U.S. Consul Denies Discrimination Against Christians
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

CAIRO, Egypt – The American consular general in Cairo yesterday blasted a New York Post story accusing him of hiring Islamist translators who discriminated against Egypt’s minority Christian population.
In an interview yesterday, Peter Kaestner said he did “not remember reading anything of truth” in Monday’s New York Post story alleging the State Department had launched an investigation into the discrimination against Coptic Christians applying for visas. The editor of Egypt’s largest Coptic newspaper, who is a Copt and a leading political researcher on Muslim-Copt relations in Egypt, said in interviews yesterday that he had never heard any complaints of discrimination against Christians in the visa process.
On Monday, a New York Post story alleged the State Department was investigating 15 to 20 Muslim employees who work in the consular section of America’s embassy here. The story said hundreds, possibly thousands, of Egyptian Christians had been wrongfully denied visas. At the root of the problem, according to the paper, were “hard-line” Islamist employees, who conducted pre-interviews of visa applicants, pushing a secret agenda to punish the minorities. The article said the employees had placed posters of the Palestinian Arab terror organization, Hamas on the walls of the office.
Mr. Kaestner yesterday denied categorically that there was any investigation of his staff. He did say he had been asked about two individuals who were denied visas after State Department officials in Washington relayed concerns from Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican of Virginia. One of the individuals, according to Mr. Kaestner, who could not share their names, did in fact receive a visa.
“I don’t remember reading anything of truth in that story. There may have been a word somewhere, but I don’t remember it,” he said. “We are not under investigation. We do not have hard-line Islamists working here. There are no Hamas posters in the consular section.”
Posters that hung the consular section yesterday included one of a soccer player, the mug shots of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, and a Turkish promotional flier advertising the movie “Green Card.” On one woman’s desk was a photograph of the Egyptian Coptic Pope. None of the six Egyptians working at the embassy yesterday were wearing hijabs, the traditional head covering worn by religious Muslims.
Mr. Kaestner yesterday said the majority of his 15-person staff is Christian. He also said the Egyptian staff does not conduct formal interviews with applicants for visas. Instead, he said employees are brought in on rare occasions for spot translations for the American consular officers if the accent of the applicant is hard to understand.
When asked if he had ever heard any complaints from Christians regarding the American visa process, the editor of Watani Sunday, Youssef Saidhom, said, “Never.” “In fact, I am always frequently approached by families and individuals who have applied for immigration process in the U.S. embassy, when they were aware, they were required to present sponsorship from residents in the United States. They approached me to provide them with sponsorship, in this context I was able to get close to their documentation. Not a single case stemmed from any meddling in the U.S. embassy,” he said.
An expert on Copt-Muslim relations, Samir Morcos, who himself is Christian, said yesterday that, if anything, post-September 11, 2001, emigration rules made it harder for Muslims to get visas to visit America than Christians.
A senior researcher at Human Rights Watch also said he had not heard of this kind of discrimination. “Copts do face various kinds of discrimination in Egypt, but I have never heard of this allegation that Copts face discrimination in access to U.S. visas,” the deputy director of Human Rights Watch Middle East division, Joe Stork, told The New York Sun yesterday.