The COVID-19 lab-leak hypothesis is plausible because accidents happen. I should know

Chen Jimin/China News Service via Getty Images

Allen Rodrigo, University of AucklandAt the conclusion of the G7 summit, leaders called for a fresh and transparent investigation to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic began.

I welcome the renewed interest in the potential “lab-leak” origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It wouldn’t be the first time an infectious pathogen was accidentally released from a research laboratory.

I know from personal experience. Back in 1994, on my first day of a fellowship at Stanford University, I picked up a damp courier parcel at reception and took it back to the lab. My professor put on latex gloves immediately. The parcel contained a vial with an HIV-infected lymph node.

The dry ice used to pack the sample had evaporated, soaking the cardboard. There I was, someone who had not worked with HIV before, with hands damp from handling a box containing live virus.

I didn’t get infected. But the experience left me acutely aware of how easily accidents happen. A 2018 review found 27 cases of laboratory-acquired infections between 1982 and 2016 in the Asia-Pacific region alone. The list of pathogens included everything from the virus that causes dengue fever to the SARS coronavirus.

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The American Biological Safety Association (ABSA) maintains a searchable database of reported laboratory-acquired infections. It documents “leakage from the plastic bag in the negative-pressure transport chamber” and exposure to “droplets when cleaning a spill”, among many other examples.

From a scientific perspective alone, it is important to investigate the lab-leak hypothesis because, if true, we have to tighten safety procedures to prevent future leaks.

Two lab-leak hypotheses

When the virus was first reported from Wuhan almost 18 months ago, people have raised the possibility that it emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research on SARS coronaviruses was underway.

This lab-leak hypothesis comes in two flavours. First, the virus could have jumped from an animal (or animal tissue) infected with a SARS coronavirus as part of the research. The infected person subsequently infected others in the community.

The transfer of a pathogen from an animal to people is called a zoonotic transmission. This process also occurs outside of laboratories, perhaps when there is close contact with infected animals or they are eaten.

The second hypothesis suggests a purposeful genetic modification of a coronavirus that gave rise to a more infectious and human-transmissible variant, which then leaked into the community. This type of genetic modification is called gain-of-function, because the engineered virus acquires new biological traits.

It is unfortunate these hypotheses have been miscast as somehow equivalent, and often portrayed as alternative to the “natural origins” hypothesis.

When I and other computational biologists think of origins, we think about evolutionary ancestors: a virus’ evolutionary line of descent. If SARS-CoV-2 had evolved without human intervention from an ancestral variant found in one or more hosts, it is quite possible that such a host animal, or a sample from an infected host animal, was the subject of study in a lab.

Through some unfortunate misadventure, it is plausible that someone in that lab became infected.

Why an investigation is important

Arguments for or against these hypotheses are often couched in terms of likelihoods. In February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) listed four scenarios in its global study of SARS-CoV-2 origins: direct zoonotic transmission, indirect zoonotic transmission through an intermediate host, transmission through cold/food-chain products and accidental laboratory release.

Indirect zoonotic transmission through an intermediate host was deemed “likely to very likely” and accidental lab release “extremely unlikely”. The WHO panel rejected deliberate gain-of-function manipulation because it “has been ruled out by other scientists following analyses of the genome”.

But that wasn’t the last word, because the exact origin of the COVID-19 virus remains a mystery.

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The COVID-19 lab leak theory highlights a glaring lack of global biosecurity regulation

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Genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 has shown the virus is related (about 96%) to a strain found in horseshoe bats. Although this seems like a high level of similarity, it implies that SARS-CoV-2 diverged from this strain several decades ago. Therefore, it remains unclear if the spillover was directly to humans or through an intermediate species.

In any case, such evolutionary analysis cannot distinguish between transmission in or outside a laboratory.

The WHO panel considered a lab-acquired infection as extremely unlikely because of the Wuhan laboratories’ strict biosafety protocols. But the ABSA database lists accidental infections happening even in labs with the highest biosafety accreditation, and these include SARS-coronavirus infections.

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In its arguments for and against accidental lab release, the WHO report noted the Wuhan laboratories moved to a new location near the Huanan market in early December 2019, but “reported no disruptions or incidents caused by the move”. There is no reason to distrust the WHO panel’s conclusions, but it is nonetheless true that lab relocations present opportunities for error.

The lab-leak hypothesis is at least plausible and it’s therefore important to investigate it. If it were related to the operations of the lab, or its relocation, we need to re-examine safety protocols. For relocations, we may want to require independent monitoring and pre- and post-move quarantine of essential personnel.

Allen Rodrigo, Professor and Head, The School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The COVID-19 lab leak theory highlights a glaring lack of global biosecurity regulation

Alexander Gillespie, University of WaikatoThe revived debate over whether COVID-19 could be the result of an accidental release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology may never be adequately resolved. Either way, we risk not seeing the wood for the trees.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) reported in February such a leak was “extremely unlikely”, it later advised more work was needed to rule it out.

But the real problem is not what might have happened in China — it’s that there is no meaningful international legal oversight in the first place.

