Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I would like to thank all of you for having me here. It's always a pleasure to see all of you again.
Today I will be discussing with you the human rights situation in Egypt and Iraq. I will also touch briefly on the situation of minorities in Iran.
Let's start with Egypt. After the so-called Arab Spring--and I have no idea who started calling it Arab Spring--the world very slowly but surely started to discover that Arab Spring is nothing but a cold deadly winter for the minorities. The situation in Egypt, especially for the Christian minority and the rest of the minorities, is that, as we speak, since the start of the Egyptian revolution on January 25, we have seen and our sources have monitored 12 major attacks against the Christian community in Egypt. When I say 12 major incidents, that doesn't mean that is all the incidents there have been. Our resources indicate that there have been over 36 attacks, but the 12 major attacks were those that were big enough to make it into the media, into the news.
One of the major attacks I will be discussing today was that on a peaceful demonstration on October 9, 2011, which is known as the massacre of Maspero. Before I speak about the massacre of Maspero and what's happened in Maspero, I want to backtrack a little bit.
On September 30 in Aswan province, 20 imams in the mosques around Christian areas made a violent call to attack the Christians there. Three thousand Muslim extremists attacked the Christian villages and towns in the province of Aswan. That happened September 30. After these attacks the Christians were upset, so they came out in a peaceful demonstration on October 9. I just want to be clear that it was a peaceful demonstration on October 9. The Egyptian army faced the demonstrators with live ammunition, and with armed cars drove over the people, killing them. These pictures show some of the footage of the victims of Maspero.