Question 21829 — foreign policy

Summary

Ms Valérie Boyer draws the attention of the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs to the kidnappings of young Coptic Christians in Egypt. Everyone probably remembers the kidnapping of 276 high school girls from Chibok in Nigeria by Boko Haram in April 2014. These kidnappings were reported by the press, given the scale of the disappearances. But these techniques of terror and forced conversion are not the exclusive work of Boko Haram. This is why she is concerned about the lack of interest in young women kidnapped in Egypt in recent months. Indeed, Egyptian fundamentalists continue to terrorize Christians by committing attacks but also kidnapping young girls. These kidnappings appear to be the preferred method of conversion for extremist groups. If, with the re-election of President Al Sissi in March 2018, Egypt found at its head a strong personality who seems to want to fight against the Muslim Brotherhood, the situation of Christians has not improved despite a more flexible discourse. Although the government fights and muzzles Islamic extremism as much as possible, Christians, who are predominantly Copts, live in a climate of discrimination, harassment and various violence in all spheres of life. life. The 9.9 million Christians are struggling to have their right to believe recognized in a country with a total population of 99.4 million people, mainly Muslims. The precarious situation of Christians places the country in 16th place in the 2019 index established by the NGO Portes Ouvertes in terms of persecution of Christians. Young girls are the preferred target of Islamic extremists who wish to convert them everywhere the means: kidnappings, violence, forced marriages... In May 2018, eight Coptic Christian women were reportedly kidnapped. We should remember in particular Vivian Adel Youssef, an 18-year-old student kidnapped on May 2, 2018. Poorly reported on social networks and in the media, these kidnappings seem to continue since in February 2019 an 18-year-old young woman, Amira Ephraïm, was reportedly kidnapped in Luxor. Since then, the family has had no news and the MP is concerned about the lack of responsiveness of the international community. These kidnappings are sometimes carried out through smuggler networks linked to the police. Once kidnapped, the young women remain uncontactable: they literally disappear. If one of them, Mirna Malak Shenouda, 16 years old, was able to escape in 2018 and testify to the procedure and conditions of the kidnapping, the other young people women remain untraceable. Complaints from desperate parents would continue to be made without any effort being made to find these young women. This is why she calls him out on this method of religious purification against a backdrop of forced conversion, kidnappings and humiliation of the Christian community. How many more young women will have to disappear before we deign to care and worry about their fate and the situation of Coptic Christians in Egypt? Also, she asks him if he has any news of these missing young women and if other young women are added to this already long list. If so, she wants to know how many young women and men are in the hands of Egyptian fundamentalists and where they are. She would like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to do everything in its power to help these families and young women caught in the spiral of Islamic extremism.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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