[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3746]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANS KILLED

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, this week, 13 Coptic Christians in Egypt were 
killed in clashes with Muslims. Recently, a church in the town of Sol 
was burned to the ground, leading many Christians to flee the village 
in fear of their lives. This comes only 2 months after 24 Christians 
were killed in a church bombing.
  For thousands of years, Coptic Christians have lived and worshiped in 
Egypt, but some extremists want to use the chaos in the country today 
to drive them out of their homes and places of worship.
  Egypt is in the process of developing a democratic government, one in 
which all the Egyptian people will have a say. These attacks undermine 
freedom and democracy. Democracy without protection of minority rights 
is mob rule and not true freedom.
  I invite all my colleagues to join me on a letter to the commander in 
chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces calling on him to protect the 
Egyptian citizens during this critical period in his nation. We are 
glad to see the Egyptian people building a better government, and we 
must remind them that fundamental respect for human rights must be 
protected.

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