| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Africa North | |
| Egypt: U.N. Officials Warn of Attacks on Christians | |
| 2013-08-16 | |
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... officials warned Thursday that Egypt's Christian minority faces reprisal attacks after the army's brutal crackdown on supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi. Coptic Christians make up between six and ten percent of Egypt's population and their community has been the target of sectarian violence in the past. Already on Wednesday several Egyptian churches were burned by mobs of Morsi's Islamist supporters, angered by the deadly police assault on their sit-in demonstrations in Cairo. In a statement, Adama Dieng, U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and Jennifer Welsh, U.N. Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, condemned the violence by the security forces. But they also noted "with alarm that a number of Christian churches and institutions have been targeted, including in the provinces of Assiut, Fayoum, Minya and Sohag, reportedly in retaliation to the incidents in Cairo." "We call all political and social actors to abandon strategies of confrontation, engage constructively to ensure respect for diversity, and take all possible steps to facilitate peaceful resolution of disputes in the country," the authors said. | |
| Posted by:Fred |