Egypt: For the first time a Copt is appointed governor

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) praised on Tuesday as an important symbolic gesture towards the Copts, who have been discriminated for decades in Egypt, the appointment of a Copt as provincial governor in Egypt. The police general Magdi Ayoub Iskanda was appointed governor of the province Qena in Upper Egypt near Luxor by State President Hosni Mubarak on Monday.

"However this gesture will not be enough to remove for the Copts the fear of further marginalisation,” said the GfbV correspondent Ulrich Delius. Further steps are urgently required to prevent a mass exodus of the Copts from Egypt. "So Egypt should stop hindering the construction or refurbishment of Christian places of worship”, demanded Delius.

Since the massive electoral victory of the radical Muslim Brotherhood in the parliamentary elections in December 2005 the Copts have been fearing further curtailments of their rights. The Muslim Brotherhood had with a simple slogan "Islam is the answer” aimed at a religious split in Egyptian society. At the parliamentary elections the Muslim Brotherhood was able to increase the numbervof its mandates by six and it is now represented with 88 seats in the total number of 454.

Although the Copts make up some ten percent of the 74 million citizens of Egypt, only one of their candidates, the finance minister, Yussef Bautros, was directly elected to Parliament. Five more Copt Christians were appointed members of Parliament by President Mubarak on 12th December 2005. The object of this custom, which now has become tradition, is to give minorities better representation in Parliament.