Monday, May 3rd, 2021
Press Release
The Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue condemns the attack by Ethiopian monks on the Monastery of the Sultan of the Egyptian Church in Jerusalem, and reported that monks from Ethiopia set up a tent on Thursday night (April 29, 2021) with the Ethiopian state flag on it in The Sultan Monastery Square owned by the Egyptian Church.
According to the forum, the calls of Coptic monks continued to remove the flag and tent from the monastery square owned by the Egyptian Church, and continued the attack, Ethiopian monks attacked the monks of the Egyptian Church, preventing them from lowering the Ethiopian flag and mocking them;
The Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue rejected the repeated attempts of Ethiopian monks to claim their right to own any part of the monastery with the support of the Israeli government, and the coalition confirms despite repeated attempts to seize the monastery for hundreds of years, the Egyptian Church was able to keep the monastery, and the Egyptian Church filed more than (100) lawsuits before the Israeli Supreme Court, and each time the ruling was issued in its favor to take over the monastery and all its contents
The Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue expresses its solidarity and full support with the Egyptian monks in Jerusalem in defending their legitimate rights
The forum confirms that The Sultan Monastery is one of the monasteries belonging to the Egyptian Church outside Egypt, and the buildings of the monastery and its inclusions and components indicate its Egyptian Coptic identity, like all Coptic monasteries, which is part of the property of the Egyptian Orthodox Church in the Holy Land, and the monastery has never been disturbed by Egyptian Coptic monks.
The Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue calls upon the Israeli government to protect the Egyptian monks in Jerusalem and hand them over to the monastery with all its contents.
