The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights has criticized the authorities’ handling of the case of Coptic students who were forcibly displaced from al-Arish in North Sinai last February.
Files: Freedom of Religion and Belief
The study includes an analytical section and two annexes. The analysis reviews statutes regulating church construction, significant court rulings of relevance, and their impact on the legal status of existing churches and various official licenses. The study then looks at the types and frequency of sectarian attacks linked with the exercise of the right of worship, offering a quantitative analysis of the 74 sectarian attacks seen in Egypt from January 25, 2011 to August 2016.
This report documents various ways in which North Sinai Governorate’s Coptic have been targeted. The report covers the past six years until the end of February 2017 and documents intimidating ranging from preventing the practice of religious rites, burning churches, attacking property, kidnap-for-ransom, to forced displacement and identity killings.
EIPR released today a report entitled "A Death Foretold" that addresses incidents of killing and forced displacement of Al-Arish Copts.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights expresses its deep concern about the House of Representatives’ rushed approval of the law regulating the construction and renovation of churches.
As part of efforts by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights to promote freedom of religion and belief and associated rights—most significantly, to build and renovate churches and religious structures—it is launching a campaign titled “Closed on Security Grounds: for a Fair Law on Church Construction.”
“Whose Customs? The Role of Customary Reconciliation in Sectarian Disputes and State Responsibility”
The study, titled “Whose Customs? The Role of Customary Reconciliation in Sectarian Disputes and State Responsibility,” focuses on the period from January 2011 to the end of 2014.
The report documents and analyzes defamation of religion cases that took place in various Egyptian provinces and the types of social and legal intimidation facing the accused. It finds increasing prosecution and intimidation aimed at curbing freedom of opinion, belief and expression by unofficial social actors. In most of these cases, the victims were ordinary citizens and not necessarily well-known commentators or public figures, as it used to be in the past two decades. Moreover, prosecutions were not limited to members of religious or communal minorities.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) is concerned by recently issued Law 51/2014 regulating sermons and religious lessons in mosques, seeing in it a continuation of policies designed to curb freedom of religion and enforce a legal mo