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Egypt’s Dark Secret A tragic look into the rising trend of kidnapping, rape, and forced conversion of young Christian women in Egypt.
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AUGUST 2016
The Lost Girls of Egypt
Each year, hundreds of young Christian girls in Egypt are kidnapped, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, and then married to their rapists. Once taken, they are lost to their families forever. By Sandra Elliot
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AUGUST 2016
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Feature Article
y the time she saw them, it was too late. At the last second, the sound of the rushing car, the opening doors, and stamping feet registered in her mind, but as she turned her head to investigate, they were already on her. Mary Wahib was kidnapped at gunpoint in front of her home in the village of Bait Alaam on May 1, 2016. Four masked men attacked her at 8:30 p.m. and pushed her into a car with no license plate number. “After it happened, we headed immediately to Girga police station and filed a formal complaint,” Mary’s cousin explained. Unsurprisingly, the police officers at the Girga station asked for two days’ time to investigate the matter before taking any action. The Wahib family couldn’t wait that long. They, along with many other Coptic Egyptians, began demonstrating in front of the police station in a desperate attempt to force the police into action before Mary’s fate was sealed. Three days later, a video clip of Mary surfaced on Facebook. In the video she revealed her name, age and location, as well as her decision to convert to Islam. She also emphasized that she had not been kidnapped and that her conversion was by her own will. “I bear witness there is no god but Allah,” she concluded. “I bear witness that Muhammad is his messenger.” According to testimonies from other previously kidnapped women, the truth behind Mary’s “conversion” is far from willful. Many of these women have reported being repeatedly beaten and raped by their captors who videotape all of their abuse. If the victim refuses to convert to Islam, their kidnappers threaten to publish the footage online. In a culture where shame is ever lurking at the door, threatening to steal family honor, they are left with little choice but to submit.
A New Yet Old Trend Mary’s story is disturbingly archetypal and just one of thousands. Six years ago, ICC conducted an in-depth investigation of such cases, gathering names and details of hundreds of accounts. Recently, such instances are being reevaluated in light of the upsurge of victims. The abductions have come in waves since the 1970s when President Anwar Sadat took
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Police investigate an incident of violence in a crime-stricken region of Cairo.
“After I woke up, I tried to call my wife many times but her [phone] was shut off” – AMGAD ROMANY
the leash of the Muslim Brotherhood and those that follow Wahhabi ideology to counter a growing internal communist threat. As a result, radical Islamic groups started spreading throughout the country with financial support from Saudi Arabia. The 1980s saw many waves of Christian abductions and forced marriages, most of which were never redeemed due to the limited help from Egyptian police officers. Now we are seeing a new wave of these attacks in Upper Egypt with little response
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from authorities, and little hope for the families left behind.
Noura’s Disappearance Noura Youssef was last with her husband as they ate lunch together on April 20, 2016, just a few hours before her abduction in Luxor, Egypt. “She had gone to her parents’ home,” her husband Amgad Romany, age 25, explained to ICC. “It was 3:30 p.m. when she left.” AUGUST 2016
Christian families. Criminals often target fragile family members, like grandparents or young children. Due to the apathy from local authorities, relatives are forced to pay devastating ransoms to retrieve their loved ones. In the last few months, we have seen more kidnappings of Christian women and girls for forced marriages than for ransom.
Sandy’s Escape
An alleyway just outside of Garbage City, Cairo’s sector designated for Christians.
Having worked a long day in construction, Amgad took an afternoon nap after his wife headed out. “After I woke up, I tried to call my wife many times but her [phone] was shut off. I then called my father-in-law,” Amgad continued. “I was surprised when he told me that she never arrived.” Amgad, along with Noura’s parents, immediately took to the streets in search of her. When they couldn’t find her, they went to the police station in Luxor to file a missing person’s report. The authorities at the station refused to file a report until she had been missing for 24 hours. Upon returning home, Amgad was told by a neighbor that a Muslim man by the name of
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Moustafa Sayed was seen following Noura. Sayed had a history of harassing Noura and repeatedly proposing to her although she was already married. He had since disappeared from the community. “None of the police have helped me to find my wife,” Amgad explained, “I know that they do nothing for our cases because we are Christians...I don’t know where to go...”
Kidnap for Ransom From 2013 to 2014, there was an upturn in the trend of kidnapping for ransom in Upper Egypt. In Minya province alone, there were 20 such cases within a matter of months. These incidents are meant to financially destroy
On April 18, Sandy, 16, left to go shopping with her aunt for new Easter clothes. She left the house at 4:30 p.m. but never reached her aunt. “I went to the shop before going to my aunt,” Sandy later recounted. “While I was leaving…a bearded man hit me on my head, and I then passed out.” When Sandy regained consciousness, she was somewhere in the mountains, surrounded by older Muslim men. They relentlessly beat and raped her for refusing to convert to Islam. “Most of the time during my captivity I was unconscious because they were hitting me,” Sandy told ICC. On May 3, Sandy awoke to being thrown from a truck. She gathered her remaining strength and began walking home when someone found her. The man took Sandy to his shop so that she could call her family. “When I heard Sandy’s voice the tears fell from my eyes,” Her mother recalled, “I thanked God for answering our prayers.” While Sandy survived her kidnapping, her assailants have not been pursued by local authorities.
