Bombing opens vein of Christian anger in Egypt

The New Year’s Day suicide bombing of a church that killed 21 people has opened up a vein of fury among Egypt’s Christians, built up over years of what they call government failure to address persistent discrimination and violence against their community.

Christian protests spread to Cairo from the northern city of Alexandria where the attack took place. Late Sunday, riots erupted outside the cathedral-headquarters of the Coptic Church after the country’s top Muslim religious figures and government officials met with Pope Shenouda III.

Protesters threw bottles and stones at riot police outside the cathedral, injuring 45 policemen, security officials said. Elsewhere, demonstrators threw stones at cars on two main highways, and hundreds marched in other parts of the capital, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

On Monday, Shenouda spoke on state television and urged the government to address Coptic grievances over what they perceive as unjust laws and restrictions on the community — a rare criticism from the elderly church father.

“The state also has a duty. It must see to the problems of the Copts and try to resolve them,” he said. “If there are laws that is an unjust to some, the state should correct many laws.”

In the last couple years in particular, the country’s Coptic Christian minority, which makes up 10 percent of the country’s 80 million, has felt under siege following a string of incidents.

In January a year ago, six Christians and a Muslim guard were killed in a drive-by shooting on Coptic Christmas Eve in southern Egypt. Then in November, Christians rioted after government forces violently stopped the construction of a church near Cairo in a long-running dispute over restrictions on building Christian houses of worship. Two people died at the hands of security in the rare instance of Christian unrest in the capital.