The United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity puts the onus on individual countries to regulate their own biotech industries. While there are protocols for the safe handling and transfer of living modified organisms, there are still no agreed international standards governing laboratory safety, monitoring and information sharing.

This is concerning, given the long history of disease breaches at both civilian and military research establishments.

Laboratory escapes have included smallpox (1966, 1972 and 1978), H1N1 “swine flu” (1977 but probably a 1950s-era sample), Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (1995) and at least six outbreaks of SARS (with two distinct events at the same Beijing laboratory in 2004).

In 2014, it was thought up to 75 workers might have been exposed to anthrax after an accident at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, raising real concerns about pathogen safety. The same year, five researchers died while working on West African Ebola in Sierra Leone.

Accidents will happen

Rapid advances in biotechnology and the decentralisation of research industries have only increased the potential risks. Without greater control, it’s feared a new or revived disease could be inadvertently released.

Already, researchers have accidentally created a lethal mouse-pox virus, intentionally developed a synthetic strain of the polio virus, resurrected the virus that caused the 1918 influenza, and recreated an infectious horse-pox virus by ordering DNA fragments online.

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The potential risk from hostile state or terrorist acts in this area is clear, which makes the lack of global oversight all the more alarming.

This is true for even the highest risk “biosafety level 4” laboratories, such as the one in Wuhan. Analysis suggests these facilities can be operated safely, but individual countries and regions such as Europe are setting their own standards. There is also a preparedness gap between wealthy and poor countries.

The risk of bioterrorism

Beyond the WHO’s guidelines, however, there is no universal law, regulation or international oversight mandating even basic requirements, such as external independent inspections. We don’t even know how many level 4 laboratories exist. Officially there are 54, but some probably remain undisclosed for national security reasons.

The exclusion of military establishments from independent oversight compounds the problem. An international convention prohibits the creation, stockpiling and use of bioweapons, but there are only soft commitments to compliance and monitoring. Attempts to create a binding verification protocol have so far failed.

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The UN Security Council, which monitors this regime, has noted a disturbing trend of countries not participating in its voluntary mechanisms and a lack of effective controls.

In any case, many countries lack the capacity to adequately detect disease outbreaks. Those that do have the capacity are often unco-ordinated and ineffective.

The general failure of effective oversight makes the risk of bioterrorism higher than it should be.

Global agreement urgently needed

Whether or not the conclusive truth about Wuhan ever emerges, if the international community is serious about minimising the risk of biotech accidents it could look to the Convention on Nuclear Safety as a model.

This would mean a system for enforcing global standards, independent inspections and support for best scientific practice.

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It would need to cover any location or establishment where there is a significant risk from human activity that could intentionally, accidentally or recklessly cause an outbreak.

All countries would have to become more transparent to accept such a rules-based international order. And while it’s possible, even probable, that China needs to improve its own systems, it is certainly far from alone in that.

Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Online conspiracy theorists are more diverse (and ordinary) than most assume

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) in The X-Files is fond of joining seemingly unrelated dots to create a conspiracy theory – but in reality, the picture is more nuanced.

Colin Klein, Australian National University; Peter Clutton, Australian National University, and Vince Polito, Macquarie University

Conspiracy theories are known for connecting apparently unrelated events. Consider the X-Files’ Fox Mulder holed up in his office, frantically joining seemingly random dots. Or the American radio host Alex Jones connecting leaked Clinton emails and fuzzy rover pictures to conclude that NASA is running a child slave colony on Mars.

Cognitive psychologists have often claimed that conspiracy theorists possess a “monological” belief system, in which belief in one conspiracy leads to belief in others. Eventually, they explain every significant event, however unrelated, through the same conspiratorial “logic”.

On such a view, conspiracy theorists are fundamentally irrational, perhaps even pathologically so. But is this an oversimplification?

So-called “big data” approaches to psychology can give a unique perspective on these questions. By using large datasets gathered from social media websites, one can look at people interacting in everyday settings. Importantly, these approaches can capture everybody, not just the most vocal members of a community.

In a recent paper we used online comments to examine individuals who are interested in these types of ideas. We examined a complete set of comments over eight years from the conspiracy forum of reddit.com.

Our dataset included 2.2 million comments from roughly 130,000 distinct user names. Our analyses used topic modelling, a type of linguistic analysis that tries to find common themes across a large collection of documents.

We were able to identify 12 distinct subgroups of individuals who used language in different ways and who varied widely in their interests and their posting habits. What they talked about strongly suggested that they held different beliefs and attitudes about a range of conspiracies.

Eleven of these had consistent enough interests to be readily interpretable. We assigned each of them a name and created aggregate sample comments, as shown in this diagram.

CC BY-SA

We found that there were posters who fit the “monological” pattern (we dubbed them True Believers), writing at length on a wide variety of different topics. However, they were only the tip of the iceberg. Most posters had more specific interests.

Indeed, many seemed to be attracted as much to the social aspects of discussing conspiracies as the content of specific conspiracies. The group we called the Meta-redditors, for example, was most notable for their discussion of other forums on Reddit and complaints about moderation policies.

