Perilous
Times
Christian family evicted from Egypt town
By AYA BATRAWY, Associated Press
CAIRO — Nabil Gergis, a Coptic Christian, lived for nearly two
decades in the Egyptian town of Amriya, raising his children and
managing a modest business. Those ties couldn't protect him after
a video purportedly showing his brother with a Muslim woman began
to circulate.
Angry residents in the conservative, Muslim-majority town held
protests and set fire to the Gergis family businesses. None of the
attackers was prosecuted. Instead, a committee of tribal elders,
local lawmakers and security officials ordered the 11 members of
the Gergis family — the brother, Nabil and others — to leave town.
The story of Amriya demonstrates one of the reasons Egypt's Coptic
Christian minority and even some in the Muslim majority feel the
situation is precarious, particularly since the ouster of former
President Hosni Mubarak a year ago. The rule of law, they and
human rights groups say, is being eclipsed by such "reconciliation
councils," trying to fill the security vacuum left by Mubarak's
fall.
"There is no law that would have found me responsible for
anything, and under the law I would have never been kicked out of
my home," said Nabil Gergis. He said he, his wife and their two
children do not know who to turn to protect their rights and that
he feels the government has turned its back on them.
Egypt's Copts are mourning Pope Shenouda II, who led the Church
for 40 years and died on Saturday. "Baba Shenouda," as he was
called, was seen by many in the community as their biggest
protector in a country where Christians make up about 10 percent
of a population of 85 million.
Shenouda's approach was deeply conservative. He was a close ally
of Mubarak during the former president's 29-year rule and used his
influence behind the scenes to try to ensure some protections for
Christians. But he largely resisted any public protests or
pressure. His critics among the Coptic community say that left
Christians' rights dependent on personal relations rather than
enforced by law.
Reconciliation meetings were not unusual under Mubarak's regime.
Muslim-Christian violence broke out occasionally in towns of the
south, sometimes in local disputes that turned sectarian. Rather
than prosecuting those responsible, local leaders and security
officials would often insist on negotiated solutions to keep the
peace — or, critics say, because they were reluctant to confront
Muslims involved in the incidents.
The Amriya case was unique because the punishment was so
extensive. The town is comprised of scattered villages with some
500,000 residents, about 15 percent of them are Christian.
The incident erupted in late January, when the explicit video
allegedly showing Nabil Gergis' brother with a Muslim woman
circulated on residents' cell phones. The brother, who is married,
has denied any affair.
Any sex outside of marriage is a lightning rod for controversy in
the Muslim world, where a woman's chastity is vociferously
protected by her family. That a Christian man might have an affair
with a Muslim woman only further fanned the flames.
The rumors sparked widespread protests by Amriya residents, who
are mostly tribal and deeply traditional. Angry residents set fire
to three stores owned by the Gergis' family, which were under
their homes. Some Muslim residents tried to help, but were
outnumbered by the ultraconservative rioters.
Police showed up hours later and instead of investigating the
attack called in the brother for questioning, Gergis said.
With tempers still high, local officials and tribal leaders held a
series of meetings and decided to order the expulsion of the
entire Gergis family. A Muslim family who had fired shots in the
air during the protest to protect their property were initially
told they must leave too, but were later allowed to return.
Amriya police argued that they could not guarantee the Gergis
family's safety in the face of angry protesters, according to
security officials and the Gergis family. Last week, with the
family gone, their homes were robbed of cash and other belongings
they had to leave behind, Gergis said.
An Egyptian rights group that looked into the case, the Egyptian
Initiative for Personal Rights, criticized the expulsion, saying
the victims were forced to accept "the outcomes of illegal
reconciliation processes" and to abandon their rights.
Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher with the group, warns that the
breakdown of security since Mubarak's fall could lead to an even
greater dependence on such "reconciliation meetings."
"When the state's authority is eroded, then the community turns to
its own leaders to solve the crisis," he said. "The problem is
that the outcomes are not consistent. It also means that
Christians or the side that is weaker will be at a disadvantage,
and so this affects all Egyptians."
The unreliability of the law has hurt Christians in other ways.
One sore point is the construction of churches, which requires
permissions from security officials and was rarely granted. In
response, Christians often built churches secretly, and in several
instances in recent years Muslim mobs attacked the construction.
Again, perpetrators of such attacks were almost never prosecuted.
Since Mubarak's fall, there has been talk of a law putting
construction of mosques and churches under equal rules, but no law
has been passed.
A series of attacks over the last year has also stoked Christian
fears. A year ago, a Muslim-Christian love affair led a Muslim mob
to torch a church in the village of Soul, 18 miles (30 kilometers)
south of Cairo. Christians protesting the burning were attacked by
a mob; 13 people died and 140 injured.
In May, ultraconservative followers of the Salafi trend of Islam
burnt a church in the Cairo working-class district of Imbaba and
clashed with Christians, leaving 12 people dead. Many of the
rioters believed that a Christian woman who fell in love with a
Muslim man had converted to Islam and was being held prisoner by
the church.
In October, a Cairo protest led by Copts demanding greater rights
was crushed by soldiers, leaving 27 people, mostly Copts, dead.
The Gergis family is now living with relatives in Alexandria.
Nabil Gergis said neither the police nor government officials have
responded to his pleas for help.
"The only thing that this means is that police don't want us in
the country," he said. "It's a feeling that I cannot describe. My
children don't have a home anymore."