On Christian Copts persecution in Egypt - Letter to the Editor - from Kees Hulsman
Egypt, Politics, 10/28/1998

Editor's note: Drs. Kees Hulsman is the first reporter investigating in el-Koshh after Bishop Wissa cited mass arrests in this village. He reports from Cairo for Dutch Radio and the Reformed Daily of the Netherlands. He is also the deputy secretary general of the Cairo Foreign Press Association.

Finding out the truth is not easy but the extremely inaccurate and highly sensational way The Sunday Telegraph has, in its article of Sunday October 25, 1998, reported about Christians in Egypt ["Egyptian police 'crucify' and rape Christians" by Christina Lamb] certainly doesn't help the reader to understand a complex situation.

Yes, the Egyptian police in el Koshh did arrest lots of people and did torture them during investigation but Lamb's article lost all credibility because it was not only highly exaggerated but also full of fabrications.

The first mistake reported was that the police turned against Christians. That's wrong, the police turned against villagers who happened to be Christians. In other situations the police acted against Muslim villagers, even to the extent that people died during investigations.

Over and over in situations such as this people believe that if they exaggerate, if they scream louder, inflate figures and over stress incidents, their voice will be better heard. That also happened in this village, with local church leaders and human rights activists in and outside Egypt. Each one added more to the story until it became so big that it had little to do any longer with the facts on the ground and the real facts became blurred.

A huge misnomer was Lamb's use of the word 'crucifixion'. Her writing about 'horrific crucifixion rituals' is outrageous. Local Bishop Wissa speaks about people having been tied to wooden posts, walls and windows. This, of course, is horrendous, but it is not crucifixion as used by the Romans to crucify Jesus Christ by nailing him to a cross. This did not happen.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that teenage girls have been raped. Bishop Wissa denies this ever happened. No girls and no women have been raped, but several girls and women reported they were verbally threatened with rape. Again such allegations are extremely despicable but should not be exaggerated.

Also there were no three-months old babies (plural!) beaten as reported by The Sunday Telegraph. Bishop Wissa has gone on the record saying this. He does say, however, that the police beat a 14-month-old child in order to force his mother to speak. Again, this action should not be condoned nor should it be reported inaccurately.

The police behavior was completely out of line. However, there is evidence that the village's Christians have exaggerated many stories because emotions have been running high. This ought to make reporters careful in accepting stories just on face value.

The Sunday Telegraph did not investigate the facts concerning 11-year old Romani Boctor. Bishop Wissa's memorandum of September 13 claims that Romani was hung, tied at his hands, to a ceiling fan (Editor's note: see our investigative report referenced at bottom of page for this to make full sense). I asked Bishop Wissa about this on September 16. He said he was told this by Romani's sister Haneya. When Haneya was asked about the incident she said Romani told her the story but she had not seen this herself. An hour later, Romani, in the company of her mother and a priest, DENIED without hesitation this had happened to him. He did say that he was blindfolded, beaten and tortured with electric shocks. The action is reprehensible.

All of the above-said interviews have been recorded on audio-cassettes and are documented. For this reason, it's known that Romani Boctor's testimony later changed. After I reported about Romani, Bishop Wissa stuck to what he had written saying that Romani had been hanged from a ceiling fan. I suspect that someone put pressure on Romani to change his original testimony. But leave it to Sunday Telegraph to embelish the episode by adding to the horror that Romani was turned upside down!

Bishop Wissa reported, before your article was published but failed to acknowledge, that the government indictment against him was in the process of being withdrawn. Had it remained in force, it could have led, according to experts in Egypt's criminal law, to a maximum of two years imprisonment. This, of course, would have been awful but it certainly does not translate into Bishop Wissa and two of his priests facing the death penalty as The Sunday Telegraph claims.

The Sunday Telegraph story also said the closure of a church in Maadi. But it missed reporting that it was re-opened on October 13 after a bishop obtained a permit (which he did not have before in order to open it).

The entire story has nothing to do with Islamic extremists or Christian persecution as your article claimed. It was an ill trained police who did not know how to respond to a local situation appropriately. They responded with excessive force as they have done in previous cases against Muslims as well.

The story is also one of Christian extremists turning a non-religious issue into an issue which can be used to bolster their false claim that Christians in Egypt are persecuted. Lots of examples exist where Christians have deliberately exaggerated claims for personal gain only.

These Christian extremists play an extremely dangerous game. It furthers negative feelings about Christians in general among Muslims such as Muslim extremists have caused negative feelings about Muslims among a large public in the West. Christian extremists give those who want to target Christians the ammunition to do so which in turn helps to create a downward spiral of distrust.

The article of Lamb has all appearance of having given in to the lobbying of Christian extremists. I believe the press should stay far away of playing into the hands of the radicals of either side. It is regrettable the Sunday Telegraph has not done this.

Drs. Kees Hulsman,
Dutch Radio and the Reformed Daily of The Netherlands reporter in Cairo.
Deputy-secretary general of the Cairo Foreign Press Association.

Previous Stories:
  Mubarak describes British newspaper report as lies about the Egyptian people   (10/27/1998)
  Investigative report: Extreme security measures do not imply Christian persecution in Egypt   (10/3/1998)
  Israel and U.S. use the minority card to pressure Egypt   (9/2/1997)

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