II. Sectarian Tension and Violence

8. On the evening of 3 October 2008, sectarian violence erupted in the village of al-Tayiba, located in the Samalut district of Minya. The violence left one Christian dead and four people injured (among them one Muslim), and homes, lands, and property were torched and vandalized.

Information collected by EIPR researchers indicates that the incident began when a fight broke out between a Muslim and Christian resident of the Christian-majority village. It is likely that the dispute was sparked when a Muslim youth harassed a Christian girl, after which the girl’s brother intervened to defend her. This is the story supported by the police and the prosecutor’s office. Information also indicates that the harassment took place amid existing sectarian tensions in the village as a result of a local Copt’s intention to sell his home in a predominantly Coptic quarter to a Muslim, to which his Coptic neighbors object.

As the dispute evolved, several Muslims broke into the home of the Christian whose sister was harassed. Most of the contents of his home, as well as his adjacent carpentry workshop and a wood storehouse, were stolen or vandalized, and both were set on fire. Following this assault, a large number of Copts assembled and headed toward the burning house in the eastern part of the village. Muslims began firing live ammunition at them to disperse them and the Copts responded by throwing stones at Muslim homes. Eyewitnesses said that the Copts were not armed, and a police source said that investigations had turned up no evidence that the Copts had used firearms during the events in question.

Coptic eyewitnesses said that they called security forces, which came to the village, but were unable to enter the scene of the events until some two hours had passed because of ongoing heavy gunfire. As soon as the security forces arrived, they threw teargas grenades to disperse the assembled Copts. One eyewitness said that a police officer beat those assembled with a club in order to disperse them and send them to their homes. This prompted Coptic youths to run from the teargas and police forces to the western part of the village, home to several Muslims. Testimonies obtained by EIPR researchers indicate that some Coptic youths, motivated by revenge, attempted to break into the home of a Muslim in the village, leading a neighbor to randomly open fire. Yeshua Gamal Nashed was shot in the face and died shortly thereafter.

Medical sources at the Samalut General Hospital, located 12 km from al-Tayiba, where the injured were taken for treatment, said that Yeshua Gamal, 25, reached the hospital near death and died about 15 minutes later as a result of a gunshot to the forehead. The hospital also admitted three Copts from the village—Michael Samuel, Philip Ramzi, and Ibram Musa—who were injured by BB pellets, which, when fired at close range, can cause deep tear wounds. They were released from the hospital after treatment. The fourth wounded man, Mahmoud Subhi, reached the Samalut hospital with a head injury, sustained by a blow to the head with a club during the events. He was transferred to the Minya University Hospital. After the incident, the EIPR received reports that crops owned by village Copts were intentionally burned and destroyed on Sunday night, 5 October 2008.

Village residents say that after the events, the police made random arrests of nearly 40 Muslim and Coptic youths, who were released in groups in the following days. The police also arrested Gamal Selim Abd el-Hakim, who was accused of murder by the family of Yeshua Gamal. On 28 December 2008, a Samalut court released him on bail pending a trial on charges of murder. Relatives of the defendant, however, told EIPR researchers that after the prosecutor’s office released him, he was placed under administrative detention using the Emergency Law and was taken to the Liman Abu Za'bal facility.

9. On 6 October 2008, a Christian youth in the Amiriya area of Cairo used an automatic weapon to open fire on his sister’s family. His sister had converted to Islam two years earlier, married a Muslim man, and had a ten-month-old daughter. The Muslim husband died in the assault and the child was injured; the sister of the killer was injured in her left arm, which was later amputated. The police arrested the youth and his uncle, who helped him commit the crime. Their trial before a criminal court is expected to begin in February 2009. A heavy security presence was visible in the Amiriya area for nearly a month after the assault, in anticipation of revenge attacks against Copts.

