acquired a new 
permit.

  On March 28, Salafists attacked a liquor store in Kasr El-Bassil 
owned by a Copt, destroyed other stores, and demanded that coffee shops 
be closed. One villager was killed and eight others injured. On April 
5, hundreds occupied St. John the Beloved church in Kamadeer, stopping 
repairs after heavy rain, and told Copts that they were not allowed to 
pray there anymore. After yet another ``reconciliation,'' Copts were 
told to build a church 200 meters away, one without a dome, cross, 
bell, or any other external feature marking it as a church.
  Beginning on April 15, over 10,000 demonstrators, mostly Salafists, 
protested in the southern province of Qena against the appointment of a 
new governor, Emad Mikhail, who is a Christian (the previous governor, 
Magdy Ayoub, was also Christian). Protesters blocked main roads, 
stopped buses to separate men and women passengers, and disrupted the 
main rail route in Upper Egypt for eight days. There were threats to 
bar Mikhail from the province and even to kill him. Tensions ran so 
high that local Christians stayed inside and couldn't celebrate Palm 
Sunday. The armed forces refused to intervene, and, although Egypt's 
cabinet initially rejected calls for the governor's resignation, on 
April 25, Prime Minister Essam Sheraf surrendered and said he would 
``freeze'' the appointment for three months.
  On April 28, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom 
for the first time recommended to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 
that Egypt be labeled a ``Country of Particular Concern (CPC).'' This 
designation refers, as commission chair Leonard Leo noted, to ``the 
world's worst religious freedom violators and human rights abusers.''
  The abuse continues, with the worst violence against Christians in 
decades.
  On October 9 thousands of peaceful demonstrators marched in downtown 
Cairo to protest the attack of a Coptic Christian church and called for 
an end to the systematic discrimination against Copts by the Egyptian 
authorities. At some point in the protest, violent clashes erupted 
between the protesters and the Egyptian military forces. Video shows 
Egyptian military tanks speeding through crowds and running over 
protesters. At one point, the Egyptian State Television aired a message 
calling on ``honorable citizens'' to

[[Page E2273]]

take to the streets to protect the Egyptian army from ``the Coptic 
protesters.'' The call was answered by Islamists who came in to join 
the violence against the Christians. In what is now known as the 
``Maspero Massacre,'' over 25 people were killed and 300 injured. This 
marked the first time that the military--not the state police or 
radical Islamist groups--used violence against Christians.
  Since the revolution, 5 churches have been attacked. The most 
disturbing part of these attacks is that they all happened in broad 
daylight, with the military standing by and watching. Those 
perpetrators who are clearly identified by video footage of the attacks 
have still not been arrested.
  Former state security officials who tortured Christians have not been 
brought to justice either. One woman has burn marks on her arms and on 
her inner thighs from state security officials that wanted to know who 
the priest was who baptized her and what church she was baptized in. 
She wouldn't give his name, so the torture went on for three days. She 
knows the names of her abusers because they made sure they introduced 
themselves before they started the torture. But have they been tried? 
No.
  Another man was tortured by state security because he converted from 
Islam to Christianity. He described how they removed his clothing, tied 
him down and put a metal chair between his legs and tied wires around 
his genitals and to his toes and then turned on the electricity. He 
knows the exact location of where he was tortured and the name of the 
person who tortured him, but of course he has not been brought to 
justice.
  There is one more disturbing story to tell and that has to do with 
the kidnapping, rape, and forced marriage of Christian women to Muslim 
men. In testimony before the Helsinki Commission, it was described like 
this.
  Christian girls are lured to an isolated place, drugged and 
kidnapped. Often, they are raped. They are then forced to marry their 
rapist and forbidden from returning to their families. Here is one 
story from Christian Solidarity International and the Coptic Foundation 
for Human Rights' report.
  R. was abducted October 11, 2005. She had lived in the same 
neighborhood all of her life and knew all the neighbors. She was 
especially good friends with the daughter of a neighboring Muslim 
family, Sarah. They practically grew up together and were like sisters, 
inseparable. Sarah had an admirer named Wali, a classmate, who called 
her all the time. Wali began to call for Sarah on R.'s phone. His calls 
became so frequent that finally R. told Wali to stop calling her. He 
became very angry. ``You will regret telling me not to call you,'' he 
said in a threatening voice. She stopped seeing Sara after that. This 
happened in 2004.
  After a year and a half, she received a call from Wali's telephone 
number. The voice was different and polite. A young man introduced 
himself as Amir, and said that he was an admirer of hers. He also knew 
everything about her. He wanted to meet her in a church. When R. said 
that she did not usually meet people she did not know, he replied that 
he knew she was on her way to church and that he would wait for her 
outside. There, he introduced himself and asked R.'s mother for her 
hand in marriage. The mother replied that it was not so simple. Amir 
went to their flat the next day to speak to R.'s father. Amir told R.'s 
father that he wanted nothing from the family except for their 
daughter's hand in marriage. He had seen her in the street and 
instantly felt that she would be a perfect wife for him.

