A nation, along with all its political and religious institutions, has lost its humanity. Hearts have turned to stone, and feelings have dried up in the face of the grief and tears of a mother and her family due to the disappearance of her underage daughter, Silvana Atef Fanoos, who has a mental disability. She has been missing since October of last year. These institutions have failed to provide any information about the whereabouts of the abducted girl, amidst deliberate obfuscation by security agencies from the very beginning. Her location was reported to be at the home of a young man who claimed she was his wife when he was summoned to the police station in Tamia, Fayoum, accompanied by the girl who was wearing a niqab, indicating her forced conversion to Islam.
Instead of returning the girl to her parents, the case was handed over to the judiciary, disregarding all laws pertaining to children and human rights, and she was given to the young man and his family. This family appeared in two videos where they humiliated her family and disparaged Christianity by labeling Christians as infidels. Ultimately, the Tamia court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over the case after initially accepting and postponing it, and placed the minor in a care home under the Ministry of Social Solidarity.
It is a shame for the state security institutions, which swiftly reacted when a video was released of a girl claiming she was sexually harassed by a young man on a bus a few days ago. The security forces arrested him and subsequently brought him before the public prosecutor in Cairo, who decided to release him on a bail of 1,000 Egyptian pounds while the young man who hid the girl and his family were left free without any charges, whether for the forced disappearance of the child or for disparaging Christianity, despite being responsible for the content of the video where the child was coached by a woman next to her.
Moreover, it is disgraceful for the Ministry of Social Solidarity to leave the girl caught between the hammer of a family that is foreign to her and lacks compassion and the anvil of care homes affiliated with the ministry. They have not disclosed any information about the missing child, highlighting the state’s disregard for the plight of a girl suffering from a mental disability. The cries and tears of a mother who has lost her daughter in one of the state-run care homes have reached a point where, being denied the chance to see her, she organized a silent protest in front of the public prosecutor’s office, putting her life at risk. This act has made it clear how obstinate state institutions are in revealing the whereabouts and fate of her underage daughter.
This raises several questions about all cases and violations concerning Copts, whether it be blasphemy or the forced disappearance and abduction of children for conversion. Questions such as: “Are we truly in a state of citizenship that respects laws and international treaties as established by the United Nations regarding children’s and human rights? What evidence supports this?” “Whose interests are state agencies and institutions protecting in concealing the abduction of Coptic children within their institutions?” “Has the Ministry of Social Solidarity deliberately concealed Silvana for the benefit of certain entities or individuals until she turns eighteen, after which they would issue a certificate of conversion and hand her over to her abductor?”
There is no doubt that if the case of the missing girl continues to be deliberately neglected by state institutions until she turns eighteen, the extraction of a birth certificate and a conversion document will serve as a green light for government institutions to conceal more Coptic girls until they reach adulthood. This will further tarnish Egypt’s reputation in areas concerning children’s rights and lead to condemnation from international human rights organizations and committees.
