Reem Leila reports on attempts to end the sectarian tensions which have rocked the village of Al-Nahda A 16-member fact-finding committee formed of members of the People's Assembly Human Rights Committee visited Al-Nahda village, close to Alexandria, on 13 February in an attempt to uncover the causes of sectarian clashes that erupted on 27 January. The conflict between Muslim and Coptic villagers started after rumours began to circulate of an affair between Murad Guirgis, a Coptic tailor, and a Muslim woman. Several houses and shops owned by Copts were burned down in the ensuing violence though the house of Guirgis was left untouched. Fearing for the safety of Coptic families the conciliatory committee set up to resolve the problem agreed that they would temporarily leave the village until the situation calmed down. The families of Guirgis and of Khalil Suleiman Abskharoun, aka Abu Suleiman, himself a member of the committee, subsequently left Al-Nahda along with several other families. Abu Suleiman's two sons had fired gunshots in an attempt to prevent attacks on houses and shops owned by Christians. The committee agreed that all the families would return to their homes after tensions dissipated. Elders of the village guaranteed their safe departure. The fact-finding committee included Amr El-Shobki, Ihab Ramzi, the youngest female Coptic Assembly member Marian Malak, Mustafa El-Naggar and Ahmed Sherif El-Hawari. After several hours of negotiations the committee, along with Alexandria Governor Osama El-Fouli, two priests, a delegation representing the Maspero Youth Union and representatives of families who had left the village, succeeded in ending tensions that had developed since the rumours first began to circulate. Ramzi criticised the media which had characterised the crisis as the forced eviction of Coptic families. "Copts were temporarily taken out of the village to ease escalating tensions. They will soon return to their homes," said Ramzi. The committee, he added, had established that Abu Suleiman agreed that leaving with his sons was the best course, and that it was Abu Suleiman who suggested Guirgis depart the village temporarily. The PA committee stressed in a statement that what had happened could not be described as a forced eviction, a position with which Coptic priest Bokhtor Nashed, who took part in the negotiations, agreed. "To describe what happened as the forced eviction of Copts is to misrepresent events," says Nashed. "The fact is that this is a temporary departure. None of the journalists who wrote inflammatory stories of the incident visited the village or properly investigated." The PA committee statement also said that a criminal investigation of the whole incident will soon begin and declared appreciation of the conciliatory committee's attempts to contain the situation while condemning the villagers who had broken the law. MP Emad Gad complains that assembly speaker Saad El-Katatni was slow to approve an investigation into the events that rocked the village. "I presented an interpellation to investigate the incident but El-Katatni initially rejected it," says Gad. Only when the incident received blanket coverage in the media following a march organised by Maspero Youth Union was an investigation launched. "El-Katatni then responded positively to avoid embarrassment and commissioned the assembly's Human Rights Committee to conduct an urgent meeting to investigate the incident," claims Gad. Within days El-Katatni announced that the sectarian clashes would be investigated by committee rather than debated in the assembly's televised general sessions. The reason, he said, was to avoid inflaming sectarian tensions. The PA committee has issued recommendations that Gad believes should be swiftly implemented. They include ending the forced displacement and prosecuting anyone accused of spreading instability and igniting sectarian tension among the village's population. Unfortunately, says Gad, recourse to conciliation committees often means the real culprits are not penalised. He is demanding that a criminal investigation be launched, and has called on all concerned parties to ensure "the law is enforced in a transparent manner and culprits are punished for criminal behaviour without any pressure twisting the results of the investigation." The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) issued a statement in which it highlighted the urgent need for an independent judicial probe into crimes that were committed in the village. EIPR criticised the police and army for not protecting houses and shops belonging to Copts which were burned and looted. The initiative's statement pointed out that deliberate arson is a criminal offence that is not covered by customary reconciliation and that a criminal investigation be launched immediately. That investigation should not, says EIPR, shirk from prosecuting members of the security forces if it was found they had failed in their duties.
