Closed on security grounds Sectarian tensions and attacks resulting from the construction and renovation of churches Closed on security grounds Sectarian tensions and attacks resulting from the construction and renovation of churches First edition November 2017 Designed by Mohammed Gaber Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights 14 al Saray al Korbra St., Garden City, Al Qahirah, Egypt. Telephone & fax: +(202) 27960197 - 27960158 www.eipr.org -
[email protected] All printing and publication rights reserved. This report may be redistributed with attribution for non-profit pur- poses under Creative Commons license. www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher and officer for EIPR’s freedom of religion and belief program, is the lead author of this report. Research intern Mohammed Medhat contributed to the second annex on the proposed standards for the church construction law. Amr Abd al-Rahman, the director of the civil liberties unit, edited the report, and Ahmed al-Shabini proofread the text. Closed on security grounds Introduction In August 2016, the House of Representatives adopted Law 80/2016 on the construction of church- es to fulfill the terms of Article 235 of the 2014 Constitution, which required the House to issue a law regulating the construction of churches in its first session. While the law was under debate in Parliament, the EIPR launched a campaign entitled “Closed on Security Grounds” in an attempt to draw attention to the most significant hurdles to Egyptian Coptic citizens’ exercise of their right to religious practice and worship—most notably, the administrative and security complications in- volved in the construction of churches.