Washington / United States

The Freedom House shows much concern about what is happening in Egypt, China and Vietnam, not paying the least attention to Israel’s practices. Also other groups are mentioned in the article. The conclusion of the author is that there are many slanders, some people are really making money out of this.

Claims made in the western press about the rape of Christian girls in Egypt, and forcing them to become Muslims with the allegation that this takes place with the blessing of the police stirs and angry response from the authorities and Christians.

Is President Clinton capable of achieving what he demanded yesterday? He gave a severe warning to President Milosevic, saying the latter should comply with all NATO conditions or he would lose Kosovo. In short, the allied forces will occupy, if not the entire country, then at least the trouble spots.

I ask Muslims, where are you? How long will you succumb, submit, be passive? Can’t you do something! Clinton threatens and warns. Why must you submit? This shocks me for patience is not enough. We all knew beforehand that the NATO war would lead to nothing. Meanwhile, you Muslims continue to look to right and left, in confusion.

Cypriots are obsessed by centuries-old animosities and who remain loyal to religious and ethnic lines drawn as far back as the Middle Ages, just like the peoples of the Balkans. The apparent obsession with religion as the ultimate decider of who is friend, and who foe.
It places Cyprus on a par with those radical Islamist zealots throughout the world who are apt to detect the hand of "neo-crusaders" in every conflict in which Muslims are involved.

The article outlines some of the events that happened when an Egyptian delegation to the United States met with an American delegation there to discuss some of the claims made by Coptic groups there concerning persecution of Copts in Egypt.

Since he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, in September 1997, the Amman-based chief of Hamas’ political bureau, Khalid Misha’al, has been living under tight security.

Misha’al knows all too well that he is still likely to be targeted by the Israelis.

"We know that this is an unbalanced war [against Israel], but resistance will continue. The only way to stop resistance is to end occupation, and this is a natural right. Nobody can prevent a people from fighting occupation, and even if they kill some of Hamas’ leaders, new ones will emerge. We [Palestinians] have been struggling since the 1920s, and that is the way it has been. No one has been able to end our resistance."

The article deals with what went wrong in reporting about the issue of el-Koshh. Many Egyptians, and definitely the Egyptian authorities, would like nothing more then to forget the issue of el-Koshh but will it be forgotten?

The arrest two weeks ago and subsequent release of Hafez Abu Se’ada, secretary general of the EOHR and the interrogation of Mustafa Zeidan, EOHR-lawyer, continue to focus international attention on the status of human rights groups in this country.

A TV station from Qatar organized a live debate on the American Freedom of Religious Persecution Law and el-Koshh between Mustafa Bakri, editor in chief of Al-Osboa newspaper, and Maurice Sadek, president of the Center for Human Rights and National Unity.

Sadek, who defended the recently accepted Freedom from Religious Persecution Law in the USA, had the lead in the debate. Bakri’s main points of critique was American hypocrisy in dealing selectively with human rights. He criticized Sadek for taking individual cases of discrimination and claiming this is rule in Egypt.

Canceling its first rejection, the Sunday Telegraph agreed to publish the statement of the Egyptian Coptic education-investor Reda Edward which refuted the paper’s allegations of Copts’ persecution in Egypt. The paper accepted the statement in a form of paid advertisement.