Dozens of Coptic Christians protest outside King Tut exhibit
Crossposted on Marathon Pundit.
Yesterday, in my second Egyptian post of the day, I made the point that protesting outside the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs exhibit about the plight of jailed Egyptian blogger Alaa was definitely fair game, since the government of Egypt is collecting about half the gate receipts from this lucrative show.
As I was typing that post, a group of Coptic Christians were outside Chicago's Field Museum drawing the attention of the plight of the members of their faith in Egypt.
According to the Chicago Tribune, many of the picketers came from three Chicago area Coptic churches: St. Mark in Burr Ridge, St. Mary in Palatine, and St. George in Monee.
From the Chicago Tribune, free registration may be required:
Discrimination and human rights abuses against Coptic Christians remain widespread in Egypt, according to a report released this month by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Copts face societal intolerance, and Egyptian authorities have been accused of being lax in protecting their rights.
No Christians serve as governors, presidents or deans of public universities, and very few Christians hold positions in the upper ranks of the security services and the armed forces, Coptic community leaders said. A 14th Century law bars Christians not only from building new churches, they said, but also from performing necessary maintenance on structures without government approval.
Recent violence in Coptic churches in Egypt has renewed fears of escalating religious strife. In April, a Muslim man was accused of knife attacks at three Coptic Christian churches in Alexandria that left one man dead and about a dozen others wounded. The incident unleashed three days of rioting on the same weekend Christians were observing Orthodox Palm Sunday.
Anissa Essam Hassouna, an official with the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs and part of the Egyptian delegation visiting Chicago, said Thursday that the government has "neglected" the issue of how Copts are treated in Egypt but "is trying to do better."
Well, Egypt has to do a lot better. Besides the mistreatment of the Copts, last month Egyptian blogger Alaa was jailed while attending a peaceful protest. He's still incarcerated.
People shelling out at least $31 per ticket to see the King Tut exhibit (again, about half goes back to Egypt) deserve to learn about Alaa.
Related posts: Egypt, King Tut, and blogger Alaa
Alaa in prison: Pajamas Media Blog Week in Review #4 follow-up
Abusive comments will be deleted.
UPDATE May 29: TigerHawk found one of the few MSM articles to cover Alaa's plight. Along with Sandmonkey, TH has been aggressively following this story.
11 comments:
John, what do you want President Bush to do to address the Egypt's human rights abuses?
anon 12:24,
Big Pharoh's thoughts on what Bush has already done, and should do:
Mubarak was definitely on his way to consolidate a fifth term using the usual shame referendums and he and his party officials brushed aside any possibility for amending the constitution to allow multiple candidates to run against him. In other words, the government wanted to maintain the status quo and didn't realize back then that the US and Europe stopped playing using pre-911 rules.
Now, what is the way forward? I think enough pressure was leveled on the regime. I believe the boat was rocked hard enough to trigger some change here and I do hope that this change will not be huge enough to remove Mubarak from power because this is something I hate to see during this stage. I also hate it when some Western commentators treat Mubarak as if he is Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi. He might be disliked by many disgruntled Egyptians but he is definitely not despised. I still consider him to be a man of peace who has managed to establish friendly relations with the 4 corners of the earth.
I believe the US should move ahead in improving its relationship with Mubarak while in the same time telling him that he must allow liberal democratic voices to grow. Enough internal and external pressure was put on the system here. Egypt is an ancient old country, with too much pressure, it will break apart and we'll all go down.
As for we bloggers, and especially those of us who claim to hold Liberal and Progressive values, the best thing we can do... our duty really... is to advocate for Liberals, Progressives, and Secularists in the Egypt, the Middle East, and the world.
Going around saying we're sorry for the US to tyrants is no way to go.
It's betrayal.
I was planning on going to the exhibit this weekend, thanks for the info. I will certainly make other plans. Hopefully, more people will hit them where it hurts the most...
I'd hazard a guess that the significant portion of funding goes only to the Antiquities department. Of course, we could all boycott, watch as antiquities in Egypt fall into disarray and then only be able to see Egyptian relics on our Chinese-made TVs. China, of course, does not violate human rights in any fashion nor do they receive any significant portion of the money used to buy Chinese-made goods.
I still plan on going to the exhibit because basically life sucks all over the world, especially where we get most of our cheap goods, cheap foods and natural resources.
Middle Eastern Christians have a hard time all over. They are persecuted all over the Muslim world and in Israel. It is a shame.
We should stand behind the Copts. And the Sudanese Christians also.
It is racism AND anti-Christian and there is a lot of silence.
Good decision, Cynthia.
John,
Do you care about human rights abuses in non-muslim countries?
Do you see this as part of your bold and noble struggle agianst the rising tide of as Bush terms it, "isalmo-facism," or do you just like to pile on muslim countries?
A wiser person than me wrote that virtually all the world's conflicts involve either Muslims fighting each other or Muslims fighting kefirs (non-believers).
Andrew Sullivan, a difficult man to pin down politically, coined the term "Islamofascism."
Last fall, President Bush used the word for the first time in a speech, which National Review noted with surprise. To my knowledge, he hasn't used the word since.
The only Muslim countries that come close to having functioning democracies are Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Mauritiania. Most of the others are are brutal dictatorships run by some thug with a mustache.
On Marathon Pundit, I've posted on other brutal countries, such as North Korea, China, and Belarus.
Nice try, anon.
Albania I missed. Malaysia is a thug state that openly discriminates against its most productive citizens, its Chinese minority.
Bosnia has a plurality of Muslims, but it isn't a Muslim-majority nation.
Bangladesh has elections, but is plagued by sub-Sahara Africa level corruption. Same with Yemen.
Kosova is a de facto independent state, Democratic yes, but the book is still open on that unhappy place.
A wiser person than me wrote that virtually all the world's conflicts involve either Muslims fighting each other or Muslims fighting kefirs (non-believers).
Well that's a total load of crap if I've ever seen one. So of the world's conflicts that have recently been in the news, how many of these involve Muslims? Nepal? Sri Lanka? Congo? East Timor? Uganda? Of other major conflicts going on around the globe, their are very few that you can attribute to Islamic Extremeism. In some places like Chechnya, and Sudan, religion plays a role in the conflict, but nobody would say that the conflict is exclusively caused by religious difference.
I'm also sure their are just as many undemocratic non-Islamic countries as their are undemocratic Islamic countries.
Do you agree with Bush here, are do you accept the notiont that "certain people can't self govern"
There is a notion in some parts of the world that certain people can't self-govern; certain religions don't have the capacity of self-government. And that condemns people to tyranny. And I refuse to accept that point of view.
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