10. The village of Sila al-Gharbiya, located in the Matay district of Minya, was the site of mutual attacks between Muslims and Christians on 14 October 2008, which left one Muslim and three Christians, including a nine-year-old child, injured. An eyewitness in the village told EIPR researchers that a dispute erupted between a Christian liquor store owner and a Muslim customer, which ultimately led to several Muslims and Christians throwing stones from the roofs of houses. After the incident, the police arrested some 25 residents of the village, all of whom were released following a traditional reconciliation between the parties to the dispute.

11. On 19 October 2008, five Copts assaulted members of a Muslim family in the district of Sidi Salem in the Kafr al-Sheikh governorate after rumors spread that a Coptic girl from their family had run away with a member of the Muslim family. The level of sectarian tension increased after the fight, when it was rumored that a Muslim youth had disappeared and that Copts were responsible for it. The police found the Muslim youth and arrested four Copts and two Muslims, all of whom were released a few days later. A church source in the area told EIPR researchers that the girl had converted to Islam and married a Muslim. He added that State Security officers banished the five Copts from the village and prohibited them from returning until a traditional reconciliation session was held between the two families. EIPR researchers learned that the five returned to the village during the first week of January 2009.

12. On 26 October 2008, there was violence between Muslims and Copts in the predominantly Christian village of Kom al-Mahras in the Abu Qurqas district of Minya. The violence left six people injured on both sides, according to statements made by the director of the al-Fikriya District Hospital to EIPR researchers. Information indicates that a fight broke out between a Muslim and Christian, both teenagers, after which dozens of Muslims and Christians gathered and fought with clubs and rocks, leading to the aforementioned injuries and damage to a storehouse owned by a Copt. When security forces arrived on the scene, they detained five Muslims and three Christians. The Abu Qurqas prosecutor’s office ordered their release three days after the parties held a traditional reconciliation.

A source who resides in the village (and asked to remain anonymous) told EIPR researchers that the clashes took place amid heightened tensions between Muslims and Christians after the Mar Mina church in the village obtained a renovation permit and work began on bathrooms and a service center for the church.

13. On 5 November 2008, several Copts who live in Mit Nama in the Shubra al-Kheima area of the Qalyoubiya governorate staged a protest in front of the Orthodox Patriarchate in Abbasiya after a Muslim, at dawn that same morning, appropriated a plot of land in the village that belongs to the Shubra al-Kheima archbishopric and built a fence around it. A church source in the area told EIPR researchers that the church had bought the plot of land on 9 January 2002, and completed the official measures needed to build a service center on it. There is no church in the village to serve the more than 500 Christian families, and the nearest church is four km away. The source said that State Security had refused to give Copts a permit for the establishment of the building on three separate occasions, the last on 27 October 2008, citing “security concerns.” The source said that the same person who appropriated the land demolished the fence on 6 November 2008, and returned the land to the church after the intervention of several official and security agencies. Nevertheless, the problem of the building permit remains unresolved.

14. On 23 November 2008, sectarian tensions in the Ain Shams area of Cairo led to clashes between a group of Muslims and security forces and an attack on a building used by Christians in the area for prayer.

A priest in the area told EIPR researchers that the Coptic Church had bought the building about six years ago and transformed it from an underwear factory to a service center; he said that the church intended to hold prayers inside the building for the first time the day of the attack. Coptic eyewitnesses said that that morning several Muslims from the area had hung loudspeakers on the opposite building and broadcast Qur'anic verses. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the loudspeakers were later used to call Muslims to a demonstration to protest the Copts’ intention to turn the building into a church. By evening time, hundreds of area Muslims had gathered outside the church and started chanting anti-Coptic slogans, and some threw stones at the building, breaking several windows. Press reports said that 13 Copts inside the church were injured by the stone throwing. Eyewitnesses added that security forces on the scene decided to intervene to disperse those assembled about four hours after they began to congregate. Demonstrators clashed with security forces and, according to press reports, several soldiers were injured. The clashes continued until midnight, when the police managed to help the Copts surrounded in the building to leave.

