Mr. President, thank you for giving me the floor
My name is Medhat Qalada, President of the Union of Coptic Organizations in Europe. I represent the Coptic minority in Egypt, which is a religious and ethnic minority that represents the origin of Egypt.
Although the provisions of the Constitution recognize the principle of equality on the basis of citizenship and the rule of law, the essence of the Citizenship Law is based on equality and non-discrimination. However, the absence of legislative texts and the absence of a law regulating the right to equality and non-discrimination undermines the principles of equality stipulated in the Constitution:
First - The current Egyptian Constitution has enshrined the rule of discrimination and inequality, as its second article stipulates that Islam is the religion of the state and Islamic Sharia is the main source of legislation, therefore, any legislation that contradicts the provisions of Islamic Sharia is considered unconstitutional in a country inhabited by more than twenty-five million people of non-Islamic religions.
Secondly - The Egyptian government issued a building law specifically for the construction of churches, and it has many legal restrictions that allow security to prevent the construction of any church under the name of security conditions that do not allow, and these are conditions controlled by extremist Islamic groups. As a result of this law and its executive regulations for codifying the status of churches built before 2016, there are more Of the one thousand and five hundred closed churches in the countryside and villages of Upper Egypt, the believers practice their religious rituals in the open.
Thirdly, Article 98, Paragraph (F) of the Penal Code punishes with five years imprisonment for those who disdain religions, but in practical reality it is applied in only one aspect, which is anyone who criticise Islam, only with any criticism or even an attempt to respond to those who insult the Christian religion, on the other hand not holding the original perpetrator of contempt of Christianity accountable as if the punsment for contempt of religion law is made to punish Christians only but noth the Muslims.
Fourth: The state has abandoned its basic duties, especially towards the Coptic citizen, leaving many parts of Egypt under the control of extremist Salafist groups that prevent the construction of any new church and also lure underage Coptic girls into marrying them to Muslim men in order to force them to convert to Islam.
Finally, we recommend that the state abolish Article 2 of the Constitution and also Article 98 of the Penal Code in order to ensure equality between citizens and to implement the international treaties signed by the Egyptian state.
