Hundreds of Egyptian Copts and supporters organised an angry protest and started a sit-in Tuesday night to voice fury over their renewed feeling of persecution and injustice in the wake of last month's sectarian tensions in Aswan, Upper, Egypt Al-Ahram reported
Egypt's minority Coptic population has been fuming since 30 September after a group of Muslims in Merinab village in Aswan attempted to block renovations underway at a christian church in the majority Muslim village, charging that the building was actually a 'guesthouse' that cannot be turned into a church.
Coptic protesters congregated in the main square in Cairo's neighborhood of Shubra, which is home to a large concentration of Egyptian Christians.
As planned by "The Union of Maspero Youth" and "Copts Without Constraints", the demonstrators started to march at 5pm CMT towards the Supreme Courthouse, the destination where the protest ended.
After the march, a few hundreds angry Copts re-gathered at Maspero to start an open-ended sit-in that blocked the main street across from the TV building.
What added insult to injury to many Copts is that official documents were presented by Christians verifying that the building has been a licensed church for 80 years.
Several demonstrations were staged later in Cairo and Aswan, with Copts calling for the punishment of the assailants.
However, Copts and protesters got no decisive response form the authorities.
Governor of Aswan, Mustafa El-Sayed, widely deemed biased towards Christians, incurred the bulk of the wrath among demonstrators.
During Tuesday's march, protesters burned many medium-sized photos of El-Sayed and dubbed him "The Killer" in angry chants.
Protesters also came down hard quite on Field Marshal Tantawi and his ruling military council. Many blamed Tantawi for not providing Copts with the proper protection against sectarian violence.
"The people want to bring down the Field Marshal [Tantawi]," was one of many other slogans that resounded in Shubra during the march. They blamed him for his "incompetence and inability to make Egypt a modern state". Others accused him of being more loyal to other countries such as Saudi Arabia and the US.
The march caused a traffic bottleneck in Shubra. Marchers also called on people in residential buildings to come down and join them.
Some of the banners and placards that were held aloft along with many crosses read: "No for religious discrimination", "No for misleading media", "We die, for our church to live" and "Muslim and Christian [are] one hand".