CAIRO: A Cairo Administrative Court postponed on Tuesday its decision in two controversial legal cases concerning the rights of Bahai Egyptians to obtain official documents.
The hearing, which saw a heavy press presence and was attended by several human rights activists, was adjourned till Nov. 13.
“The postponement of the decision did not come as a surprise. The composition of the court’s members changed recently and they will want to hear the voices of all members before delivering a verdict, Hossam Baghat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) told Daily News Egypt.
The first of the two lawsuits concerns 14-year-old twins Imad and Nancy Rauf Hindi who are still unable to obtain computerized birth certificates unless they claim they are either Muslim, Christian or Jewish.
The father of the two children, Dr Raof Hindi, obtained birth certificates for the twins upon their birth in 1993 that recognized their true religious affiliation (Bahaism), but the new certificates only allow citizens to have Christianity, Islam, or Judaism as their religious affiliation.
Currently, the only official Egyptian document that does not require a statement of religious affiliation is the passport.
Birth certificates and identity cards are mandatory and children cannot enroll in public schools without them. Unable to send his children to school in Egypt, Hindi told Daily News Egypt that his twin daughters attend a British school in Libya where their mother works as a physician.
“Of course, I am not happy with today’s decision. It’s all wrong, Hindi said angrily on his way out of the courtroom.
The issue concerning the rights of Egyptian Bahais to obtain official documents has been an ongoing court battle.
In December last year the Supreme Administrative Court ruled in a similar suit that the state has the right to deny Bahai Egyptians identity documents recognizing their religious affiliation. Shortly thereafter, the lawyers of Baghat’s EIPR modified their requests arguing that Bahaii Egyptians should have the right to obtain documents without having to state religious affiliation at all.
“Just give us the right to leave the box for religious affiliation on our official documents blank. We are simply asking the authorities to not force us to state a religion that we are not members of, Shady Samir, a Bahai activist told Daily News Egypt.
The second case concerns 18-year-old Hosni Hussein Abdel-Massih who was recently suspended from his studies in Social Work at Suez Canal University Institute as a result of his inability to obtain an identity card due to his Bahai faith.
“We can’t work, we can’t do anything. I don’t know how to live in my own country, Hussein Hosni, the father of Abdel-Massih told Daily News Egypt.
Egypt is a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, making “protection of citizens from religious discrimination and “education without distinction on any basis, including religion or belief legally binding.
