Sectarian violence in Egypt has become extremely dangerous and could spiral out of control the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) announced yesterday as it released the results of a study. "We fear the emergence of a wave of violence, even if it is triggered a trivial cause, that will gain momentum and simultaneously spread across different areas of the country," said Hossam Bahgat, EIPR's executive director, during a press conference. EIPR, a prominent human rights organisation, distributed its new study analysing all 53 known incidents of sectarian violence in the country from January 2008 to January 2010. All incidents took place between Muslims and Christians, with the exception of one incident of violence by Muslims against Baha'is, a minority religious group which has struggled for legal recognition in the country. The study, carried by the German news agency (dpa), showed that most incidents of sectarian violence are concentrated in southern Egypt. The majority were escalations of minor conflicts or collective retribution for a transgression by an individual. EIPR asserts that the Egyptian Government does not recognise the severity of the problem, and has no plan to tackle it. "The state's goal is always to impose calm ... they do this first by using violence at the location of the incident, in order to disperse gatherings, even if they are gatherings of the victims of the incident," Bahgat said. He also criticised random detentions - sometimes of victims - related to the incidents and noted that the state sometime used the threat of arrest to pressure victims to accept pleas, in which they lose their legal rights. According to government figures, Christians account for roughly 10 per cent of Egypt's population, though many Egyptian Christians believe the real figure is higher. Sectarian violence has been known to periodically erupt in Egypt. In January, seven people were killed in a drive-by shooting targeting a group of Copts on the night of Coptic Christmas Eve in the city of Naga Hamadi.
