Egyptian Catholic leader: Egyptian government is not stopping hate speech against Christian
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Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sedrak (CNS
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In a statement he said perpetrators
involved in a wave of attacks on Christian institutions across the country
since early July were not being apprehended, and those involved in the burning
and destruction of churches should have been forced to repair them at their own
expense and not at the cost of the state.
He said southern parts of the Minya
governorate had seen some of the most severe anti-Christian violence so far,
and that “people there are so extreme that they are threatening the Copts with
expulsion from their homes”.
Muslim-Christian tension in Egypt has
long been a problem, but it reached unprecedented levels after the July 3 military
ousting of the Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and worsened after security
forces raided two Cairo camps of pro-Morsi demonstrators on August 14. Hundreds
of people, most of them protesters, were killed that day.
About a week later, the Catholic
Church reported that more than 70 churches, schools, community centres, homes
and other properties belonging to Christians had been ransacked in the
violence. The military and the new interim government have said they will
repair the damage done to Christian institutions.
Coptic Christians make up as much as 15
percent of Egypt’s population. Catholics account for as many as 300,000.
The rest of Egypt’s 82.5 million people are predominantly Sunni Muslims.
Christian leaders, including Patriarch
Sedrak, have come out in support of military leaders, who they say are
“fighting a war on terror” launched by people sympathetic to Morsi.
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