“#Maspero stand to start in just under an hour. If you're against what happened to the #EdfuChurch and many other churches, try to be there,” announced supporter Sarah Naguib (@SarahNgb) on Twitter on Sunday afternoon. A tweet retweeted by many to show their support to Coptic protesters, not knowing that a violent attack was in order around the place their voices' chose to break free. The place they thought would finally speak up with their own unaltered words. It all started on October 1, when extremists burned down the 71-year-old Mar Guirgus church in Merinab village in the city of Edfu, located in the southern Aswan governorate of Egypt. The Copts didn't demand much, all they wanted was to rebuild their church after it was demolished and get the equality they've been longing for since Mubarak's regime (closely linked to the church bombing that occurred on New Year's Eve). The Copts also demanded the passage of a law that regulates the building of worship areas without the baffling and time consuming paperwork, and another law which condemns and criminalizes attacks on places of worship. Thinking they had enough legit reasons to speak up to the SCAF angrily about, they marched last Tuesday in the streets from Cairo's Shoubra district to #Maspero, Egypt's governmental state television and radio building. They beautifully chanted “Muslim, Christian, one hand” and expressed their freedom to coexist in a fully civil Egyptian society, until the brutality of the army and police forces proved stronger by dispersing the protesters after plans of a sit in. However, police/army's barbarity on October 5 was not enough to put the protesters aspirations down, on the contrary, it gave them a more valid reason to fight for their forgotten liberty. Calls for a new march, #maseera, was scheduled again on Sunday around #Maspero‘s premises; the numbers even larger and the support was more significant from both the old and the young. “It's either we all live happily, or we all get tried by the military,” chanted @SarahNgb and both Coptic and Muslim protesters along the road before they were cordoned in by the military police forces who possessed wooden sticks. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, rocks were thrown on the #maseera while it was marching and that people during the attack started to chant “The people demand the removal of Tantawi” and “Where's the media? We are here,” denouncing the media's decision to ignore them. Ironically, an hour before the attack, #Tantawi decided to stop referring civilians to military courts except in cases stated by military law; a decision that was decided after the SCAF's generals promised they would look into lifting the emergency law a week and a half ago. The attack became more vigorous when @RamyYaacoub and others reported on Twitter that gunshots were heard and tear gas was used again, bringing back memories of January 28, 2011, or as it is called the “Day of Wrath.” #Maspero started using their ugly media weapon by implementing some counter revolution tactics that they've been quite prominent for since the Mubarak era. After citing an awful reputation during the revolution, #Maspero‘s news claimed “#copts” were attacking the police/army forces responsible for protecting the building. They struck again by asking the “loyal” and “respectful” Egyptian citizens to save and aid the army against their fight against the #copts, leading to a the possibility of a sectarian clash due to disgusting media maneuvers used by #Maspero. This was shown in one of the tweets when @AmrGunner1 tweeted that people in Omraneya were actually looking for any Copt to murder after #maspero‘s news regarding the clashes. Even worse, the state tv was bold enough to rarely announce that some of the “martyrs” were actually civilians, but rather kept reporting that the martyrs were actually from the army's side. Videos of army tanks stepping on protesters were also not shown, bringing up flashbacks of the same methods used when police cars used to run over protesters and kill them. While #Maspero was too busy pushing biased news, the military police took it too far and invaded some live broadcasting news channels, causing a semi-blackout in the clashes and hiding the truth regarding what was really happened. Some Twitter users argued that #Maspero should have been burned down or controlled by the revolutionaries during the revolution to ensure their voices were heard to the hearts of the Egyptian population and especially low and middle-class citizens. 24 dead and over 200 injured in Sunday's events as quoted by the Health Minister. Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and generals from the military were called for a meeting and therefore a curfew from 2 am until 7 am was imposed in #Tahrir and Downtown. Support the stances or not, Sunday marks one of the worst days in the revolution. Read more of Sunday's events by Bikyamasr.com ** Menna Alaa can be found on twitter: @TheMiinz BM
