EGYPT'S HIDDEN, UNHOLY WAR

On the eve of Pope's visit, Coptic Christians struggle against sectarian violence
Sandro Contenta
AL KOSHEH, Egypt

WHEN THE SHOOTING, the looting and the burning stopped; Dabe'a Michael Habib placed the body of his only son in a wheelbarrow and rolled him to the police station.
Behind him, his house and shop were burned, set ablaze by the mob that shot dead his son, Wael, a 16-year-old victim of the worst Muslim-Christian clashes in Egypt's recent memory.

He pushed the wheelbarrow along a dirt road, where his Christian neighbours cautiously emerged to survey the remains of their ransacked lives.
He pushed it past scores of mainly Muslim police officers, whom Habib and other Christians accuse of doing nothing to stop the killing and looting.

He pushed it into the police station, just 250 meters from his home.
''I said to them, 'How could you stand there and do nothing while my son was bleeding to death in front of me?' '' recalls Habib, 39, his voice cracking with anger and grief.
''All they could say was, 'What could we do?' '' They lifted the wheelbarrow to the back of a truck and took Habib's son to the hospital morgue.

''I lost my son, my shop and my house. I lost everything,'' Habib says, staring at the large bloodstain on the stone floor, the spot where life drained from Wael.
The clashes have again raised concerns about discrimination against Coptic Orthodox Christians, who represent about 10 per cent of the population. Egypt's 64 million people are predominantly Muslim. But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dismisses the possibility of discrimination. ''All are Egyptians on the land of Egypt regardless of religion,'' he said recently.

The government is highly sensitive to suggestions of discrimination, all the more so on the eve of Pope John Paul II's visit to Egypt Thursday at Mubarak's invitation.
During his three-day pilgrimage, the Pope will meet Mubarak, Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda III and Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, Egypt's senior Muslim cleric. The Pope will hold a mass in Cairo and visit St. Catherine's monastery in the Sinai desert.

Because this is a pilgrimage rather than an official visit and because the meetings with officials will be brief, no one is expecting the Pope to get involved in what Egypt's Coptic and Catholic leaders describe as an internal matter best left to the Egyptian clergy and government.
Raising the issue would only raise suspicions among many Muslims about the Pope's intentions, says Catholic Bishop Youhanna Golta, who is helping to organize the Pope's visit.

Many Egyptian Muslims still see Christianity through the prism of the Crusades, when Christian armies waged brutal ''holy wars'' in the Middle East 1,000 years ago, Golta says.
Television dramas sometimes feature Christian characters redeemed by converting to Islam. And the late Sheik Mohammad Mutwali Sharawi, a popular Muslim cleric who gave weekly-televised sermons, sometimes denounced Christianity as a false religion, Golta adds.

''This psychological climate doesn't leave much room for the Pope to discuss such matters.''
Adds Coptic Bishop Wisa: ''As Egyptians, we are very nationalistic. Despite all the injustices we are facing, we do not accept interference from outside. ''
Al Kosheh, a mostly Coptic Orthodox rural community 440 kilometers south of Cairo, is still reeling from the communal violence two months ago.

A dispute between a Christian shopkeeper and a Muslim customer escalated into three days of gun battles, arson and looting that left 23 people dead - 19 of them Coptic Orthodox Christians, one Muslim and three unidentified, two of them because they were burned beyond recognition.
''All of those killed, except one, were Christians. That says to me that the Christians either weren't shooting, or they were greatly outnumbered by the Muslims,'' says Gasser Abdel Razek, head of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a Cairo-based human rights group.

More than 30 people were injured and some 70 homes and shops torched or looted. Fifty-nine people, Muslims and Christians, have been arrested. A tense calm was restored after Egyptian authorities deployed a 6,000-strong security force in Al Kosheh and several nearby towns, where the violence had spread.

Christians, who make up 80 per cent of Al Kosheh's 23,000 residents, say they were the victims of a pogrom by their Muslim neighbours. They charge the local police force of complicity in the attacks.
Wisa, whose parish includes villages hit by the rioting, says Al Kosheh's police force ''instigated'' the rioting.
''Villagers are always afraid of police. They wouldn't riot for so long unless the police stood by their side,'' Wisa says.
Anger and fear have persisted since 1998, when the local force was accused by an Egyptian human rights group of torturing hundreds of Christians. Wisa criticizes authorities for not having cleaned up the force after those incidents.

Mubarak says the rioters were ''pushed from abroad'' to destabilize Egypt. He hasn't elaborated, but vows ''decisive actions'' to investigate and punish the crimes. A government program is compensating victims up to the equivalent of $1,200.
Human rights groups stress that Egypt's Copts sometimes suffer discrimination, but not persecution. Their community is vibrant, unlike the dwindling Christian communities throughout the Middle East, and Copts have become prominent business leaders.

Still, school textbooks ignore their 1,700-year-old history in Egypt, government jobs are often out of their reach and restrictions on the building of churches have only recently been relaxed.
The Copts make up about a quarter of the population in the villages of southern Egypt, where vendettas are common and severe poverty and illiteracy have helped give rise to Islamic radicalism.
Armed bands targeted police, tourists and local Christians over the past decade, before being crushed by Egypt's security forces.

