By Jan. 3, the bodies of some 20 slain Christians and at least one Muslim lay scattered through the homes and fields of El Kosheh, a town 35 miles north of Luxor in upper Egypt. El Kosheh is the same village in which police arrested and tortured hundreds of Christians in 1998. The most thoroughly documented accounts of the latest incident say an ordinary tiff in the village marketplace set off the massive sectarian violence, resulting in the deaths of 23 and dozens more wounded. Sources at the Egyptian Embassy in Washington tell Insight that the massacre in El Kosheh resulted from a case in which ignorant hotheads in an economically miserable backwater blew a private argument out of proportion before local security forces could respond. But local and international advocates of human rights and religious liberty are asking whether the government in Cairo should bear some blame for the massacre.
Critics say the situation has turned parts of the country into a powder keg.
Egyptians who dare to warn of these problems in public have been charged with undermining national unity and arrested. While the rest of the world celebrated the approaching third millennium, riots broke out in the streets of El Kosheh. Hussein reportedly didn t like the way Rashid Fahim s son was speaking to a female customer. As the woman left, Hussein started a fight with the shopkeeper s family. When Rashid Fahim went to the police to make a complaint, Hussein s relatives reportedly accosted him.