The violence signals increasing tension between the ruling SCAF and a population frustrated by the military’s increasingly strong-armed rule. “Time and again since February, the Egyptian military has used excessive force in responding to protests,” Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “The high death toll from the clashes on Oct. 9 shows the urgent need for thorough investigations that lead to accountability and better protection for the Coptic community.”
Wagdy says civilian thugs came to join the army in attacking Christian protesters after buying into government hype. “They were saying it was a battle between Muslims and Christians,” she says. “That’s not really true. It was a battle between the army and civilians. Army vehicles were crushing protesters, and the army was saying [the protesters] had stolen them from army units” and were driving them into the crowd.
She says that after protesters dispersed and made their way to Tahrir Square, fighting broke out between Christians and neighborhood residents who had been led to believe that the Christians were armed. Police then teargassed the area. State-run TV “made an announcement for people to go support the army, and they were saying Christians were attacking the army,” Gobrail says. “It’s not true. The army was waiting for the protesters at Maspero, and then they attacked them using the cars and the guns.”(
On Monday, SCAF said it had asked the Egyptian government to form a committee to investigate Sunday’s violence. “All legal measures will be taken against whomever is proven to have incited or been involved in the incidents,” it said in a statement that aired on state TV. “The council doesn’t want to respond to attempts to create a division between the people and the armed forces, which only aims at destroying the country and hindering democracy.”
Late Sunday night, Christians — joined by Muslim friends in a show of solidarity — gathered at Cairo’s St. Mark’s Cathedral, in the orthodox neighborhood of Abbassia. There was an air of resilience and anger from a community that may finally be saying enough is enough. “The priests were telling us, ‘Let’s stay calm, let’s try to console ourselves,’ ” Wagdy says. “But in the cathedral, people were roaring against SCAF. There were chants against the army, calling for them to prosecute and execute its field marshal [Hussein Tantawi.] This isn’t going to be something where you flip the page really easily. Our duty now is to stand as one, Muslim and Christian.”
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TIME Magazine (abridged) See “After Bombing, Egypt’s Christians Worship and Worry.”
