Archpriest Salīb Mattá Sawirus has rejected the expatriate Copts who attended a United States Congressional hearing on Thursday to discuss the alleged discrimination of Middle Eastern minority groups, according to al-Misrī al-Yawm.
Sawirus, a member of the Coptic Orthodox Community Council, said the Church opposes any interference with internal Egyptian affairs, claiming that the recent attacks against Coptic Christians are an Egyptian matter that is being dealt with by the Egyptian state apparatus.
According to the paper, several members of congress called for the appointment of special representatives to US embassies in the region that would monitor “human rights and religious persecution.”
Sawirus believes that Coptic involvement in such hearings “harms the Coptic image,” as some consider it to be resorting to foreign assistance and subsequently apply this to all Copts.
Citing a joint press release, the paper says twenty-five Coptic expatriate organizations have called for the formation of an international committee to monitor the investigations into the incidents involving Copts in Egypt, the latest of which were the attack on the Church of the Two Saints, the crisis of the halted construction of the ‘Umrāniyyah church, and the Samallūṭ train shooting.
The press release continued that this would not entail a lack of sovereignty or represent interference in internal Egyptian affairs, but would essentially serve the same function as the Egyptian government’s legal team that was sent to Germany following the killing of Marwa al-Sharbini, a veiled Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death in a German courtroom in 2009.
