Den bisher detailliertesten Augenzeugenreport von dem Massaker an den Kopten in Kairo hat Yasmine El Rashidi in der New York Review of Books abgeliefert. Es ist ein erschütterndes Dokument, das leider meine schlimmsten Befürchtungen bestätigt, dass Ägypten in Gefahr ist, sich unter dem Druck der Islamisten, der Ex-Mubarak-Kräfte und des wütenden Pöbels zur Hölle für Andersgläubige zu wandeln.
Around 7:30 PM, I received text and Twitter messages that an announcer for State TV had on air called for Egyptians to go down and “defend the soldiers who protected the Egyptian revolution” against “armed Copts” who had opened fire and were killing soldiers. Looking around me, I could see that many of those gathered in the tight area around the TV building seemed to have responded to the call. Rough-looking men were arriving in groups; people said they were neighborhood thugs. They held bludgeons, wooden planks, knives, and even swords, and walked boldly into the chaos of burning cars, flying bullets, and glass. “We’ll kill any Christian we get our hands on,” one of them shouted. Someone tweeted that he was in the middle of what looked like a militia, “men with clubs and antique pistols.” Nearby, a young girl was harassed, and a mob assaulted a young Coptic couple, beating them and ripping their clothes. One of the perpetrators emerged from the gang with blood on his hands. “Christian blood!” he boasted. (The couple survived—rushed away by ambulance to be treated for wounds and possible fractures.)
For the next few hours, the violence ebbed and flowed between riot police, soldiers, Copts, and mobs. I could see clashes up on the bridge and was told that the army was chasing protesters through the streets of downtown. I was chased myself at one point, up a ramp. Young boys were also flocking in—many of them teenagers, some as young as nine or ten. They picked up rocks and threw them, challenging anyone to fight back, shrieking insults about Christians, and chanting for an Islamic state. Many of them looked familiar—the same youth I had seen gather outside the Israeli embassy a few weeks before, and at other protests in recent months that had turned violent. Soldiers looked on, many of them leaving the rowdy crowds to battle, while others tried to break up the mobs. The sirens of ambulances rushing to and from the area could be heard in all directions.
Vivian and Michael
By 10 p.m., as the crackdown continued and dozens of box-shaped olive-green Central Security Forces trucks rolled in as reinforcement, 23-year-old Michael, the young Copt I had met in Shubra that afternoon, had been confirmed dead. Images and footage from the morgue taken by friends show him covered in a white sheet while his fiancée Vivian sobbed by his side, holding his hand, saying she wouldn’t leave him. He had been crushed beneath a twelve-ton APC. His legs had been almost severed and internal organs ruptured. Police then beat him as he lay on the sidewalk, Vivian begging them to have mercy as he gasped his last breaths. “You infidel,” they had screamed back at her.
Frau El Rashidi beschreibt auch, dass es für den Mörder an den Christen in Nag Hammadi, der kürzlich hingerichtet wurde, eine nach tausenden zählende Trauerprozession gab:
On Tuesday, as Copts were mourning their loved ones, the funeral procession of the executed gunman, El-Kamouny, marched through the streets of the southern city where he opened fire on Copts as they were leaving church on Christmas eve, killing six. Thousands of Muslims marched through the streets with his coffin. They chanted “La Illaha IlaAllah, La Illaha IlaAllah, El-Kamouny shaheed Allah” (There is no God but Allah, There is no God but Allah, El-Kamouny is a martyr of Allah). People cheered them on. El-Kamouny, in their eyes, was a hero.
Schande.