The Coptic Orthodox Church has come under fire from human rights groups who accuse it of abducting and holding the wife of a priest against her will, Amira Howeidy reports The curious case of Camilia Shehata, the 26- year-old wife of a priest in Upper Egypt who fled her home on 18 July only to be found by the police and returned to the church a few days later, continues to reverberate in unexpected directions. What was otherwise a normal marital quarrel resulting in a wife leaving her home turned into a sectarian issue. Coptic Christians took to the church and held angry demonstrations, blaming Shehata's disappearance on Muslims, whom they accused of converting her to Islam. Although the church announced that Shehata was not abducted by Muslims and left her husband's home of her own free will, the issue snowballed. Two weeks later, and amid the deafening silence of the church on Shehata's whereabouts and wellbeing, rumours that she had indeed converted to Islam circulated nationwide after an image of the priest's wife clad in black niqab (head to toe cover), most probably photo-shopped, appeared online. The tale of Camilia Shehata evolved from being a misunderstood story of a disgruntled wife into a sectarian issue exacerbated by both the security apparatus and the church. Images of angry bearded Muslims demonstrating with posters of the niqab -clad Shehata, demanding her "release" from the church, were front page material in some of Monday's independent newspapers. In response, unnamed "church sources" close to Pope Shenouda were quoted in both Al-Masry Al-Yom and Al-Dostour newspapers saying that the Pope would not permit Shehata to make any public appearances even if demonstrations were held daily. The pope, claimed the sources, was adamant in his refusal to bow to pressure. The issue assumed a human rights dimension when the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) held a hasty press conference on 30 August to mark the International Day of the Disappeared. After listing four cases of what ANHRI Director Gamal Eid described as "enforced disappearance" in Egypt, "quite often with the assistance of the security apparatus" under the emergency law, he mentioned the Shehata case in a cautious attack on the church. "We are not concerned about whether or not she converted," said Eid, "but about her disappearance, which appears to have been against her will." It is unacceptable, he added, that we know from the church that it is keeping an adult, law abiding citizen in seclusion against that person's will. Although he chose his words carefully Eid, a secular human rights defender, did not shy away from conceding that the case raises "sensitive and difficult" issues because it touches the raw nerve of Muslim-Coptic tension. "The church, Al-Azhar and the State Security apparatus operate within the laws of the Egyptian state and we cannot turn a blind eye to any human rights violations associated with any of them," he said. "Our emphasis here is entirely focussed on Shehata's illegal confinement, not on the sectarian aspects of the case. When the church says it will keep her wherever it pleases, that's called abduction." A statement issued by ANHRI on Monday demanded that the public prosecutor conduct an investigation into the whereabouts of Shehata and four other cases, including that of Libyan dissident Mansour Al-Kikhya who disappeared while in Cairo in 1993, and of Al-Ahram journalist Reda Helal who disappeared in 2003. Present during the press conference were the parents of 23-year-old Alexandrian medical student Mohamed Saad Turk who went for a walk on 26 July 2009 never to return. His father, Saad Turk, told media representatives that he met with senior state security officials who summoned him and implied that his son was in custody though no one would say explicitly that he had been detained. "We know from eyewitnesses and from the information we acquired from police sources that Mohamed is being held somewhere in Damanhour [70km east of Alexandria] though no one has explained to us why he is being held," said Turk. "This has been going on for 14 months and still we have no idea why." There are no available statistics on the number of forced disappearances in Egypt although human rights groups believe them to be in the thousands. Speaking at the press conference, media figure and political activist Bothaina Kamel made an analogy between the pain inflicted upon Turk's parents as a result of their son's disappearance and the case of the 28-year-old Alexandrian Khaled Said, beaten to death by police officers last June. "One would have imagined that no pain could be worse than that faced by Khaled's mother who has had to grapple with his brutal death, the repeated exhumation of his body and the final image of his grave," said Kamel. "But at least she knows where he is while Turk's parents daily face the trauma of getting through their lives not knowing where their son is." The problem with "enforced disappearances" in Egypt, noted Kamel, is that "the disappeared never, ever, surface". While the above cases are seen by rights groups as one outcome of the emergency law -- which grants the security apparatus the power to detain people without judicial sanction -- Camilia Shehata's situation is very different. Eid admits that there is no evidence that hers is a case of enforced disappearance -- the church has announced she is under its protection -- but argues that in the absence of evidence that proves otherwise one can only assume that she is being deprived of her liberty. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has also taken issue with Shehata's disappearance. It issued a statement on 25 July criticising both the church and security agencies for forcing an adult citizen, against her will, to be handed over to the church in violation of the constitution which stipulates that personal freedom is a natural and protected right. According to EIPR Director Hossam Bahgat, the security agencies thought that by transporting Shehata to the church it had pre-empted a sectarian face-off. The opposite is true, he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "It already aggravated an already disturbing atmosphere of sectarian tension." He said that since the photo-shopped posters of Shehata in strict Islamic attire appeared on the Internet, prompting widespread allegations that she had converted to Islam and was being held prisoner in a convent, his organisation has received a flood of e-mails from Muslims demanding information on the safety and whereabouts of "Muslim sister Camilia". Attempts by the Weekly to get a response from the church were unsuccessful. The incident recalls the story of then 48-year- old Wafaa Constantine, the wife of another priest who indicated her intention to convert to Islam, or had already converted, in 2004. She, too, was forcibly returned to the church by the police. The incident provoked angry demonstrations by Copts who threw stones at the police. The Pope went into seclusion to protest the general grievances of the Coptic community in Egypt, heightening tensions over an already inflammatory situation that observers argue needs to be addressed more seriously than the current church-police partnership dynamic allows. According to Samir Morqos, an independent Coptic intellectual, the situation today smacks of "crisis for everyone, the church and the state". "The state was complicit in handing over an adult Egyptian citizen to the church. All the concerned parties are accomplices to this," he told the Weekly. "The entire affair has been dealt with too lightly [by both sides], without any understanding of its repercussions." Another demonstration is reportedly being planned on Friday at Al-Nour Mosque, adjacent to the Coptic Cathedral in Abbasiya, east of Cairo. It will echo the Coptic demonstrations staged in front of the cathedral in July when Camilia Shehata first disappeared. Whether or not events will snowball into a more critical situation is still to be seen. But for Bahgat, the planned Muslim demonstrations -- provoked by the "misguided" approach of both the church and police to the entire affair -- is a "very negative" development. "Using mosques to demonstrate against the church could very easily and quickly lead to an escalation. Given the vulnerability of Christians to violence all over the country it is very worrying." EIPR has documented 52 incidents of violence against Christians from January 2008 to January 2010. Shehata's story also begs a question Morqos finds compelling: how does the church relate to Egypt's Copts? Are they a sect or Coptic citizens with rights? In other words, "when Camilia disappeared was it viewed as a 'Coptic' disappearances or that of an Egyptian citizen?" he asks. "I would much rather have seen Muslims and Christians demonstrating against the scandalous nationwide power cuts, the wheat shortage and water cuts. What's happening is very painful," says Morqos.
