Egyptian Protestor Killed in Clash Between Police, Christians
November 24, 2010, 5:48 PM EST
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Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Egyptian police killed a protester and detained 93 others during clashes with Coptic Christians triggered by a halt to construction of a church, in the latest sectarian tension in the Muslim-dominated country.
Several policemen, including two senior officers, were also injured in the confrontation in southern Cairo, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported, without saying how it obtained the information. Authorities had ruled the church was being built without a license, the state-run news agency said.
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Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Egyptian police killed a protester and detained 93 others during clashes with Coptic Christians triggered by a halt to construction of a church, in the latest sectarian tension in the Muslim-dominated country.
Several policemen, including two senior officers, were also injured in the confrontation in southern Cairo, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported, without saying how it obtained the information. Authorities had ruled the church was being built without a license, the state-run news agency said.
“What have Copts done? Have they committed a crime?” Naguib Gebraeel, a lawyer for the Coptic Church said in a live interview with Al Jazeera television. “Scores of security forces were ordered to attack a church, a place of worship.” He said about 30 protesters were injured. Television footage showed police using tear gas to disperse a crowd.
Sectarian violence and discrimination have worsened in Egypt, say Copts, who account for about 10 percent of the population of 80 million people. Christians in Egypt “face personal and collective discrimination, especially in government employment and their ability to build, renovate, and repair places of worship,” the U.S. State Department said in its annual International Religious Freedom report this month. The government says it treats all citizens equally.
The Coptic Orthodox Church was founded in Alexandria in the first century by Mark, one of the apostles of Jesus. After an Arab army conquered Egypt in the seventh century, Islam gradually became the country’s dominant religion.
Rising Tensions
Tensions between the two communities, reported in the government-controlled and independent press, have been building for several years. In 2004, Christians in Cairo claimed that the wife of a Coptic priest was forced to convert to Islam. After a riot in which 50 people were injured, the government ordered her returned to her Coptic family. In 2005, Muslims in Alexandria demonstrated against a DVD in which a Coptic youth converts to Islam and then changes his mind.
In late 2008, riots erupted in Ain Shams, a district of Cairo, after Copts renovated a former underwear factory and held mass there.
The single fatality in today’s protest died after sustaining a gunshot wound, the state-run news agency reported. The protesters hurled rocks and used Molotov cocktails against police forces, it said.
Related News & Information: Stories about religion: {NI RLG } News about Egypt: {NI EGYPT BN } Egyptian crime news: {TNI EGYPT CRIME } Top regional stories: {TOP MIDEAST } --Editors: Digby Lidstone, Philip Sanders.
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