Report from Human Rights Watch on Egypt's Muslim attack on Christians

This,  the  first official report from Human Rights Watch on the Muslim Bastards attack on Christians, their churches, their schools, their businesses and homes...is dated August 22, 2013. There will be more reports to follow .... of that I am sure.  I have heard that Christians in Egypt are so terrified they are not venturing out of their homes and neither are they  opening their doors to their Muslim neighbours  who want to help them with their grocery shopping etc.   There's a lot more that needs covering in  future reports from the HRW but without finding those Christians who were subjected to  violence by  supporters of the Muslim Bastardhood  or  were witnesses to the mayhem, HRW's reports will not be able to tell us the complete facts.  The reports of first hand experiences will take longer to seep out. 



(New York) – Egyptian authorities should take the necessary steps   to protect churches and religious institutions against mob attacks, Human Rights Watch said today. Since August 14, 2013, attackers have torched and looted scores of churches and Christian property across the country, leaving at least four people dead. Authorities should also investigate why security forces were largely absent or failed to intervene even when they had been informed of ongoing attacks......

......“For weeks, everyone could see these attacks coming, with Muslim Brotherhood members accusing Coptic Christians of a role in Mohammad Morsy’s ouster, but the authorities did little or nothing to prevent them,” said Joe Stork, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Now dozens of churches are smoldering ruins, and Christians throughout the country are hiding in their homes, afraid for their very lives.”.....

......In the vast majority of the 42 cases Human Rights Watch documented, neither the police nor the military were present at the start or during the attack. In one case, in Dalga, a village in southern Minya governorate, residents said that men had attacked the local police station around the same time. In Kirdassa, Giza, west of Cairo, an activist said that mobs attacked the local police station, killing15 officers according to the Associated Press, before attacking Al-Mallak church. A priest in Malawi, a town in Minya governorate south of Minya city, told Human Rights Watch that he called emergency services and police multiple times while mobs burned his church, but no one came. Another Dalga resident said that on August 16 the governor promised to send armored personnel carriers to protect Copts from ongoing violence, but that none came.

“We [church officials] spoke to the prime minister, minister of interior, and a military official asking them to intervene,” Coptic Bishop General of Minya Anba Makarios told Human Rights Watch on August 19. He said the officials promised to send protection, but it never arrived.

In Hadeyeq Helwan, 30 kilometers south of Cairo, a resident told Human Rights Watch that one armored personnel carrier finally arrived on the afternoon of August 17, a day after the St. George Church there came under attack.



Residents in Minya city told Human Rights Watch that in the week following Morsy’s removal from the presidency on July 3, someone had spray-painted Coptic-owned store fronts in Minya’s city center with a black “X” to distinguish them from Muslim-owned buildings. Those marked subsequently came under attack......

......Sectarian attacks against Christians had increased even before the August 14 action against the camps. On July 5, following Morsy’s ouster on July 3, four Copts were killed in Luxor governorate. On July 23, Human Rights Watch called on the Egyptian authorities to take steps to protect Christians, investigate attacks, and hold those responsible to account........

......Most of the attacks occurred in Upper Egypt. John Sameer, 21, a resident of Minya city, 250 kilometers south of Cairo, told Human Rights Watch that at 10 a.m. on August 14, he saw crowds of thousands of men on trucks and on foot approaching his neighborhood chanting anti-Christian slogans directly aimed at the Egyptian Coptic community......

.....Father Bernaba at the Mar Meena Coptic Church in Minya city told Human Rights Watch that a large crowd attacked his church on the afternoon of August 14, setting fire to the church clinic and services building, and damaging the front exterior of the church itself. He said that security forces and police did not come to stop the attack. At midnight, however, when attackers returned, security forces dispatched an armored personnel carrier. It deterred the attackers, who moved away from the church.......



.....Human Rights Watch visited the remains of the Franciscan girl’s school and church in Bani Suef, 125 kilometers south of Cairo, which a mob attacked and burned on August 14. Father Boulos Fahmy, a Catholic priest affiliated with the school, said that at around 9 a.m. the nuns, who were alone at the school, contacted him by phone telling him that a mob was threatening the school. He notified the police, who sent a car to deter the attackers but it departed less than an hour later after a nearby police station came under attack, he said. The men returned soon after, looting and setting fire to the school and church. The men forced three nuns to leave the school and walked them through nearby streets, verbally abusing them. Local Muslim residents rescued the nuns from the mob and escorted them away to safety..........

..........Another Dalga resident, Sameer Lamie, 31, told Human Rights Watch that a crowd of men gathered outside his home before 9 a.m. A group of armed men eventually broke down his door and entered his house. He said the men shot his cousin Iskandar Doss twice, while Lamie, his mother, and Doss’s wife and daughter-in-law escaped by climbing to the roof. Lamie said the attackers fired birdshot at him, hitting him in his side with 13 pellets, and they hit his mother with a pellet under her eye. Lamie said he learned later that Doss died of his wounds. He said that no security forces or police arrived during the attack..........

.........In Minya city, residents, family members, and the Christian owner of the Mermaid boat restaurant, along the Minya city corniche, told Human Rights Watch that two Mermaid employees – Bishoy Mikhail, a Copt, and Ihab Ali Ahmed, a Muslim – died while hiding in the bathroom of the boat after a mob set it on fire. Human Rights Watch researchers visited the boat on August 19 and viewed the charred remains of shoes, pants, and a mobile phone on the floor of the bathroom...........

.........A Coptic shop owner in the Cairo neighborhood of Ezbet al-Nakhl died from gunshot wounds after a group of men attacked his shop, next to the Abu Siffin church, activists from the Maspero Youth Union told Human Rights Watch..........

.....Church clergy throughout Upper Egypt expressed frustration and desperation that security services did not quickly intervene to stop the widespread attacks. .......