Good afternoon, Chairman. Thank you for the invitation. I am honoured to appear before the members of the subcommittee on human rights to give testimony concerning the plight of Copts in Egypt.
The situation in Egypt concerning Copts is a little bit complicated, and I would like to clarify a few things here. First of all, there is no change of regime. Since January 26, the regime of Mr. Mubarak has continued. Technically, many of the military were appointed by Mr. Mubarak 20 years ago and they served him. The military that at this moment rules the country is concerned about its own interests and protecting the old regime.
January 26 was a great event for Egypt. Unfortunately, based upon the culture that started back in 1952 that was co-opted by Mr. Nasser, followed by Sadat and then by Mubarak, they increased the teaching of Islam in Egypt. Mubarak used to play good guy and bad guy. When he came to the United States or Canada or visited western countries, he posed as a peacemaker while he was putting oil on the fire and killing Copts, using his regime's police fascist system.
The discrimination against Copts in Egypt is over 1,400 years long and started back in 651, when Muslims occupied Egypt. The situation now is worse. I'm not trying to make a comparison with Mr. Mubarak's regime. Mubarak was bad for Copts and also for people against his regime. But right now the country is running without any control or any law. The system is going to protect Mubarak. This comedy situation of bringing Mubark to trial is in bad taste. They are trying to tease the western countries by showing they have a new democratic system, but they do not.
At this moment, Copts are suffering more. I would like to explain what happened on October 9 against the peaceful demonstration of Copts that ended in killing, as reported in The New York Times, 56 Copts in Tahrir Square. If we look back, between January 26 and October 9, the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the Salafi Muslims demonstrated 15 to 20 times and the military never stood against them. It never oppressed them. It never attacked them.
The demonstration of October 9 was concerned with a church called St. George's, located in upper Egypt in a county called El-Marinab. This church, after various requests to be rebuilt—because there was danger for people who went there to pray—got authorization for rebuilding. But because of the doctrine of Islam that doesn't allow the rebuilding of a church once it is demolished or destroyed, they attacked the church.
The police stood there watching the attack against the church without moving a finger.
The Copts finally decided to protest, and ten days before they protested in Tahrir Square they were attacked by the police, and various protesters went to hospital. I believe three of them were killed by the police system.
On October 9 they moved from Chubra about 2.5 kilometres toward Tahrir with no problem at all. It was peaceful. They were singing Christian songs and carrying crosses. They were asking the actual regime to protect their right to worship whatever they believed in. But the Egyptian media started to charge the Muslims against the Christians, saying on the Egyptian TV and radio that they needed Muslims to go out to protect the army. Once the protesters reached Tahrir Square, armoured cars and tanks started to go against them with the intent to kill them.
I am in possession of various pictures of the tragedy that I refused to show to anybody. You can see people with their bodies cut in half. Whatever happened there at that time needs to go to the International Criminal Court against Mr. Tantawi. I hope, Mr. Chairman, you can bring this request to the Canadian government. We need Mr. Tantawi to stand in front of the ICC for what happened on October 9.
Copts in Egypt, like our friend Nabil, are still suffering from the invasion. They are still using the Umrani decree from the barbaric Bedouin law that does not allow Christians to have any rights. In fact, the word “dhimmi” that Muslims use a lot means a person who doesn't have any rights or responsibilities.
In 2011, I believe the world has to stand up and understand that there are more than 17 million Christians in Egypt suffering discrimination and persecution. The Muslim plan is to cleanse the Middle East of Christians.
In a couple of weeks Egypt will be holding an election. All the world believes that this will be a democratic election. I believe it will be another electoral fraud by Mr. Tantawi to keep his people in place to protect himself and his interests. In fact, at the beginning of this month there was a new article about the constitution explaining that the army is above any law. The army has to have all its financing and decisions, and no one, politically speaking--neither Egyptians nor the Egyptian Parliament--in the future can decide what the army will do.
A few things occurred after January 25. We see that there were various sharia courts in Egypt. They cut one of the ears off a Christian man, because rumour said he had a relationship with a Muslim lady. Another young man was thrown from a fourth-floor balcony for the same reason.
Finally, there was a 17-year-old kid named Nabil Labib. He was killed inside a school just because his Muslim teacher asked him to cover the tattooed cross on his right hand. Nabil refused to cover the cross. He was attacked by his teacher and other Muslim students. The only information that we have is that he ran to the bathroom and they followed him and after that they took him to the principal's office. Nobody tried to do anything. The ambulance arrived after one hour and took the dead body to the hospital.
Finally, just to indicate that the same regime of Mubarak is still working in Egypt, another Copt called Maikel Nabil, a blogger, wrote that he didn't accept the military regime ruling Egypt. He was taken into custody and on October 25 the current regime acted the same way as Mr. Mubarak and Sadat and Nasser. They took Maikel Nabil and they put him inside a psychiatric hospital.
What's going to happen in the future to the Christian Copts, God only knows. What I would like to ask you here is for the international community to be very active politically, economically, and maybe militarily against the Egyptian regime, and to protect not only the Copts there but also the other people who are against the regime, the secular people who are suffering.
There must also be control of the aid that Canada, the United States, and European countries send to Egypt, because a lot of this aid is going in directions other than where it was directed to go.
Lastly, I would like to ask the chairman about two ways of controlling immigration by western countries such as the United States and Canada. The first one is to generate a law to help Copts who would like to escape from Egypt for their safety. It also means the other side of this law has to be controlling who from the Muslim community is coming, so that we don't open our doors to those who come to our western countries with another intent, not to work and to find a better life, but to come here to force Islamization and sharia law in the west.
I don't know if I still have time, but I sense that I am out of time. I don't want to take advantage of anybody.