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Freedom of Religion and Belief in Egypt Quarterly Report (October - December 2008)

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Freedom of Religion and Belief in Egypt Quarterly Report (October - December 2008) Freedom of Religion and Belief in Egypt Quarterly Report (October - December 2008) Freedom of Religion and Belief Program Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights January 2009 This report This report addresses several of the most significant developments seen in Egypt in the field of freedom of religion and belief in the months of October, November, and December of 2008. The report observes continued sectarian tension and violence all over Egypt and documents cases in the governorates of Cairo, Alexandria, Qalyoubiya, Sharqiya, Kafr al-Sheikh, Minya, and Luxor. As usual, Minya accounted for the lion’s share of incidents of sectarian violence, with cases in the district of Matay, the village of Kom al-Mahras, and the district of Abu Qurqas, as well as events in the village of al-Tayiba in the Samalut district in October. The latter were the worst of the fourth quarter of 2008, leaving one Christian dead and four other people injured, among them one Muslim. Homes, lands, and property were also torched and damaged. The report also notes increased tensions and clashes as a result of Copts establishing “service centers” to use for social occasions, prayers, or religious lessons in neighborhoods and villages that have no nearby churches or in cases where Copts have failed to obtain permits to build a new church or renovate an existing church. The report discusses several instances in which the establishment of such centers, or rumors that attempts were being made to convert them into churches, led to sectarian clashes. Events in November in the Ain Shams area of Cairo received the most media coverage in this regard, but two similar incidents took place in the village of Kafr Girgis in the Minya al-Qamh district of Sharqiya and in the al-Iraq village in Alexandria’s al- Amiriya neighborhood. The report observes the mounting problems resulting from restrictions on the right to change one’s religion, as Muslims who want to convert to Christianity resort to obtaining falsified identification documents. In the period under review, two prison sentences were issued in criminal courts in Giza and Shubra in two separate cases involving Muslim women who had obtained falsified documents allowing them to convert to Christianity and marry Christians. In December, the Cairo airport police arrested a woman and her husband on similar charges while they were attempting to leave the country. The report documents the ongoing use of the Emergency Law to violate citizens’ basic rights. Blogger Reda Abdel-Rahman was placed under administrative detention for adopting Qur'anist thought, and Christian blogger Hani Nazir remains in detention without charge or trial on the grounds that he allegedly published material insulting to Islam on his blog. On a positive note, the report documents a legal ruling issued in Cairo allowing a Baha'i youth to return to school at Alexandria University; the university had suspended him when he proved unable to obtain a personal identity card, although his Baha'i religious affiliation is listed on his 1987 birth certificate. Another court ruling allowed a Christian citizen to document his re-conversion to Christianity in his official documents more than 30 years after he converted to Islam. The report also notes that the Fayoum provincial authorities paid financial compensation to Copts harmed in sectarian attacks that took place in June 2008 in the village of al-Nazla, located in the Youssef al-Siddiq district. FRB Quarterly Reports The aim of the Freedom of Religion and Belief Quarterly Reports is to provide legislators, policymakers, researchers, the media and other stakeholders with a primary source for documented information on the most significant political, legal, and social developments affecting freedom of religion and belief in Egypt. This report does not offer an analysis of the facts, but only documents them as a basis for further analysis. In preparing this report the Freedom of Religion and Belief Program of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) relies on field research by program staff, complaints received by the EIPR during the reporting period, information gleaned from news reports and confirmed by researchers, and laws and governmental decrees related to freedom of religion and belief as published in the Official Gazette. This report is not a comprehensive overview of all pertinent developments, but is limited to the facts the report’s authors view as most significant and were able to confirm. Acknowledgments Yara Sallam, researcher for the Freedom of Religion and Belief Program, compiled and researched the information contained in the report. Nader Shukri assisted in monitoring and documentation. Research assistance and legal review was provided by Adel Ramadan, Legal Officer of the FRB Program. Hossam Bahgat, Executive Director of the EIPR, reviewed and edited the report. I. Court