United Copts of Great Britain
Press Release
For Immediate Release 4th June 2008
URL: www.unitedcopts.org
Contact: info@unitedcopts.
On Wednesday 28th May 2008, 4 Christians, a jeweler and 3 of his workers were killed in cold blood at mid day by masked men in Zytoun district in Cairo. The masked men sped away on motorcycle. The Egyptian police seem not interested. No suspects being arrested so far.
On the 29th of May 2008, two masked men armed with machine guns stole 150,000 Egyptian pounds from a Christian jeweler in Alexandria. 2 suspects were arrested.
On 31st of May the ancient monastery called Deir Abu Fana which was built in the fourth century in Kasr Hoor village, Malawi district. The monastery has a small number of monks, was attacked by about 70 Muslims militants armed with machine guns at about 6pm local time. The pretext as for the attack is the ownership of the land around the monastery that was sold legally to the monastery and a permit to build a wall around it was granted by the local authorities.
The Muslim militants attacked the peaceful, unarmed monks viscously causing severe injuries. A monk, Father Yoanas sustained fracture to both legs and one arm. Four monks were kidnapped for 12 hours and subjected to abuse, torture, severe beating and were forced to spat on a cross.
In spite of repeated telephone calls to the police for help it took the police 3 hours to arrive to the scene “The police station is 2 kilometers away” Several other workers in the monastery were severely injured two of them in critical condition and one Muslim man was killed but not by the Christians as they have no firearms.
In an attempt from the Egyptian police to protect the perpetrators of the attack on the monastery from prosecution, it is now rumored that the murdered Muslim man was killed by Christian’s fire which is not true as the Christians did not have firearms, a Christian man now is being held at police station.
Hundreds of attacks on innocent Christians and their property in the past three decades ended without persecuting the perpetrators either due to complacency or even complicity by some elements of the Egyptian police. Most attacks ended in “Make up sit together session” which makes mockery of all principles of justice.
The United Copts of Great Britain condemns the barbaric attack on the innocent monks and reminds the Egyptian government of its obligation to treat all citizens equally, to provide peace and security to all citizens, to stop the police bias against the Copts and this time to show seriousness in prosecuting the perpetrators of violence.