Similarly, there were subgroups (the Downtrodden) who appeared to be communicating about conspiracy theories as a way of expressing general frustration with authority.

Some were suspicious of US foreign policy (Anti-imperalists). Others may be using conspiracy topics as a way to express racist or otherwise socially unacceptable ideas (Anti-semites). There was even a distinct subgroup who appeared to be posting primarily in order to debunk conspiracy beliefs (Sceptics).

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/H6Iwh/3/

This suggests that individuals involved with conspiracy theories may have quite different motivations, beliefs and attitudes. It may not be useful to consider them as a homogeneous group.

What does all this mean for the study of conspiracy theories? It’s complicated.

On the one hand, it has long been known that online conspiracy theorising can have a variety of negative social effects, from political disengagement to actual violence. These are effects we should aim to mitigate.

On the other hand, our study also reveals something more surprising. The vast majority of posters were no more active in the conspiracy forum than they were on other reddit forums. This suggests that, for most individuals, conspiracy theories are not an all-encompassing obsession that overrides other interests, but just one interest among many. Even the most obsessed posters also spend a lot of time discussing Star Wars and trading cute cat photos on other parts of the site.

As noted, many members of online forums appear to use conspiracy theories to express legitimate doubts about structures of power, even if the details may appear striking to us. Reddit’s conspiracy forum links on its front page to a “list of confirmed conspiracies”, many of which are historically accurate. In the 1960s, for instance, the US FBI did infiltrate domestic protest groups to disrupt and discredit them. The public health service in Alabama did conduct long-term medical experiments on African American men.

Hence, we think that conspiracy theorising may be best understood as a symptom of a breakdown of trust in institutions like government and the media. Rebuilding that trust is, alas, a difficult proposal. However, our work suggests that recognising the varied and complex motivations and attitudes of conspiracy believers is an important step forward.

Colin Klein, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Australian National University; Peter Clutton, , Australian National University, and Vince Polito, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cognitive Science, Macquarie University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Depression Could Be More a Physical Than Mental Condition, Say Scientists

Plinky Prompt: What Part of Life Confuses You the Most?

For me this is more of a question of disillusionment than confusion.

Question Mark Sign On Hobson’s Old Building, Corner Of Henry & Main (Honor, MI)

OK, this is a difficult question to answer. I don’t know that there is anything that really confuses me too much. That isn’t to say I’m smart, only to say that the Bible generally gives me the answers to all of the questions that generally confuse people.

I think that which gives me the most difficulty is an area that I know the answer to – at least in theory, yet in practical terms it seems very difficult to fathom. It is a religious question (Christian). Why is it that people who know the truth behave/live in a manner opposed to that truth they profess? The answer of course is sin (put simply), but this widespread issue is one that does from time to time bring me some disillusionment.

The ‘Swoon Theory’: What is It & Is It True?

Egyptian Convert from Islam Devastated by ‘Delay Tactic’

Court suspends Mohammed Hegazy’s lawsuit pending outcome of separate case.

CAIRO, Egypt, May 17 (CDN) — An Egyptian convert to Christianity said he is devastated by a recent court decision to suspend a lawsuit he filed to change the religion on his identification card from Muslim to Christian.

The First District of the Court of the State Council on April 27 suspended Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy’s case until the Constitutional Court rules on a challenge to Article 47, a section of the civil code that in theory allows Egyptians to change the religion listed on their ID card.

Hegazy, 27, said the suspension endangers his children’s welfare and will force them to lead a double life indefinitely – at home they will be taught to live in accordance with the Bible, and outside it they will be taught to live according to the Quran.

If they ultimately decide to follow Jesus, Hegazy said, his children will be declared “apostates” and be persecuted the rest of their lives for “leaving Islam.” Hegazy, who has suffered severely after Egypt’s religious authorities declared him an apostate, including being imprisoned by State Security Investigations (SSI) several times, said he filed the case so his children would avoid the same fate.

“I didn’t want them to have to go through the same harassment and persecution that I went through,” he said. “My daughter won’t be able to go to school without constantly fearing for her safety. She might even be killed simply because she is my daughter.”

Hegazy is arguably the most well-known Muslim convert to Christianity in Egypt. He rose to national prominence in August 2007 when he became the first Muslim convert in Egypt to sue for the right to change the religious status on his identification card to “Christian.”

Hegazy said he became a Christian in 1998 after seeking God during a period of intense study of religion. In his final assessment, he said, he found that Islam was void of the love and forgiveness found in Christianity.

Not long after his conversion, Hegazy said, he was arrested by SSI agents who tortured him for three days. In 2001, the SSI arrested Hegazy for writing a book of poems critical of the agency, which has been accused of abusive practices to preserve the regime. In 2002, the SSI arrested Hegazy and held him for more than two months in a prison he compared to a “concentration camp.”

In addition to the government response to his conversion, Hegazy said his mother and father have attacked him repeatedly for becoming a Christian.

“In the culture in Egypt, for a person to change his religion, it’s a big deal because it’s a question of honor and tradition,” Hegazy said. “My dad and my mom took it in a really bad way and would beat me.”