rulings and trials 1. On 12 October 2008, the Giza Criminal Court sentenced five people, among them a Christian priest, to five years in prison each on charges related to the falsifying of official documents. The court began hearing the case (no. 4829/2007 Criminal- Qesm Imbaba) in June 2008, after the defendants were charged with helping a Muslim woman obtain falsified identification documents proving that she had converted to Christianity, in order to enable her to marry a Christian man in 2005. These falsified documents were used to draw up a marriage contract and obtain a passport, which the woman used to travel to Jordan with her husband (see paragraph 8 of the Second Quarterly Report, 2008) The verdict was issued in absentia for all the defendants (including the married couple), except for the priest, Mata'os Abbas Wahba, who is currently serving his sentence in the Tora Prison on the outskirts of Cairo. After the sentencing, several newspapers reported that Pope Shenouda III had criticized the verdict and they quoted him expressing his “strong displeasure” at the sentencing of the priest. He also announced that he had hired an attorney to appeal the ruling. On 15 November 2008, attorney Ramsis al- Naggar appealed the ruling with the Court of Cassation (case no. 220/2008). The court had not set a date for the appeal hearing before this report was issued. 2. In a similar case, the Shubra Criminal Court on 11 November 2008 sentenced three people to three years in prison each (case no. 12201/2006 Criminal -Northern Cairo -Shubra). The court convicted the three defendants for helping a Muslim woman obtain a national identity card containing falsified information in 2002 to facilitate her marriage to a Christian. The defendants also served as witnesses on the marriage contract with the false information (see paragraph 8 of the First Quarterly Report, 2008). On 17 January 2008, the court had issued a ruling in the same case in absentia, sentencing the three defendants and the fugitive couple to ten years each in prison. The re-trial began on 12 February with the attendance of the three defendants, who are currently serving their sentence in the Marg General Prison. The defendants’ attorneys appealed the ruling before the Court of Cassation, but a date for the appeal hearing had not been set before this report was issued. 3. On 11 November 2008, the Court of Administrative Justice in Cairo, headed by Judge Mohamed Ahmad Atiya, issued a ruling requiring the Civil Status Department in the Interior Ministry to issue a national identity card to Baha'i citizen Hadi Hosny al-Qusheiry and place a dash (—) in the slot designated for religious affiliation. The EIPR had filed a suit (case no. 14124/62) in January 2008 after al-Qusheiry 21, was suspended from the College of Agriculture at Alexandria University, where he was registered as a third-year student. The university suspended the student when he failed to provide deferment papers for his compulsory military service. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense refused to issue the papers because the student did not have a national identity card, and since the student had a birth certificate documenting that he was born to Egyptian Baha'i parents, the Civil Status Department refused to issue him an identity card if he did not change his religion to either Islam or Christianity. The same court, headed by its former chief judge, Mohamed al-Husseini, issued two similar rulings on 29 January 2008, affirming for the first time the right of Baha'i citizens to obtain official identification documents without mention of religious affiliation. The Interior Ministry had not implemented these rulings before this report was issued in January 2009 (see paragraph 1 of the First Quarterly Report, 2008). 4. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights decided in its biannual session, held in Abuja, Nigeria from 10 to 24 November 2008, to consider a complaint filed against the Egyptian government regarding the case of two Egyptian children, Mario and Andrew Ramsis. After their father converted to Islam, the children’s religion was changed from Christianity to Islam and their Christian mother lost custody of them. The complaint (no. 363/2008), filed before the African Union's main human rights body, accuses the Egyptian government of violating four articles of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which was ratified by the Egyptian government and the People’s Assembly in 1984. The children’s mother, Kamilia Lotfy, was a victim of religious discrimination (Article 2) and her right to equal protection under the law (Article 3) was also violated when she was deprived of custody of her twin sons. The petition also accuses the government of violating the children’s right to freedom of religion and belief (Article 8) and its obligation to respect the rights of children (Article 18.3). The Commission accepted the petition and will begin hearing the case in its next session in May 2009; the complainants and the Egyptian government must file their preliminary briefs before 8 March 2009.
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