IV. Discrimination on The Basis of Religion or Belief

25. Officials with the Church of the Virgin in the village of Sheikh Yusuf, located in the Maragha district of Sohag, held provincial administrative and security agencies responsible for the death of eight Copts on 19 February 2009, after they arbitrarily delayed renovation permits for the church. Father Bakhoum, the bishop of Sohag, al-Mansh'a and Maragha, told EIPR researchers that since 1979 various cracks had appeared in the church requiring repair. Since he had assumed the position of bishop in 1986, he had repeatedly asked officials for legal permits necessary to rebuild the mud-brick church, which had come to pose a danger to the lives of worshipers. On 16 January, one of the church walls, built more than 100 years ago according to the bishop, collapsed, after which church officials obtained a permit to demolish the church and rebuild it. The church was demolished and the digging was completed in preparation for laying a new foundation, but the authorities ordered the priest in charge of the church to halt the construction until the necessary permits were obtained from Cairo, despite warnings from the priest that delays in laying the foundation constituted a danger to the adjacent buildings due to the nature of the soil.

According to the bishop, on 19 February four houses adjacent to the church—also built of mud brick—collapsed as a result of cracks in their walls caused by the excavations on the church building site. Eight people died and four others were injured; Father Bakhoum issued a statement on 20 February on the internet containing the names of the deceased. The Maragha prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into the causes of the accident, but the findings had not yet been issued at the time this report was released. The EIPR did learn that the security apparatus had allowed church officials to resume construction and that construction on the new church had indeed begun at the time this report was issued.

26. On 5 February 2009, Mervat Rizqallah Fahmi had her three-year-old daughter, Parthenia Fadi Farahat, returned to her after her ex-husband took the child in July 2008 and prevented Fahmi from seeing her since. According to statements given to EIPR researchers by Fahmi, she had received an order from the Prosecutor General’s Office allowing her to take charge of her daughter in August 2008, but the police refused to implement it because her ex-husband converted to Islam in May 2006. Farahat said that when she approached the police asking them to implement the court order, one officer told her that he will not take a Muslim child from her father and give her to a Christian mother to raise.

On 15 February 2007, Farahat’s ex-husband received a court order allowing him to see his daughter once a week. While exercising his visitation rights on 11 July 2008, he took his daughter with him and refused to return her to her mother until Farahat agreed to reunite with him or renounce her financial rights. Farahat turned to the Tanta Family Prosecutor’s Office, which issued an order, a copy of which was obtained by the EIPR, on 2 August 2008, ordering that Parthenia be temporarily placed in her mother’s care.

The child’s father filed a lawsuit before the Tanta Family Court (no. 664 / 2008) asking for legal custody of the child “to care for her, protect her and give her a proper religious upbringing,” citing his fears that she would not be brought up as a Muslim. On 25 December 2008, the court rejected his petition on the grounds that the child had not yet reached the age where she is capable of distinguishing between religions and that the father had not proven that the child would be harmed if her mother raised her.

Farahat said that she was finally able to take custody of her daughter but only after giving up all her financial rights in the divorce, signing a pledge that the child would not travel abroad, and allowing visitation rights to the father for three hours each week.