CAIRO: The Egyptian government’s respect for religious freedom has somewhat declined due to the failure to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of increased incidents of sectarian violence, the US Department of State’s 2009 report on international religious freedom said.
The report also cited some positive developments such as allowing Bahais to issue national identification cards containing a dash in the religious affiliation field as well as the Court of Cassation’s ruling granting Kamilia Lotfy, a Coptic Christian, custody of her two sons despite their father’s conversion to Islam.
The International Religious Freedom report is submitted to Congress annually by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the American International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). The report supplements recent human rights reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom with individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom worldwide.
It notes that the Egyptian government has “again failed to redress laws and governmental practices that discriminate against Christians.
The governmental discriminatory practices against Christians, the report continues, include the continuing of authorities to detain and harass some converts from Islam to Christianity and pressuring them to revert to Islam. “One convert told US officials that government authorities had raped her, states the report.
In a section titled “Restrictions on Religious Freedom, the report states that the Egyptian government continues to detain, harass, and deny civil documents to citizens who convert from Islam to Christianity.
This is showcased in the failure to implement a February 2008 Supreme Court of Administrative Justice ruling ordering the government to issue national identity documents to 12 converts to Christianity who were originally Christian but had converted to Islam.
The documents will reportedly not be issued until the Supreme Constitutional Court rules on a number of similar cases.
Furthermore, the discrimination is seen in the governmental decision to cull an estimated 300,000 pigs in the country, which had a severe economic impact on Coptic Christian families who rely on pigs and garbage scavenging for their primary income.
Although the Egyptian constitution guarantees the freedom of belief and the practice of religious rights; according to the report, the government restricts these rights in practice. It cited the February 2008 lower court ruling that interpreted the constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom as inapplicable to Muslim citizens who wish to convert to another religion, in addition to other courts ruling that this article of the constitution does not apply to Bahais.
The report documented incidents where officials prosecuted members of religious groups whose practices are deemed to deviate from mainstream Islamic beliefs and whose activities are alleged to jeopardize communal harmony.
As for the local media, the report said that state television and radio regularly include Islamic programming. Regarding anti-Semitism, the government has advised journalists and cartoonists to avoid anti-Semitism, the report said.
The ban of the Muslim Brotherhood since 1954 was also mentioned.
Members of unorthodox religious belief are also subjected to harassment, for example when security officials at Cairo International Airport prevented Quranist Abdel-Latif Said from traveling to the United States to attend a conference.
In addition, the report also indicated that there are no Christians serving as presidents or deans of the country s 17 public universities.
There have also been forced religious conversion in Egypt, the report said. The 2009 report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) made reference to a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch which asserted that in 2007 there were 89 cases of Egyptian citizens whose religious affiliation had been changed in official documents to Islam against their will, after their fathers converted to Islam.
Even though the court ruling in Lotfy’s case was remarkable, it also ruled that the religious identity of the children should remain Muslim, which fails to address the discriminatory policy of forcibly changing the religious affiliation of Christian children recorded on official documents when their fathers converted to Islam.
Violent sectarian attacks on Copts and Bahais increased, the report said, under the section titled “Status of Societal Respect for Religious Freedom.
It cited the National Council on Human Rights (NCHR)’s annual report, issued in May 2009, which expressed concern over the increase in sectarian tensions in Egypt, including a March 2009 attack on Bahai villagers in Upper Egypt. The NCHR called for new legislations to address all forms of discrimination.
On the other hand, there have been more than 25 cases mentioned which prove that there have been “improvements and positive developments in respect for religious freedom.