A Permanent Loss Christians make up ten percent of Egypt’s population. They are citizens and, therefore, entitled to equal protection under the law. Aside from the perpetrators themselves, the indifference of the local and federal authorities is egregious. This cancer that was in remission is metastasizing throughout Egypt’s Christian community. It is tragic, obscene, and a permanent loss for the affected families. In a mere instant, young girls are destroyed in the name of Islamic subjugation and dominance. There are no words to describe this crime; there is no comfort for this agony. Only empty bedrooms and shattered families remain.
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VIETNAM: RELIGIOUS FREE
The streets of Vietnam are quickly becoming a hostile place for Christians.
The state respects and guarantees religious freedom of the people but all religious activities must obey laws.
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do not understand why they arrested me and beat me up like I was a criminal,” T.L Phan told Asia News. “They choked me, and banged my head against the wall.” On June 13, 2016, in MuongKhuong, Vietnam, approximately 30 government officials stormed a house church, beating and arresting those in attendance. T.L
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Phan was one of these churchgoers. “[They] forced [me] to admit that I had endangered security and had caused disorder in the community,” Phan continued. “The police forced me to write a report and sign a statement that I would no longer go to church…I did not sign.” Three of the officials who stormed the church are vice presidents of government organizations. This violence comes in the new wave of Vietnam’s crackdown on local Christians.
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The communist nation has declared that every Christian meeting is now illegal in the country. Christians like T.L Phan will face vast and intensified persecution. Due to Vietnam’s poor religious freedom record, it has been listed as a Country of Particular Concern by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) for many years. According to USCIRF’s 2016 annual report, Christians in Vietnam “are prevented from holding religious ceremonies, pastors are harassed or punished, and many are summoned to meet with local authorities and pressured to cease practicing their ‘poisonous’ faith.” At present, there seems to be no indication of progress on the religious freedom front as dozens of Christian pastors and human rights activists languish in prison for charges of AUGUST 2016
EDOM’S LAST STAND
The Vietnamese government is systematically eradicating Christianity.
One of the few churches in Vietnam. “inciting unrest” and “speaking out against the state.” One such person is Pastor Nguyen Cong Chinh—a religious freedom activist who was arrested in 2012 for having “colluded with foreign reactionaries.” Both Chinh and his wife, Tran Thi Hong, are considered to be among what Vietnam calls an “illegal” faith as they are members of the Lutheran church which is not a registered denomination. Tran has been advocating for her husband’s release through various domestic and international channels. For her inspiring devotion to her wrongly imprisoned husband, she has endured a constant barrage of harassment and assault by local authorities. Earlier this year, Tran met with the visiting US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Following this meeting,
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she was detained by authorities. While in custody, Tran was questioned and beaten, leaving black and blue reminders of the struggle against her own government. This is a direct and hypocritically crude example of what Christians experience in Vietnam. Chinh and his wife are but one example of the continued persecution of Vietnam’s religious minorities. Thousands of persecuted Christians have fled to Cambodia, seeking asylum from religious persecution in their homeland. Instead of finding refuge, however, many are deported or placed in prison for illegally crossing the border.
Progress Toward Religious Freedom? Vietnam, a nation with a long record of
intense and violent persecution of Christians, is actively and deceptively working to convince the world of its ‘progress’ on human rights and especially religious freedom. Vietnam’s proposed Law on Belief and Religion, introduced in early 2015 and anticipated to pass in late 2016, states that the “government respects and protects the freedom of religion and belief of everyone.” Despite the government ensuring protection of religious freedom, the law includes onerous requirements of registration, excessive state control and interference in religious organizations’ internal affairs. The law itself is supported by the Committee for Religious Affairs’ Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh. In a statement published by Vietnam’s Communist Party’s online newspaper, Binh said, “The state respects and guarantees religious freedom of the people but all religious activities must obey laws.” She urged officials to fight against “bad elements who abuse religious activities to undermine national unity.” Such language is broad and ambiguous, leaving plenty of room for discrimination and potential increased government crackdown all in the name of ‘national unity.’ It is totally outlandish for government authorities to point toward this legislation as a progressive step in minority rights. In May of this year, President Obama continued his administration’s pivot toward China in a visit to the communist nation of Vietnam. Prior to the president’s visit, Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly was released after enduring nearly 30 years of imprisonment and house arrest for his vocal support of religious freedom. While it is wonderful to see him released, his release should be recognized as both a token political move and a reminder of others who are locked away and may never see freedom. During his visit, Obama made the decision to lift the weapons embargo, which, in human rights circles, is considered to be one of the last remaining bargaining chips with the communist nation. With that gone, the question remains if Vietnam will ever really change its policies on religious freedom. The future seems bleak for the small nation as religious persecution is ever rising. Pastors and human rights activists continue to suffer assault, excessive interrogation and torture. We must not forget the sufferings of these brothers and sisters.
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