To the Editor:
While this might not be on the hearts of most people in Hudson County, on New Year’s Eve over 20 Coptic Christians were killed when a car bomb exploded outside of their church in Egypt. Nearly 100 others were injured. The horror isn’t only that they were killed after celebrating church services in peace, but that this has been an ongoing pattern of suffering for this minority religion in an Islamic country.
For most of the last 1300 years, the Coptic church has suffered in silence. And while other atrocities around the world may sometimes drown out the tears of these Coptic mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters, I think it’s time for a change. Not only a change in the way of our country conditions the international aide it gives to foreign nations, but also time for change in the way we Americans perceive the world’s persecuted minorities. It would be a great service of raising awareness and educating citizens if the editors of the “Bayonne Community News” ran a weekly column on global minorities and their suffering. I, of course, think the first one you publish should be about the Coptic Church since they rang in the New Year in blood and mourning.
MONICA WASSEF