- 14 January 2004
Enough, Already
- Mary Elizabeth Hansen
Veteran journalist Barbara G. Baker recently reported on a deadly and deliberate attack against a Christian run facility for mentally handicapped children. The Patmos Center, located near Cairo, Egypt, was established in l995 by three Coptic Christian brothers and serves as an agriculture operation in which the children help the staff to raise animals and grow fruits and vegetables.
The Patmos Center has long been a thorn in the side of the local military garrison, which has, in the past seven years, provoked several violent confrontations with their Christian-dhimmi neighbors. The latest incident proved to be the bloodiest yet when members of the Egyptian Army, attempting to bulldoze the gate of the facility over a dispute about the placement of a wall, provoked the Patmos staff into throwing bottles and stones at the soldiers and their equipment. As the staff members moved onto the local highway, a bus driver drove through the group, killing Patmos employee, Kirilos Daoud Lam'ily, seriously injuring Shehata Nakhal and Hany Sa'ad and wounding 10 other staff members. Bishop Botros, director of the center, narrowly missed being run down. According to reports, the military directed the bus driver to mow down the protesting Christians and then quickly removed the bus driver from the scene of destruction. The bus driver has yet to be located for questioning or charges.
This horrific act by the Egyptian military is just the latest in a long list of attacks made on Christians by official government bodies, including police forces, the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of the Interior. Several months ago, a group of Muslim converts to Christianity, some who had converted decades ago, were rounded up, jailed, threatened and tortured. Dozens of young Christian girls have been kidnapped by Muslim men who then rape them, forcibly marry their victims and declare their new wives to be Muslims. When the families of these young women protest to the police, they are threatened with intimidation and revenge by the very government agency supposed to protect their rights as citizens of Egypt.
On a daily basis the Egyptian Christian population experiences discrimination, oppression and violence by their fellow Muslim neighbors and by various government agencies. Their religion, their language, and the Coptic Christian culture preceded the Islamic culture of their Arabic conquerors by hundreds of years. Yet, like Christians in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon and the Palestinian-controlled territories, the Muslim governments in these countries continue to run roughshod over their dhimmi, non-Muslim citizens, as they have done for centuries.
Western countries, for a variety of political and economic reasons, continue to turn a blind eye to the suffering of minority believers living in Islamic-dominated countries. Each year the government of Egypt, hand outstretched, receives several billion dollars in aid from the United States. And, the Mubark government continues with its campaign to suppress it Coptic Christian minority without negative consequences to its monetary and political alliances with America. Most of the Western press collaborates with the Egyptian actions by reporting incidents such as the one at Patmos Center as a "sectarian dispute," or as "an isolated incident," glossing over the overwhelming evidence of the systematic oppression of the Copts by their own government.
Enough, already. Egypt badly needs to pay diplomatic and financial costs for its shabby and shameful treatment of 15% of its population. No more free rides for the president-for-life and his cronies on the Nile.
© 2004 Mary Elizabeth Hansen