Morsi’s arrest and the clampdown on the Muslim
Brotherhood has led to an increase in the number of attacks against
Coptic Christians who have become an easy target for radical Islamists
in search of a defenceless scapegoat.
Over the past months about 80
churches have been attacked and often set ablaze before police were able to take charge of the situation.
The region that has been hit by Islamist violence
the hardest is Minya in Upper Egypt, home to a large Coptic Christian
minority.
According to local sources, at least twenty churches, schools
and other Christian institutions have been attacked and set alight.
Even
orphanages have been attacked, looted and burnt by radical Islamists in
an attempt to wipe out the Christian presence in the area.
The Tadros
e-Shabti Church is a case in point. Morsi’s supporters have targeted two
homes for disabled children located near the parish church. After
stealing the offerings and the children’s clothes and toys, they set
fire to the buildings, creating a blaze that lasted over five hours.
There were also Copts among the victims and the
attacks prevented liturgies from being celebrated. For the first time in
1600 years, the Monastery of the Virgin Mary - which radicals tried to
set fire to - did not celebrate the customary liturgies one Sunday.
The
Evangelical church in the village of Bedin is just one case of a
Christian building being forcibly transformed into a mosque.
Associated Press
reported that after Islamists set fire to a Franciscan school, they made
three nuns march through the streets like prisoners of war, before a
Muslim woman offered them shelter. Two other women who were working at
the school were attacked and molested as they tried to escape through
the crowds.
The Copts and other Christian minorities are
baffled by the support which media across English speaking and Western
countries in general have been showing the Muslim Brotherhood. The
Coptic Church criticised “the false presentation of the facts by Western
media” and has asked for the “actions of bloodthirsty radical
organisations” to be examined “instead of legitimising them by offering
them global support and political protection as they try to spread chaos
and destruction across our beloved land.” The Coptic Church also called
for the facts to be presented in an “accurate and truthful manner.”
But there is now another form of violence adding
to and sometimes mixed in with anti-Christian Islamic political
violence: ransom kidnappings. Since the start of the “Arab Spring”
revolts, almost a hundred Christians have been kidnapped in Upper Egypt
and released after families paid a ransom.
Minya province has yet again been the main centre of these
kidnappings. More than eighty people – all of them Copts – have been
abducted in the region. Victims, human rights activists and Church
figures are accusing the authorities, especially the police, of doing
little or nothing to curb this dramatic phenomenon.
Bishop Makarios, Minya's highest Coptic spiritual
leader, felt obliged to make a public declaration: “Although some
Muslims say the Church should not get involved in political affairs and
should not interfere because it is not our place to, the truth is, that
the State is not fulfiling its duty, members of the Church are suffering
and are pressing the Church to intervene. If teh State did its job, no
one would say anything.”
Minya is already called the “kidnapping capital. And
since Christian doctors and pharmacists have become kidnappers’
favourite target, some rural communities have found themselves withour
medical assistance.
Indeed, doctors are afraid to venture out into
desert streets that are far out fromt he city as this is where the risk
of ambushes is highest. This type of crime has become more and more
frequent since Morsi’s ousting, a clear sign that it is linked to the
current political situation in the country.