In Egypt, a new pogrom

EDITORIAL | Jeff Jacoby

October 12, 2011|By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist

An Egyptian Christian woman mourns on the coffin of Coptic Christian Mina… (Reuters )

THIS IS what a pogrom looks like: “The Coptic Hospital tried its best to deal with the sudden influx of casualties,’’ wrote Sarah Carr, a Cairo-based journalist and blogger, in her firsthand account of Sunday’s deadly attack on Christian protesters by the Egyptian military. “Its floors were sticky with blood and there was barely room to move among the wounded.’’

In one room of the hospital morgue Carr counted the bodies of 12 people, some of whom had been killed when soldiers in armored personnel vehicles charged the crowd, firing at random and crushing the protesters they ran over. One of the victims was “a man whose face was contorted into an impossible expression. A priest … showed me the remains of the man’s skull and parts of his brain. He too had been crushed.’’

What happened in Egypt on Sunday was a massacre. Government security forces assaulted Coptic Christians as they marched peacefully to the headquarters of the state TV network. They were protesting the recent burning of St. George’s, a Coptic church in the Upper Egypt village of El-Marinab. Yet broadcasters loyal to the ruling military junta exhorted “honorable Egyptians’’ to help the army put down the protests. “Soon afterward, bands of young men armed with sticks, rocks, swords, and firebombs began to roam central Cairo, attacking Christians,’’ the Associated Press reported . “Troops and riot police did not intervene.’’ Graphic video of the violence was quickly uploaded to the Internet. So were even more graphic images of the murdered protesters.

Back during the Tahrir Square demonstrations against strongman Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military was widely praised for not using force to crush the protests and keep Mubarak in power. Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates , for example, declared that Egypt’s military had “conducted itself in exemplary fashion’’ and “made a contribution to the evolution of democracy.’’ Popular, too, was the notion that the uprising could catalyze a new era of interfaith solidarity . “Egypt’s religious tensions have been set aside,’’ reported the BBC in February , “as the country’s Muslims and Christians join forces at anti-government protests.’’

But the “spirit of Tahrir Square’’ has ushered in neither liberal democracy nor a rebirth of tolerance for Egypt’s ancient but beleaguered Christian minority.