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2011-02-01 issue:

Mennonite Central Committee monitors Egypt situation

by Everett J. Thomas

Print Article

Mennonite Central Committee is in regular contact with MCC workers in Egypt but has not yet released any information about their status amidst ongoing street demonstrations and violence in that country.

A statement on the MCC website says, "MCC is monitoring the situation in Egypt carefully ... Pray that the violence will end soon and that a just peace will prevail."

A Jan. 31 e-mail statement said: "MCC has workers in Egypt, national and international, but for reasons related to their security we are not providing information that may identify them. We are in regular contact with our workers ... MCC is attempting to move its international workers out of Egypt. MCC’s work in Egypt is at a standstill because of the unrest."

MCC has 14 international workers in Egypt, including two children, and three national workers.

According to information on the site: MCC supports Egyptian churches' life and witness as they work to improve the lives of their communities. MCC works with institutions of the Coptic Orthodox church, an ancient church that has coexisted with Muslims ever since Islam arrived in Egypt more than 1,300 years ago, and with the Coptic Evangelical church, which dates to the late 19th century. MCC workers serve as educators in various diocesan adult evening programs and do teacher training in church schools. Other areas of MCC's work in Egypt include conflict management training for congregational leaders.

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  • Posted by ebodnaruk at Wednesday, February 02, 2011 at 09:57 PM

    It is great to pray, but what else can people do? The US put Mubarak into power in the first place, and now finally people are showing they are upset with it. This country's history, unfortunately, has been to support our own foreign policy interests when situations like this happen (when a leader/dictator is on the way out, and we have some ability to influence who will be the successor). We need more calls to our government that we are not only interested in "our" own foreign policy interests and that real democracy is not supported when we try to influence who the next leader will be. I can't say for sure that the US is doing that now, but there are certainly tons of examples showing that this is pretty typical. Although I trust Obama much more than other presidents, it seems that there are many, many people who aren't elected who have considerable influence over foreign policy and the more day-to-day actions (or meddling) in other countries. Probably Obama isn't as neocolonialist as other presidents are, but there is probably still a lot that goes on he's not aware of. Government is extremely complicated - seems like we never can know what all is exactly going on.

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