Hoisting homemade wooden crosses and photographs of bodies they said were crushed by tanks, hundreds of Coptic Christians rallied Wednesday in front of the White House to protest rising violence against minority Christians in Egypt and to demand that the Obama administration pressure Cairo to protect their rights.
The demonstrators, mostly Egyptian immigrants who traveled in buses from as far as New York and Chicago, included black-robed Coptic orthodox priests and families who had lost relatives in recent violence in Egypt, including the New Year’s Eve bombing of a church and a bloody clash Oct. 9 between protesters and army forces in Cairo that left 27 people dead.
“It is like a horrible nightmare. We watch on TV and see our people being run over by tanks,” said Mary Wassef, 66, who took a bus with friends from her church in northern New Jersey. “This is my church and my homeland. But now they want to force all Christians to convert or leave. If you hang a cross in your car, they pull you out and smash you to pieces.”
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Coptic Christians protest outside White House against violence in Egypt
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