Hegazy married another convert from Islam, Katarina, in 2005. Katarina also wants her ID changed but fears government reaction; there are numerous reports circulating among Egyptian Christians about female converts being arrested and tortured by the SSI or simply disappearing in Egypt’s prison system under Egypt’s Emergency Law. Renewed last week for another two years, the law grants the government broad powers of arbitrary incarceration that human rights groups have roundly criticized.

Delay Tactic

When Hegazy filed his suit in 2007, he and his wife were expecting their first child. Overnight, Egyptian media propelled him into the national limelight. And the persecution got much worse.

Two religious scholars from Al-Azhar University, one of the leading voices of Islamic thought in the Middle East, publicly declared it was legal to kill Muslims that convert to Christianity. In one incident, extremists surrounded a home where Hegazy had once lived and stayed there for several days. In another incident, a group of men ransacked and set fire to Hegazy’s apartment while he was away.

Throughout his legal proceedings, several of Hegazy’s attorney’s have dropped out of the case after receiving death threats, being sued or being arrested. On Jan. 28, 2009, a court ruled that Muslims were forbidden to convert to another religion and ordered Hegazy to pay the costs of hearing his case. He appealed.

Hegazy lives in hiding. Unable to work, the former journalist is supported by friends and other Christians. Last month’s ruling will likely delay a decision in Hegazy’s case for several years and keep him and his family in limbo.

“The court is using this decision as a way of delaying having to make an ultimate decision,” Hegazy said.

The couple’s first child, Mariam, is now 2 years old, and their second child, Yousef, is 3 months old. Because Hegazy and his wife are unable to change their ID to reflect their true faith, the government lists both of their children as Muslims. If they choose to become Christians, they will be considered apostates who, in accordance with longstanding interpretation of the guiding scriptures of Islam, must be killed by faithful Muslims.

“It makes me feel like religion in Egypt isn’t something you can choose by your own free will; it’s something that you are forced to be, and nobody has a choice to choose what their religion is,” Hegazy said. “It bothers me a lot because my kids know they are being brought up as Christians in their home and their parents are Christians, but they can’t practice their religion outside the house.”

Inconsistent Rules

Every Egyptian citizen age 16 or older must carry a state-issued ID card that is required for opening a bank account, enrolling children in school and for starting a business, among other activities. Religious identity also determines to which civil or family court one is subject.

Of primary importance to Hegazy is that the religion indicated on the ID card determines what religious education classes a child is required to take in school.

There is a stark contrast in Egypt between the treatment of Christians who want to change the religious affiliation on their ID card to Islam and Muslims who want to change their affiliation to Christianity. Generally speaking, because Muslims consider the preaching of Muhammad to be the last of three revelations from God to man, in practice “freedom of religion” in Egypt means only the freedom to convert to Islam.

Article 47 of Egypt’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the constitution also states that Islam is the official religion of Egypt. Article 2 of the constitution states that Islamic law, or sharia, is “the principle source of legislation” in Egypt.

The difference between the treatment of converts to Christianity and converts to Islam is illustrated in the case of Samy Aziz Fahmy. The week before the court postponed Hegazy’s case, Fahmy, a Coptic Christian from Saayda village, changed his legal status to Islam. He received his ID card reflecting his new religion on the same day he applied for it – on the day he turned 18, the legal age for conversion.

“I think it’s very weird and not fair that when Christians want to convert to Islam there’s no problem, their papers go through and there’s no discrimination against them,” Hegazy said. “But when Muslims want to convert to Christianity, all of the sudden it’s a big deal.”

Hegazy is not alone in his legal battles. After he filed his case, other Muslim converts sought court action to change their IDs. Like Hegazy, most are in hiding of some sort. Hegazy’s lead attorney, Ashraf Edward, said he is working on several ID cases. He estimates there are more than 4 million converts to Christianity who want to change the religion listed on their ID, though the basis for that figure is unclear.

“There are a lot of people who want to change their ID, but they’re afraid of turning it into a court case because they don’t want to be persecuted,” Edward said.

International Condemnation

Human rights groups and government agencies around the world have condemned Egypt for its record on religious freedom. In a report issued earlier this month, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom outlined Egypt’s problems with identification cards and the treatment of converts from Islam, taking note of Hegazy’s case.

“The Egyptian government generally does not recognize conversions of Muslims to other religions,” the report states. “Egyptian courts also have refused to allow Muslims who convert to Christianity to change their identity cards to reflect their conversions. In the first such case, brought by Muhammad Hegazy, a lower court ruled in January 2008 that Muslims are forbidden from converting away from Islam based on principles of Islamic law. The court also stated that such conversion would constitute a disparagement of the official state religion and an enticement for other Muslims to convert. Hegazy, who has been subjected to death threats and is currently in hiding, has appealed the ruling.”

The report cited numerous other problem areas in regard to freedom of worship in Egypt, and the country remained on USCIRF’s Watch List for 2010. Egypt has been on the list since 2002. Among the changes USCIRF said are necessary in Egypt is how religion is reported on Egypt’s national ID card.