  R.'s father did not want them to date until he met the boy's parents. 
Amir kept giving excuses: his mother was sick and his father was out of 
town. Finally, he told them that his father died. R.'s parents wanted 
to go as a family to pay respects but Amir said that this would not be 
necessary since his home was far away.
  Later that week, Amir's sister contacted them and came to meet R. R. 
was engaged and ready to be married. She said she was not deeply in 
love, but that Amir seemed like a decent person. Amir's sister 
Christina asked R to go shopping with them. R.'s mother initially 
opposed the idea but finally relented when the girls told her they 
would not go far.
  Christina offered to find a taxi and returned saying she had found 
one quickly. In retrospect, R. says that this was odd since they lived 
in a neighborhood in which it was usually difficult to find taxis.
  Christina gave directions to the taxi driver to a close- by shopping 
area. It was a warm day and Christina offered R. some juice. R. 
declined but Christina insisted and drank it, remembering that the 
bottle was already opened. By the time she finished her juice, she felt 
quite dizzy. The taxi took a detour onto a dirt road and stopped in an 
isolated area. The driver said that there was something wrong with the 
car and he needed to check. Christina got out as well.
  A van pulled up full of people and some came over to get her. Amir 
was one of them.
  R. could not talk, even though she wanted to ask many questions. They 
began to beat her and she fainted.
  When she woke up, she was in bed surrounded by many different strange 
men. ``Amir'' told her that he was in reality Wali, whom she had 
dismissed so abruptly in the past and he reminded her of his threat. He 
then announced that she was going to be married to a Muslim man.
  She wanted to get out of the room but a woman blocked the door. She 
was locked in the room without her purse or her phone. This was the 
period of Ramadan, when under Islamic Law it is not possible to marry. 
Amir insisted on a conversion immediately. She was taken to the 
religious authorities where five other girls were waiting. All of them 
were Christians preparing to marry Muslims.
  The papers were signed and the conversion was complete. R. was given 
the Muslim name of Fatimah. She refused to say the proclamation of 
faith and was beaten.
  She was married to another man she had never met, Mahmoud. When she 
refused to have sex with him, the family held her down while he raped 
her. She began bleeding profusely.
  She stayed with him for 9 months and was beaten every day,The Coptic 
cross which was tattooed on her wrist was burned off with acid and she 
still has scars. R. was forced to cover herself completely when she 
left her home and was called Fatima by the family members. Her veil was 
black.
  R. pretended to observe the Muslim rituals and prayers, but it was 
just a pretense for her. As a result of the rape and constant beatings, 
she became physically ill. When her husband went to work, he locked her 
in the house, alone, without a phone. She was never allowed to leave by 
herself. On the day of her escape, she told her in-laws that she was 
going to pray in the mosque but instead she called her mother and said 
she wanted to come home. She took a taxi to her parents' house. She is 
unable to have children as a result of the rape.
  The practice is horrible and nothing is done about it. One parish 
father testifies that he has had over 50 cases of forced conversions of 
Coptic women in one year alone in his congregation. Another bishop says 
he has 45 women who were abducted and are now living in his safe house.
  The Egypiian government has so far failed to protect Coptic Orthodox 
Christians. All we're talking about here is allowing people to practice 
what they believe. The government should not be inciting violence 
against them or running them over with tanks. It should be going after 
those that burn their places of worship or kidnap, rape, and torture 
them. Christians need to feel like the government has their back, not 
that it is out to get them. There cannot be unity and reconciliation 
until people feel like there is some sort of equality in society. There 
has to be consequences for persecution. This Administration needs to 
make the protecting of religious minorities a major point whenever it 
talks to its counterparts in the Egyptian government. They need to be 
clear that there will be consequences for them too if nothing changes. 
Our aid is not endless and it is not free. We should not support 
tyrants and dictators who oppress their own people. Egypt must uphold 
fundamental human rights, including protecting Christians.
  And that's just the way it is.

                          ____________________