Coptic priest murdered; protective fences around monasteries torn down

Several thousand Coptic Christians returned to Tahrir Square Wednesday evening to protest against new attacks on members of this religious minority in Egypt. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) in Göttingen reported on Thursday that demonstrators protested the Army's violent destruction of protective fences around Coptic monasteries and concomitant attacks which left several Copts were seriously wounded. The protests were also directed against the murder of a Coptic priest in Upper Egypt.

The body of Father David Boutros was found on Tuesday in his apartment in the Schatb hamlet, near the city of Asyut in Upper Egypt. Boutros was apparently killed on the previous weekend; he had stab wounds on his neck, back and abdomen. The body was not discovered until after Boutros had failed to appear for mass two days in a row. Hundreds of Christians protested in front of his house, which led to an increased police presence in the area.

"Even after the fall of Mubarak, the Coptic minority in Egypt is in need of protection," said the head of the Africa section at the STP, Ulrich Delius. Following the collapse of the Mubarak regime and the withdrawal of protective security forces, fences were erected in mid-February around several monasteries in remote wadis for protection from attacks. But these have been destroyed by the army.

The St. Bishoy monastery, 110 kilometers northwest of Cairo in the el-Natroun wadi, put up a safety fence after having been attacked on 13 February 2011 by five prisoners who had escaped from a nearby jail. On 21 February the Egyptian army threatened to destroy the fence if it was not dismantled within two days. When the monks refused, the army tore the fence down. Eyewitnesses reported that soldiers fired on the monastery and on the monks with submachine guns for 30 minutes. Two monks and six Coptic workers suffered gunshot wounds; three monks and one Coptic attorney were arrested.

A similar incident occurred in the monastery of St. Macarius, 92 kilometers north of Cairo in the el-Rayan wadi. Here, too, monks had erected a protective fence after six of the monastery's residents were seriously wounded in a robbery. Soldiers tore down the fence, claiming it had been put up illegally.