The police filed a report about the incident (no. 3196/2008 Matariya misdemeanors) and arrested five Muslims and three Copts on charges of unlawful assembly, disturbing the peace, damaging two cars, and injuring police personnel. All the detainees were released pending investigations on 27 November 2008. After the events, church officials said that they had stopped using the building for any purpose, fearing further attacks.

15. Copts in the Izbat al-Nakhl area of Ain Shams in Cairo were assaulted on the evening of 23 November 2008, when a Muslim man on a motorcycle attacked a group of Copts who were leaving a wedding at a church. According to a testimony given to EIPR researchers by one Copt, the incident evolved into a fight with a group of Muslims armed with knives. At least four Copts were injured, and there are indications that five or six others sustained light wounds that they did not report to the police. Two cars owned by Copts were also damaged. The EIPR learned that the Matariya police station filed a police report about the incident (no. 30195/2008) and arrested three Muslims and four Copts and referred them to the prosecutor’s office, which released them within a week.

16. On 9 December 2008, a bus belonging to a Cairo church was pelted with stones on the road leading to the All Saints’ Monastery in al-Tud, located in Luxor. Father Sarabamun al-Shayib, an official at the monastery, told EIPR researchers that the bus, owned by the Mar Girgis Church in Cairo, was on its way to the monastery when several “Muslim boys and youths” threw stones at it, breaking some windows on the bus and injuring a child among the passengers. He said that he had complained to security several times regarding similar assaults on visitors and priests with the monastery by residents of adjacent villages. He added that following the most recent attack Luxor security forces had secured the road leading to the monastery.

17. On the evening of 10 December 2008, hundreds of Muslims from the village of Kafr Farag Girgis, located in the Minya al-Qamh district of Sharqiya, gathered to protest village Copts conducting prayers for the first time inside a new service center. A church source told EIPR researchers that security intervened to disperse the crowd and closed the four-story building, sitting on a 200-meter plot of land, while also posting six guards to ensure that it remained closed. The source said that village Copts, who number 1,500, have been praying in a service center no bigger than 100 meters for decades and decided to establish another building. Since 1996 they have tried and failed to obtain a permit to renovate and expand the old structure, built in 1936, which has become in dilapidated conditions due to time and the effects of groundwater.

18. In mid-December 2008, the governorate of Fayoum and the Fayoum archbishopric dispensed compensation of LE100,000 (with equal contributions from both parties) to Copts harmed in the sectarian attacks that took place six months ago in the village of al-Nazla, located in the Youssef al-Siddiq district of Fayoum. On 20 June 2008, hundreds of Muslims in the village had attacked Coptic property and homes following rumors that the wife of a village Muslim, who had converted from Christianity to Islam two years earlier, had been kidnapped with her ten-month-old son by her Christian family in Cairo. During the ensuing attacks, several stores owned by village Copts were damaged, their contents stolen or destroyed; several homes were raided and looted; some homes and stores were torched; a car was smashed; the facade of the village church was damaged by stone-throwing; and the car of the church priest was vandalized (see paragraph 12 of the Second Quarterly Report, 2008).

Some of the victims told EIPR researchers that the total compensation covers no more than one-fourth the value of the losses. One victim added that the sum offered to him was so paltry he refused to take it. Nevertheless, the victims said that the value of the compensation lies in its symbolic effect, not its equivalence to the material damages.

19. On 25 December 2008, hundreds of Muslims from the al-Iraq village in Alexandria’s al-Amiriya area assembled outside the home of a Copt to protest his intention to turn a structure built on his private land into a church for village Copts. The owner of the land told EIPR researchers that the building belongs to the Association for Coptic Orthodox Reform in Alexandria, which is registered with the Ministry of Social Solidarity. The 80 Coptic families in the village want to use the structure as a place for prayer and religious lessons since the nearest church is located 50 km away in the King Maryout area. The landowner added that he refused to acquiesce to a demand from the protesters that he sign a customary affidavit declaring that “the building is not a church and will not be used for prayer.” He said that the assembled Muslims left when security forces arrived. Security also closed the building and posted a security detail outside it.