The commission said Egypt must “ensure that every Egyptian is protected against discrimination in social, labor, and other rights by modifying the national identity card, either to omit mention of religious affiliation or make optional any mention of religious affiliation.”

Report from Compass Direct News 

INDIA: CHRISTIANS DISPUTE POLICE THEORY ON PRIEST’S DEATH

Hindu extremists suspected in area known for anti-Christian violence.

NEW DELHI, August 3 (Compass Direct News) – The suspicious death of a 39-year-old priest in the southern state of Karnataka has further terrified Christians living in an area known for anti-Christian violence, but police indicate that they doubt it is a homicide.

The body of the parish priest of St. Mary’s Church, the Rev. James Mukalel was found lying near his motorbike on a remote roadside in Belthangady sub-district near Mangalore early last Thursday (July 30). After family members reportedly sought a second autopsy that delayed interment, the priest’s body was buried on Saturday (July 25) with the cause of death still unsolved.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) maintains that Mukalel, from Belthangady’s Syro-Malabar diocese in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, was killed.

“According to Fr. Joseph Valiaparambil, vicar general and spokesperson of the diocese of Belthangady, the death of the priest appears to be suspicious and unnatural,” officials at CBCI said in a statement, “as his body was found lying on the roadside near the motorbike which he was riding, and there were no clothes on his body.”

Alluding to Hindu nationalist extremists, the CBCI affirmed that “such killers represent no religious community but only a section which promotes the cult of violence, whose inhuman acts only further widen the gap between religious communities, thus aggravating the agony of the even larger human family.”

The Catholic Church demanded that the alleged killers be brought to justice, but police said Mukalel may have died from food poisoning. Superintendent of Police of Dakshina Kannada district Subramayeshwar Rao told Compass that police had only two theories on the cause of death.

“Although I have not seen the autopsy report, I learned from the forensic surgeons that Fr. James Mukalel died of poisoning – most likely naturally because of food poisoning, or he was poisoned.”

There were no external marks of injury or signs of suffocation, Rao added. The diocesan social work director had reportedly said there were signs of suffocation on the body.

Asked why Mukalel’s body was found nearly naked, Rao said only that Mukalel had vomited and passed a stool before his death.

“The body was found without any clothes, with only underwear, which had been pulled down the legs,” Rao said. “I don’t know why some people are thinking like that [that he was killed and for religious reasons].”

The Karnataka-based Global Council of Indian Christians has demanded an inquiry by the federal Central Bureau of Investigation.

Two Autopsies

Mukalel, from Kannur district in the neighboring state of Kerala, was recently assigned to St. Mary’s Church.

According to the CBCI, Mukalel was killed as he returned to his parish in the Kutrupady area after attending the funeral of a parish priest in the adjacent Charmadi village around 9 p.m. on Wednesday (July 29).

On Friday (July 31) the priest’s body was taken to Government Wenlock Hospital in Mangalore, district headquarters of Dakshina Kannada district, after which the Catholic Church sent the body for last rites to St. Sebastian’s Church in Vellad, in Kerala state’s Kannur district.

A funeral service was held at St. Sebastian’s Church on Saturday (Aug. 1), but the body was not buried. It was instead taken to the Government Medical College at Kozhikode in Kerala for another autopsy because Mukalel’s parents and brother, along with other close relatives, felt it was not a natural death, Indo-Asian News Service reported.

Police official Rao said he had not been apprised of a second autopsy. “I heard about it in the news,” he said. “There is no legal provision for a second autopsy.”

Reports of the two autopsies were awaited at press time. The case, registered as a suspicious unnatural death under Section 174 C of Criminal Procedure Code, will be processed only after autopsy reports are completed.

Past Attacks

The minority Muslim and Christian communities have faced numerous attacks in Dakshina Kannada district in general and in Mangalore in particular.

Most recently, The Hindu reported that on the evening of May 16, the day general election results were announced, a group of people celebrating the victory of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Nalin Kumar Kateel from Dakshina Kannada attacked four Muslim families with sticks, soda bottles, cricket bats and cycle chains in the Nettrakere area in the Bantwal area in Mangalore.

In August-September of last year, at least 28 attacks on churches were reported in Dakshina Kannada district, mainly in Mangalore. According to a report by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), in every case, the attackers were from Hindu nationalist extremist groups like the Bajrang Dal, the Hindu Jagaran Vedike or the Sri Rama Sene.

The attacks were seen as fallout from violence in Kandhamal district in the eastern state of Orissa, where Maoists on Aug. 23 killed a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or the VHP, whose youth wing is the Bajrang Dal), Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, for which Christians were wrongly blamed.

In Karnataka, Hindu nationalists also based their violence on alleged conversions of Hindus to Christianity and to protest a booklet, which they said was “derogatory” to Hindu gods, published by a Christian group, New Life Fellowship Trust.

Mangalore police were also suspected of having played a role in the attacks.

“What was striking about these attacks, especially in Mangalore, is that the police acted in tandem with the Bajrang Dal,” said the PUCL report, entitled, “From Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face of Sangh Parivar” released in March.

