Stretched out over his friend’s coffin, just before the burial ceremony, Tony’s drawn-out sobs flow into raging anger at the mere mention of Egypt’s army, a day after clashes between Christians and security forces left 25 people dead.
Tony and hundreds of other Christians had gathered at the Coptic Hospital in central Cairo, which housed the bodies of most of the victims who died during Sunday’s fighting.
Coptic demonstrators had taken to the streets to denounce a recent attack on a church in the southern city of Aswan, before the protest in Cairo’s Maspero neighbourhood degenerated into violence.
Outside the hospital, protesters chanted slogans against the military council which has been in power since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted by a popular uprising in February.
“Down with the military! Down with the field marshal! The people want the execution of the field marshal”, cries the crowd, referring to Hussein Tantawi who heads the ruling military council.
“SOS: Copts under attack from the army of Egypt,” reads one banner. Egypt’s Copts, who make up around 10 per cent of the 80-million population, have long complained of systematic discrimination in the mainly Muslim country, where Islamism has become increasingly visible.
At the hospital, friends and families of the victims insist the army is responsible for Sunday’s deadly events. One woman speaking on her mobile phone is in tears: she had just lost her fiance.
“He was crushed by an armoured personnel vehicle. It’s the army that killed him,” says her mother.
“The army said we were armed. It’s completely wrong. Three groups attacked us in Maspero: Police, army and hired thugs,” another Copt, Abdullah Morgane, 32, said.
“It was all planned by the army and the police,” he charges.
During the early stage of the clashes, state television had announced that three army soldiers had been “martyred” after they were shot by Coptic demonstrators.
“I saw the army vehicles drive into the demonstrators at full speed. I saw people being crushed. When some managed to escape, anti-riot police beat them up,” says Samuel Suleiman, 28.
In the hospital’s laundry room and among the washing machines, empty coffins lay on the floor covered in floral arrangements shaped into crosses, waiting for the bodies after their autopsies.
His eyes red, Tony flips between rage and sadness as he strokes a photo of his friend Mina Daniel who died on Sunday from gunshot wounds.
Tony tells how Mina was mistrustful of the military.
“When he used to hear people chant ‘the army and the people are one,’ he would tell me ‘No, you’ll see – the army is always on the side of the police.’ And he was right,” says Tony.
Ehab Ramzi, a Coptic lawyer said: “The martyrs must go through an autopsy so we can determine that they were indeed killed and did not die of natural causes, but they have to be taken elsewhere because the hospital here is not equipped,” he says.
When Dr Ramzi suggests that the bodies be moved to the public forensics department nearby, there is immediate outcry.
“Never! If we go, it will be a massacre,” says one of the protesters.
“Not only do they have a problem with us, but now they think we shot the army it will be a massacre,” adds another.
Factbox: The Middle East’s main Christian community
Egypt’s Copts, at the centre of clashes, are the largest Christian minority community in the Middle East, and one of the oldest.
The Copts are generally estimated at between six and 10 per cent of Egypt’s population of 80 million. The Coptic Church itself claims it has 10 million followers.
Most Copts adhere to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, headed by Pope Shenuda III, while the others are divided between the Coptic Catholic and various Coptic Protestant churches.
The Catholic Copts, who form part of the Church’s eastern rites, are headed by patriarch Antonios Naguib, who was consecrated cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI last November 20. Vatican records show some 165,000 Catholic Copts lived in Egypt in 2010.
The Copts go back to the dawn of Christianity, at a time when Egypt was integrated into the Roman, then Byzantine empires, after the disappearance of the dynasty of the Pharaoh Ptolemy, who was of Greek origin. The word Copt has the same roots as the term Egyptian in ancient Greek.
Their decline started with the Arab invasions of the seventh century and the progressive Islamisation of the country, which today is largely Sunni Muslim.
Copts are present across the whole country, with a strongest concentration in Middle Egypt. All social categories are represented, from the lowest Cairo dustman to major patrician families.
Weakly represented in government, Copts complain that they are sidelined from numerous posts in the justice system, the universities and the police.
They also complain about very restrictive legislation on building churches, whereas the regime for building mosques is very liberal.
On January 1, 2011 the unclaimed bombing of a Coptic church killed 23 people and wounded 79, mainly Christians, in Egypt’s second city of Alexandria. An upsurge in puritanical Islam has increased their feeling of marginalisation, especially since the fall of president Hosni Mubarak on February 11, which has led to a degradation of the security climate and heightened visibility for Islamists.
On March 8, 13 people were killed in bloody clashes between Muslims and Copts in Cairo’s working class neighbourhood of Moqattam, where around 1,000 Christians gathered to protest over the torching of a church south of the capital.
In May, clashes between Muslims and Copts left 15 dead and more than 200 injured in the popular Cairo neighbourhood of Imbaba where two churches were attacked.