A new paper [al-Watan] said it quoted the American organization Pew as saying that Coptic population is 4.3 million and the paper claimed that it contacted Pew to confirm the figure but it said that it relied on the numbers provided by the Egyptian statistical organization in 2006, writes Mājid 'Atīyah in an article in Watanī.
The paper also alleged that it contacted the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), which replied that the population is 4.6 million.
CAPMAS said Copts were 8.1 million in 1982 but the figure went down in 1986 to 5.7 million due to expensive standards of living and migration.
The paper, to accentuate its inaccurate figures about Copts – the timing is very dubious, resorted to a Dutchman it termed as "Coptic affairs expert since 1976". This so-called expert, Cornelis Hulsman, in a full-page interview, said the population of Coptic Christians is only five million.
No one understands why the fledgling daily newspaper failed to refer to the civil registry offices to get the truth about the Coptic census based on the digital ID. Only then the paper will find out that the figure is 18.5 million, which I had published before. [Mājid 'Atīyah, Watanī, June 10, p. 10] Read text in Arabic
