THE KILLING of 24 Coptic Christian marchers by Egyptian troops on Sunday is a heavy body blow not only to the vulnerable Coptic community but to all of the country’s adherents of democratic transformation. Not surprisingly, and not without cause, many of the latter have seen the massacre as clear evidence that the army has decisively turned its back on the spring revolution and on its promised handover of power to civilian rule, now scheduled for as much as two years after parliamentary elections due next month.
Eyewitness accounts of firing by soldiers on a peaceful march of Copts and liberal Muslims, followed by the repeated running down of demonstrators by armoured cars driven at them at speed, have posed sharp questions of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), which assumed executive power in February.
The military blamed “unknown” provocateurs, and arrested 25 people, a mix of Muslims and Christians, for acts of “sabotage” and attacks on both soldiers and army property. But, at the very least, what occurred reflected a complete breakdown in army discipline, facilitated by rogue officers in league with extremist Salafist militants. At worst, it was a conscious attempt by the army leadership to foment sectarian strife and instability as a pretext for putting off civilianisation. Now the military’s establishment of a “fact-finding committee” will satisfy only the most gullible. Only an independent civilian inquiry, the demand of human rights groups and the leading Christian party, can suffice.
The latest killings took place against the background of escalating violence against the Copts – some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 80 million population – and specifically the arson attack on St George’s Church in Aswan on September 30th. The fall of Mubarak has seen Salafist mobs step up their sectarian attacks with apparent impunity, courtesy of a discredited and unreformed police force. Clearly the army is no protector either.
The attacks have compounded Coptic fears that Islamist gains in the forthcoming elections will reinforce the petty discrimination that their community has faced, most notably over the construction of churches and the refusal of the authorities to prosecute their attackers. Many are fearful the community may end up sharing the fate of Iraqi Christians, half of whom have fled into exile after the removal of Saddam Hussein and the Islamist pogroms that followed. The many young Copts who joined the revolution with enthusiasm are finding its consequences bittersweet.