The Coptic Demonstration:
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Hundreds of Copts (Egyptian Christians) who live in North American and came from as far as Toronto, took to the streets outside the White House to protest the Egyptian governments sponsored persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt. The demonstration took place while President Mubarak of Egypt was inside the White House meeting with President Bush. The Copts outside chanted, "Justice for the blood of our martyrs", referring to the numerous incidents where Copts were killed and the Egyptian governments failed to arrest or convict their killers.
The day started with the local Copts from Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia gathering outside the White House around 9:30 am. The police had already barricaded the area outside the White House to protect the demonstrators. Minutes later, the bus carrying the Canadian Copts arrived around 10:15. The Canadian Copts joined the demonstration carrying the Canadian flag and signs denouncing the persecution and injustices by the Egyptian government. Around 11:30 am, 6 buses carrying Copts from NY and NJ started arriving, which increased the total number of Copts outside the White House significantly. By noon, two more vans carrying the Copts from Pennsylvania (Lanchester and York) arrived and the local Copts who joined the demonstration during their lunch hour brought the total number of Copts to its peak.
President Mubarak was greeted on his way into the White House by the Church
deacons who were carrying black banners and leading the March chanting, "Lord have mercy", "Justice.. Justice", "Christian blood is not cheap" and many other slogans.
Over all, close between 800-1000 Copts took place in this showing of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Egypt. Throughout the day, many American tourist groups, who were visiting the White House, stopped by the demonstration and many participated by holding signs or marching in circles with us. One of these groups, a Church group visiting Washington from California, participated with us by holding a group prayer in a circle for about 10 minutes and had close to 200 members in it.
The demonstration started around 9:30 AM and lasted to 3:30 PM. The demonstration was held in a very Christian manner and showed how the Copts in the Diaspora love their motherland, Egypt. Copts held the American, Egyptian and Canadian flags. This demonstration also sent a message to the Egyptian government and media that no matter how you attempt to intimidate us through your media inside Egypt, we are not going to quit until we get justice and equality.
Egyptian Governments’ Attempts to undermine the Coptic Struggle:
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In an attempt to cover up its polices and practices of persecuting Copts, the Egyptian government was very active in attempting every trick in the book to either stop our demonstration, intimidate us, or lie to the American public about the status of the Copts in Egypt.
Newspaper Ads:
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The Egyptian government took over 4 full pages of advertisement in the Washington Post and the Washington Times in an attempt to show that Copts are not persecuted inside Egypt.
On Sunday, April 1, 2001 the government took two full pages advertisement in the Washington Post. On one page, they put a full picture of President Mubarak and on the other page; they wrote few articles including a translation to H.H Pope Shenoudah’s letter (which he sent to the Copts only) and put that next to a picture of H.H. While the page gave the impression it was written by the Post itself, the top of the page said Paid for Advertisement (the object is obviously to trick the reader in believing the Washington Post wrote the page not the government).
On Monday, April 2, 2001 (the day of the demonstration). The government took two full pages, one in the Washington Post and the other in the Washington Times. The Washington Post page was in colors and had 5 photos of the Coptic members in the Egyptian Parliament and the page read the following "President Mubarak, As Egyptian Christians, we wish to thank you and all those who assist you in making Egypt a Freedom of Expression united country"
The other ad which appeared in the Washington Times was titled "The other side of the story from Copts living inside Egypt", claimed that there were no discrimination against Copts in Egypt and had a picture of a church in it. (A copy of all these ads will be on www.copts.com soon)
Anti Copts Demonstration organized by the Egyptian Embassy:
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As usual, the Egyptian embassy distributed flyers in Mosques asking the Islamic community to come out and support president Mubarak. The goal is to undermine our demonstration. The Egyptian embassy operatives made few attempts with the US Park Police to take over our permission to hold the demonstration on the White House Sidewalk. We stood firm and strong on our rights to be granted this permission (since we applied for it before the embassy operatives did) and were successful in finally receiving the permission after we held a meeting with the proper authorities. The embassy operatives wanted the Park police to grant them permission on the sidewalk and give us an undesired location, to minimize our effect. The pro-Mubarak demonstration was very disappointing since only around 200 people showed up. The alarming facts about the pro-Mubarak demonstration is that it was organized and lead by the Islamic Fundamentalist organizations in the Washington DC area (Egyptians and none Egyptians, including an organization linked to Malaysia’s Jihad Organization). These are the same fundamentalist we saw in Imbaba, Kafer Demian, El-Zawyah El-Hamarah, Abu Qurakas, etc. The Egyptian government, once again, is calling on the aid of the Fundamentalists. This time, however, it is using them to silence the voice of the real Egyptians. Officers of The Egyptian State Security Intelligence attempted to video tape the protestors from a close distance to intimidate people, however, we called on the local police to remove the officers and they were removed from the area. At any rate, I hope they are convinced by now that all their tactics and tricks, that do not involve giving us our full and equal rights in Egypt, will not stop us from exposing them to the world.
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I would like to thank all digest members who took the time to come and show their support. Especial thanks to the Canadian Copts who drove 12 hours to come and demonstrate with us and then drove 12 hours back. The same goes for the Copts of NY, Pennsylvania and NJ for driving about 5 hours each way. Digest members who flew in from Atlanta, Georgia and Florida to participate with us, we are grateful for your zeal. It was so great to meet each one of you in person.
Many thanks to members of US Copts Association, Coptic American Foundation (East Brunswick), American Coptic Association (Jersey City) and Canadian Coptic Association (Toronto) for helping us organize this great turnout.
God bless,
Michael Meunier
