Priest’s cousin killed, 3 injured in Minya sectarian violence

One person was killed and three others injured in another incident of sectarian violence in Minya on Sunday night, Minya Bishop Makaryous said in a statement.

The 27-year-old cousin of a Minya priest was stabbed in the heart, Makaryous said, while his father and another family member received stab wounds to the face and side respectively. A Coptic female neighbor who was also present at the scene was also injured in the violence that took place in the Minya village of Tahna al-Gabal.

According to Ishak Ibrahim, researcher of religious freedoms at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), it started with a fight on the street between four Muslims and the priest’s father. The group began insulting him, after which they mobilized around 30 people to join in, leading to the violence.

He said that security is currently on the scene and that four or five people have been arrested in relation to the crime.

Ishak explained that the incident cannot be described as just a fight, and that the group mobilized Muslims on the basis that this was a fight with a Coptic man.

“This shows that any fight or argument is prone to turning sectarian because the state is not there to implement law,” he said.

This is the second incident of this nature to take place in Minya in a week. On Thursday, a mob attacked and burned the houses of five Copts in the Abu Yaacoub village after they heard a rumor that a church was going to be built there, according to another statement by Makaryous.

A day earlier, the eight defendants accused of rioting and violence in connection to a sectarian incident in which an elderly Coptic Christian woman was stripped and assaulted in Minya in May were released after the Minya Misdemeanor Court ordered the defendants to pay LE10,000 each .

Ibrahim said the series of attacks on Copts is an indication of the way state institutions are dealing with sectarian tension and the Coptic Christian community in general. He lamented the reluctance to indict and hold those responsible for other sectarian incidents accountable.

He explained that most issues are dealt with through customary arbitration sessions, and rarely do they go to trial.

“The few incidents that ended up in court were dismissed because of lack of evidence and such,” he said. “This sends a message that there is no equality, and no matter what you do and how you break the law you will not be punished.”

EIPR issued a statement condemning the rise of sectarian violence in Minya on Monday, saying it has documented 77 cases that occurred across the governorate since January 25, 2011, 10 of which took place since January 2016.

The statement added that these cases also do not include attacks on churches and private and public property that occurred in the aftermath of the violent dispersal of the pro-Brotherhood Rabea and Nahda sit-ins in August 2013.