“The pattern we observed was that the Bajrang Dal would attack Christian places and cause injury to persons and damage to property,” according to the report. “Then the police would step in, not to chase and arrest the assailants, but ostensibly to prevent any violent retaliation by the Christians. And in the course of the alleged preventive activity, they would assault the Christians further.”

A report by the National Minorities Commission also said that in the first week of the attacks on churches, police arrested more Christians, 47, than extremists from the Bajrang Dal, 36.

Karnataka is ruled by the BJP, which came to power for the first time in the state in alliance with a regional party, the Janata Dal Secular, in February 2006. In May 2008, it won the state assembly elections and became the one-party ruler of the state.

Report from Compass Direct News 

EGYPT: TWO CLASHES SHAKE COPTIC COMMUNITY

Security forces fail to avert attacks on Christians in separate cases.

ISTANBUL, July 7 (Compass Direct News) – Separate cases of sectarian violence in two villages erupted in Egypt last week, shaking the country’s Coptic Christian community as Muslims attacked their homes and security forces imposed curfews in an effort to maintain peace.

Last Wednesday (July 1) in the village of Kafr El Barbari in Mit Ghamr, Dakahlia, north of Cairo, Muslim villagers mourning the death of 18-year-old Mohamed Ramadan Ezzat, an Al Azhar University student stabbed to death by a Coptic grocer, attacked Christian homes with stones, breaking their windows.

During post-funeral violence, 25 people were injured as hundreds of angry Muslims attacked Coptic homes. Some sources claimed that those who attacked the Christian houses were Muslims from surrounding villages. Reports varied on extent of damage to houses.

Many of the 1,000 Christian Copts who live in the village of 4,000 inhabitants fled or remained indoors out of fear that tensions may escalate. A non-profit organization that visited Kafr El Barbari on Sunday reported that it was unable to make contact with Christians.

On June 29, Ezzat had gone to the family grocery store of 50-year-old Emil Gerges to buy soft drinks. A dispute about an alleged debt Ezzat had with the store ended when Gerges’ son John, 20, stabbed the young Muslim. Ezzat died in the hospital that evening, after which his family members attacked and burned the Gerges’ store as well as two of the family apartments.

Gerges, his two sons and wife were arrested on June 29, and while his wife was released for health reasons, the men of the family remain in prison under charges of manslaughter. Security forces ordered a curfew in the village and placed a cordon around it to prohibit movement into and out of it.

Although the conflict in Kafr El Barbari was seen as a family dispute, sources say it quickly escalated into sectarian violence, heightening tensions throughout the country.

“The event could have passed as an individual fight, only there is so much tension now that if any individual fight happens between a Muslim and Christian, the whole village erupts and fights,” said Samia Sidhom, news editor of Egyptian Coptic weekly Watani.

So far there has been no official reconciliation meeting between the village’s Christians and Muslims, although leaders have met. Ezzat’s father, in a statement this week to online news agency Youm 7, said that his family has conflict only with the Gerges family and asked Christians who had fled to return to their homes. He did, however, imply that if the courts did not vindicate his son’s death, he would.

Sidhom of Watani said that overall there is an increase in sectarian tensions in the country because Islamic elements see a benefit to dissension rising.

“It destabilizes the country, and it puts security authorities at a weak point,” she said.

Other Coptic experts, however, believe that security forces have a hand in most cases of sectarian violence across the nation.

“The police are more than capable of controlling any situation if they want to,” said Ibrahim Habib, chairman of U.K.-based United Copts, of the apparent lack of control during Ezzat’s funeral. “This is deliberate I think. Some authority in the police feels that this is a time to teach Christians a lesson, to humiliate them according to sharia [Islamic law], to treat them as dhimmi, to treat them as second class citizens. If the government is serious, it is more than capable of controlling things.”

Rumors Lead to More Violence

On the heels of violence in Ezbet Boshra-East last month that left Christian villagers imprisoned and hiding in their houses on suspicion of holding a prayer meeting without permission, just five kilometers away in Ezbet Guirgis on Friday (July 3) Christians faced a similar fate.

After rumors spread among Ezbet Guirgis’s 400 Muslims that the majority Christians were planning to use a four-story building as a church, early in the morning the Muslims set fire to a warehouse adjacent to the building.

The village priest, the Rev. Saman Shehata, had applied for permission to use the building for worship last year, but authorities had rejected it.

The village’s 1,400 Coptic Christians have not used the building due to lack of official permission even though they have owned it for three years. Instead, the Christians have been using an old 35-square-meter building that has association status, allowing them to pray in it.

Shehata told Compass he believed that local police authorities who resented the application for permission to use the newer building as a church, which he filed eight months ago, spread the rumor that Copts would worship there in spite the denial of his request.

“These rumors are most likely spread by the lower ranking people from the police themselves,” Shehata said. “They incite the Muslims to show that they don’t want the building.”

The priest, who has been working in Ezbet Guirgis for 12 years, said his application for church use was rejected due to its proximity to the village’s only mosque.

