As a group of Egyptian citizens who defend equal rights for all Egyptians (without discrimination between them on the basis of religion or belief, gender, color, geographical location within the country), we were appalled by the sentence by the Court of Edfu, Aswan, to prison the priest Makarios Boles, of the Church of Al-Marenab village, for 6 months and a fine of 300 LE, for a building irregularity. This is related to exceeding the height of the church construction over what was specified in an earlier permit by the competent authorities.
With all due respect for the rulings of the courts, we wish to declare the following observations and facts:
• It is amazing that the judge would leave out the real perpetrators who destroyed this church (and others), based on video recording that show incitements, and acts of church demolition under supervision by those who are suspected to be state officials. Instead, the judge appears to only consider the irregularity of height of the only building that holds a license in this village compared to many other buildings, including places of worship and residences, which exceed in irregularities those of this church building.
• The policy of “double standards” indeed opens the door of hell. because the judiciary is the supposed to be the institution that raises the nations and pulls them off oppression, stagnation, corruption, and backwardness towards justice, progress, the sense of belonging and sophistication. This, however, could only happen within a framework of the rule of law and its application to everyone without differentiating between citizens, through the power of independent judiciary that is not politicized nor infiltrated by political trends whatsoever.
• This judgment invites us to recall some of the hastened sentences against Copts without clear or concrete evidence, and without allowing them to exercise their natural right to defend themselves, either by themselves or through their lawyers. We mention here the judgment of the Court of Misdemeanors in Assiut to sentence to imprison a Coptic deputy headmaster of a preparatory school in Abnoub district for six years for contempt of Islam. This followed a complaint by a newly transferred teacher, who had engaged into a religious debate with the that Coptic colleague, and by the end of the school day informed the security forces, which moved “immediately” to arrest the Coptic man. We can only compare such expediency with the utter slowness or inaction by the security forces during the burning and destruction of churches and Coptic-owned shops and houses in Al-Marenab, Atfih, Imbaba and other areas without any deterrent sentences by the judiciary.
• This judgment is issued at a time arises when suspicions are raised about the extent of the independence of the Egyptian judiciary from the executive branch. These follow the scandal of “the foreign funding for NGOs,” and the related manipulations of the judiciary and the lifting of the ban on travel of the foreign defendants, allowing them to leave the country aboard a U.S. military plane. This was despite the fact that the case, which was turned by the state bodies into a big public opinion issue, was still being investigated by the magistrates and everybody awaited eagerly its findings.
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The current situation reminds us of what the renowned senior justice, Yehia Rifai, had said in a statement issued on December 31, 2002 mourning Egypt’s judiciary institution and its independence: “In everybody’s eyes, the guarantees of equality between citizens before the law have vanished, and this has ruined the reputation of the Egyptian judiciary in the world..” He added “They claim that we are an independent state with independent judiciary and that we have laws and a parliament. However, we have none of all these – not even the decency.” We fear that the revered Justice may have only been making premonitions of what we see now.
Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination
March 10, 2012