Egyptian authorities still keep a strong security presence along the highway that hugs the Nile River south from Cairo to Al Kosheh, just north of the ancient temples of Luxor, where terrorists massacred tourists two years ago.
Independent accounts of the violence in Al Kosheh are hard to come by. Foreign journalists are prevented from entering the town unless escorted by police officers, who monitor interviews and intimidate some Christians with their presence.

I entered the town unescorted after driving through a dozen police road blocks without being stopped. Apparently, it helps to often be mistaken for an Egyptian.
It was six weeks after the rioting and Christians spoke out angrily against police and their Muslim neighbors. Religious tensions have simmered since the incidents of 1998, which were precipitated by the murder of two Christians.

In investigating the murders, the local police force arrested hundreds of Christians and, according to a report by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, tortured them in a bid to extract confessions. The report's author suggests police were eager to charge a Christian to deflect suspicions of a sectarian motive.

Wissa says police are trying to do the same thing now. Father Gabriel Abdel Masih, a local priest, is charged with attempted murder and possession of firearms. Masih is out on bail and hotly denies the charges, saying he wasn't even in the town when the violence broke out.

Tensions heated up again when towers with crosses on them were recently added to a local church and when kiosks owned by Muslim shopkeepers were erected in front of Christian homes. Then, on Dec. 31, a Muslim customer was apparently refused credit by a Christian shopkeeper. The customer returned with friends and, when the shopkeeper refused to apologize, shots were fired and three people were wounded. That was the spark that caused an explosion.
Christian shop owners say the attacks began at about 4 p.m. About an hour later, police ordered them to close their shops and go home, they say.

Coptic shopkeeper Fouzi Henin Eshah returned the next day to find his store sacked and looted. He says the equivalent of $4,500 in shoes was stolen and almost $3,000 in cash. ''The police were everywhere and they did nothing. The police gave them a free hand to rob the shops,'' he says.
When one of his friends warns that his statements could get him in trouble with police, Eshah says: ''I don't care if they execute me tomorrow.''

Next to him, Bernaba Shahid Qiddis, 78, stands behind the charred counter of his shop, rolls of burned textiles piled high beside him. Qiddis says he lost almost $4,500 in merchandise and cash and received $300 in government compensation. ''Before these troubles, things were good between us,'' he says, referring to the town's religious communities.

The violence reached Habib's family on Jan. 2. Habib says he was in his father's house at about noon when he heard gunfire and screaming. He looked out the window to see his three-storey house burning next door and then heard his son shouting for help outside.

There was a burst of gunfire. Habib opened the door, and his son fell wounded into his arms. Blood poured from the youth's chest and Habib says he tried to stop it with his hands. He tried to call an ambulance, but the operator said he could not be connected.
''Half an hour later, he died,'' Habib says.

For the next four hours, Habib hid in a bathroom with his sister and her children until the rioting died down. Then he put his son's body in the wheelbarrow and pushed it to the police station.
Habib says his son's killers are two of his Muslim neighbours. One is under arrest and the other has fled.
As Habib speaks, a police officer walks into his father's home, alerted to the presence of a reporter by a town resident. Told that I have come to find out about the troubles, the police officer gives a broad smile and says: ''Nothing happened. Everything is fine.''
He uses his walkie-talkie to inform police he has found me, while Habib stares in silence at the stain made by his son's blood. Suddenly, Habib stands up and invites me to survey his home. We walk next door and the officer follows.

Using a spotlight, Habib takes us to each room. Doors have holes smashed through them, toilets and sinks are in pieces, furniture burned and walls blackened.
On the first floor, various spare parts for farming equipment that was his business are destroyed. Habib says much of his stock was stolen. In his bedroom, he sifts through the charred mound of debris and pulls out a singed Bible. As the police officer surveys the destruction, Habib looks at me as if to say, ''Right, nothing happened.''
I ask him if he could ever forgive the Muslim neighbors he accuses of the attacks. ''Only if justice is done and they are punished,'' he says.
Another police officer arrives and insists I and my translator join him at the police station ''for tea.'' They detain us for 90 minutes. We aren't under arrest, they insist, but we have to wait for clearance from their superiors in Cairo before we can go.
When that clearance comes, the police are eager that we talk to Sabrah Amin Siddig, assistant to the town's imam. ''What happened was something normal. It can happen anywhere,'' Siddig says.
''It's God's will and whatever God wants, happens,'' he adds. Religious tensions ''don't exist.''
As for police, ''They did their duty the best way possible.''

We leave the town at 10 p.m. and police give us an armed escort - as they do with tourists visiting Luxor - for what becomes a nine-hour drive back to Cairo. Our car is sandwiched between two jeeps, each with four armed men. Every few kilometers, the security teams are replaced. Sometimes, we are escorted by armoured personnel carriers.
Recently, provincial authorities changed the town's name. Al Kosheh in classical Arabic can be translated to mean ''to harbor enmity.''
The new name is Salam, which means peace.

Copyright 2000 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star

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