The Nation

Plight of Egypt’s Copts inspires moment of unity

With Egyptian human rights organisations estimating 93,000 Christians have fled Egypt since March, with 14,000 of them seeking sanctuary in Australia, there was a rare piece of bipartisanship in federal parliament last week as the House of Representatives took a break from bickering over refugees.

The house voted unanimously on a private member’s motion to acknowledge the plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christians and called on both the United Nations and the Egyptian government to protect their rights.

The vote was timely, coming just days after several dozen people, mostly Christians, were reported killed and hundreds injured after Egyptian security forces forcibly dispersed a rally by Coptic Christians in Cairo protesting against recent attacks on churches by Muslim extremists.

Ironically, though, the timing had much to do with the federal government deciding to abort its ill-fated plan to put to the vote legislation sanctioning the diverting of asylum seekers to Malaysia.

The resumption of the debate on the plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christians, adjourned in September, was thus sandwiched between debate on a national standard for fertiliser products and discusssion of a rebate for export services fees charged by the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service.

Craig Kelly, the Liberal member for the Sydney seat of Hughes who had introduced the motion, said the situation could not be more serious, both for Egypt and the world – “for as the Copts go, so may go the entire Middle East”.

“If a Christian minority cannot live in a country with a Muslim majority population without suffering persecution and institutionalised discrimination our future looks bleak,” he said. “There is a real danger of this Arab spring falling into dark Islamic winter.”

Egypt’s Coptic Christians are the largest non-Muslim minority in the Middle East, comprising about 10 per cent of Egypt’s population of 83 million. About 90 per cent belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria; about 200,000 belong to the Coptic Catholic Church.

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