Stop victim-blaming Egypt’s Copts
Excerpt: Following Friday’s attack on two buses and a microbus in Egypt’s Minya governorate, killing at least seven Coptic Christians and injuring 16 others, both domestic and international media have deployed subtle and not-so-subtle forms of victim-blaming in their coverage. Egyptian media highlighted the poor condition of the road on which the attack took place and speculated about lack of security, which had been debated in the months preceding the attack. Member of Parliament and journalist Mostafa Bakry, on his show Haqa’eq wa Asrar (Facts and Secrets) on Sada al-Balad, praised the efforts of the Egyptian military and security forces, saying, “No one says that police presence is lacking — they are everywhere. But this group went on roads away from security checkpoints to reach the monastery. Terrorists came along mountain paths and waited for them.” International media largely situated the attack within a context of Coptic Christians’ presumed wholescale support for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime. Such narratives not only attempt to posit the attack as an isolated or exceptional incident, but also reduces Copts to homogenous supporters of a regime that provides them with “special protection,” and yet perpetuates their continued exclusion, persecution and death.
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