The fire damaged two buildings, and Muslims also tried to burn cars belonging to the church and priest. Fire brigades arrived at the scene 90 minutes later. Shehata said that after morning prayers, when he went to file a complaint about the fires, he received a phone call informing him that Muslims were attacking Christians.

Few Christians were injured. Authorities arrested 11 Christian Copts and five Muslims in connection with the fires and ensuing violence. Security forces also placed a temporary curfew on the village of Ezbet Guirgis and are monitoring the village.

On his way to visit the Christian prisoners and to give them food today, Shehata said that security forces had detained and were trying to blame Safuat Atalla, a 28-year-old Copt, for the fires, which also destroyed some of the villagers’ stored crop harvest. Atalla used to work as the Shehata’s driver and had resigned on friendly terms after he found a better job to support his new wife and ailing parents.

Shehata, however, fears that the police may be torturing Atalla to extract a false confession that he set the fires out of anger toward the priest. Shehata said it was impossible to know how the prisoners are being treated as police have heavily supervised his visits.

“The greatest difficulty is that the prayer space is very limited, and it can only accommodate 1 percent of the Christian villagers,” said Shehata of the community’s older, smaller building. “People have to stand outside the building whenever they come for mass.”

The priest said the excuse authorities give for not allowing them to use or build a church is to maintain the village’s harmony.

“Christians are forced to pray in the street, and other villagers pass through them with their cattle, and this also leads to friction,” said Shehata. “So isn’t it better to pray within four walls than in the streets, humiliated?”

Shehata said this was the first time the two communities clashed in the village.

Priest Leaves

The case of Ezbet Guirgis is similar to that of Ezbet Boshra-East, said an Egyptian human rights expert, as in both villages violence erupted on rumors about the use of church-owned buildings.

Reconciliation meetings are expected to take place in Ezbet Guirgis soon, but the expert said it was likely that in order to maintain peace, Shehata may have to leave the village as did the Rev. Isaak Castor from Ezbet Boshra-East after last month’s clashes.

“It’s expected that Father Saman must leave, because they accepted that solution in Boshra so it will be hard to accept anything else,” said the expert.

Rumors have already started circulating that Muslims are demanding that Shehata leave.

“Father Isaac is already out of the village,” said the expert, who recently spoke with Castor. “He left before the reconciliation meeting that happened on Wednesday [July 1].”

Castor moved to Minya at the request of his superiors.

Commenting on the three cases of sectarian violence within two weeks, Habib of United Copts expressed worry about the negative role security forces have played in the events and the lack of equality for Coptic Christians seeking their rights based on the Constitution, which in theory grants them religious freedom.

“The national security force is a danger, and the police are not even-handed,” he said. “Even when it comes to court, they do not supply enough evidence, the Islamists have infiltrated the courts, and this is a bad recipe for Egypt. We are really worried about what will happen in the future to the Christians.”

Report from Compass Direct News 

EGYPT: TWO CLASHES SHAKE COPTIC COMMUNITY

Security forces fail to avert attacks on Christians in separate cases.

ISTANBUL, July 7 (Compass Direct News) – Separate cases of sectarian violence in two villages erupted in Egypt last week, shaking the country’s Coptic Christian community as Muslims attacked their homes and security forces imposed curfews in an effort to maintain peace.

Last Wednesday (July 1) in the village of Kafr El Barbari in Mit Ghamr, Dakahlia, north of Cairo, Muslim villagers mourning the death of 18-year-old Mohamed Ramadan Ezzat, an Al Azhar University student stabbed to death by a Coptic grocer, attacked Christian homes with stones, breaking their windows.

During post-funeral violence, 25 people were injured as hundreds of angry Muslims attacked Coptic homes. Some sources claimed that those who attacked the Christian houses were Muslims from surrounding villages. Reports varied on extent of damage to houses.

Many of the 1,000 Christian Copts who live in the village of 4,000 inhabitants fled or remained indoors out of fear that tensions may escalate. A non-profit organization that visited Kafr El Barbari on Sunday reported that it was unable to make contact with Christians.

On June 29, Ezzat had gone to the family grocery store of 50-year-old Emil Gerges to buy soft drinks. A dispute about an alleged debt Ezzat had with the store ended when Gerges’ son John, 20, stabbed the young Muslim. Ezzat died in the hospital that evening, after which his family members attacked and burned the Gerges’ store as well as two of the family apartments.

Gerges, his two sons and wife were arrested on June 29, and while his wife was released for health reasons, the men of the family remain in prison under charges of manslaughter. Security forces ordered a curfew in the village and placed a cordon around it to prohibit movement into and out of it.

Although the conflict in Kafr El Barbari was seen as a family dispute, sources say it quickly escalated into sectarian violence, heightening tensions throughout the country.

“The event could have passed as an individual fight, only there is so much tension now that if any individual fight happens between a Muslim and Christian, the whole village erupts and fights,” said Samia Sidhom, news editor of Egyptian Coptic weekly Watani.

So far there has been no official reconciliation meeting between the village’s Christians and Muslims, although leaders have met. Ezzat’s father, in a statement this week to online news agency Youm 7, said that his family has conflict only with the Gerges family and asked Christians who had fled to return to their homes. He did, however, imply that if the courts did not vindicate his son’s death, he would.

Sidhom of Watani said that overall there is an increase in sectarian tensions in the country because Islamic elements see a benefit to dissension rising.

“It destabilizes the country, and it puts security authorities at a weak point,” she said.

Other Coptic experts, however, believe that security forces have a hand in most cases of sectarian violence across the nation.

“The police are more than capable of controlling any situation if they want to,” said Ibrahim Habib, chairman of U.K.-based United Copts, of the apparent lack of control during Ezzat’s funeral. “This is deliberate I think. Some authority in the police feels that this is a time to teach Christians a lesson, to humiliate them according to sharia [Islamic law], to treat them as dhimmi, to treat them as second class citizens. If the government is serious, it is more than capable of controlling things.”

Rumors Lead to More Violence

On the heels of violence in Ezbet Boshra-East last month that left Christian villagers imprisoned and hiding in their houses on suspicion of holding a prayer meeting without permission, just five kilometers away in Ezbet Guirgis on Friday (July 3) Christians faced a similar fate.

After rumors spread among Ezbet Guirgis’s 400 Muslims that the majority Christians were planning to use a four-story building as a church, early in the morning the Muslims set fire to a warehouse adjacent to the building.

The village priest, the Rev. Saman Shehata, had applied for permission to use the building for worship last year, but authorities had rejected it.

The village’s 1,400 Coptic Christians have not used the building due to lack of official permission even though they have owned it for three years. Instead, the Christians have been using an old 35-square-meter building that has association status, allowing them to pray in it.

Shehata told Compass he believed that local police authorities who resented the application for permission to use the newer building as a church, which he filed eight months ago, spread the rumor that Copts would worship there in spite the denial of his request.

“These rumors are most likely spread by the lower ranking people from the police themselves,” Shehata said. “They incite the Muslims to show that they don’t want the building.”

The priest, who has been working in Ezbet Guirgis for 12 years, said his application for church use was rejected due to its proximity to the village’s only mosque.

The fire damaged two buildings, and Muslims also tried to burn cars belonging to the church and priest. Fire brigades arrived at the scene 90 minutes later. Shehata said that after morning prayers, when he went to file a complaint about the fires, he received a phone call informing him that Muslims were attacking Christians.

Few Christians were injured. Authorities arrested 11 Christian Copts and five Muslims in connection with the fires and ensuing violence. Security forces also placed a temporary curfew on the village of Ezbet Guirgis and are monitoring the village.

On his way to visit the Christian prisoners and to give them food today, Shehata said that security forces had detained and were trying to blame Safuat Atalla, a 28-year-old Copt, for the fires, which also destroyed some of the villagers’ stored crop harvest. Atalla used to work as the Shehata’s driver and had resigned on friendly terms after he found a better job to support his new wife and ailing parents.

Shehata, however, fears that the police may be torturing Atalla to extract a false confession that he set the fires out of anger toward the priest. Shehata said it was impossible to know how the prisoners are being treated as police have heavily supervised his visits.

“The greatest difficulty is that the prayer space is very limited, and it can only accommodate 1 percent of the Christian villagers,” said Shehata of the community’s older, smaller building. “People have to stand outside the building whenever they come for mass.”

The priest said the excuse authorities give for not allowing them to use or build a church is to maintain the village’s harmony.

“Christians are forced to pray in the street, and other villagers pass through them with their cattle, and this also leads to friction,” said Shehata. “So isn’t it better to pray within four walls than in the streets, humiliated?”

Shehata said this was the first time the two communities clashed in the village.

Priest Leaves

The case of Ezbet Guirgis is similar to that of Ezbet Boshra-East, said an Egyptian human rights expert, as in both villages violence erupted on rumors about the use of church-owned buildings.

Reconciliation meetings are expected to take place in Ezbet Guirgis soon, but the expert said it was likely that in order to maintain peace, Shehata may have to leave the village as did the Rev. Isaak Castor from Ezbet Boshra-East after last month’s clashes.

“It’s expected that Father Saman must leave, because they accepted that solution in Boshra so it will be hard to accept anything else,” said the expert.

Rumors have already started circulating that Muslims are demanding that Shehata leave.

“Father Isaac is already out of the village,” said the expert, who recently spoke with Castor. “He left before the reconciliation meeting that happened on Wednesday [July 1].”

Castor moved to Minya at the request of his superiors.

Commenting on the three cases of sectarian violence within two weeks, Habib of United Copts expressed worry about the negative role security forces have played in the events and the lack of equality for Coptic Christians seeking their rights based on the Constitution, which in theory grants them religious freedom.

“The national security force is a danger, and the police are not even-handed,” he said. “Even when it comes to court, they do not supply enough evidence, the Islamists have infiltrated the courts, and this is a bad recipe for Egypt. We are really worried about what will happen in the future to the Christians.”

Report from Compass Direct News