Egyptian police kill 20 Sudanese protesters
Middle East Desk Report
CAIRO—Twenty Sudanese refugees were killed when several thousand
Egyptian riot police forcibly broke up a three-month protest outside UN
offices in Cairo. Police armed with sticks and shields stormed the small
square where the Sudanese had been camping at around 5:00 am (0300 GMT)
on Friday.
“There was a stampede that left 30 of the protesters injured, most of
them the elderly and young and they were immediately taken to the
hospital where 10 of them died,” the interior ministry said.
Witnesses saw several people being dragged away from the mayhem as the
refugees — including dozens of women and small children — tried to
resist their evacuation. The refugees were forced into dozens of buses
lined up on one of the main thoroughfares in Cairo’s upmarket
neighbourhood of Mohandessin, ending a standoff that had lasted most of
the night.
The ministry said police intervened after all efforts to convince the
protesters to end their sit-in peacefully failed and after they
threatened to attack the UN offices.
“Efforts to convince the (protesters) continued today from 1:00 am until
4:00 am, but in vain,” the ministry said. It claimed that the
protesters, some of them drunk, began throwing bottles at police and
attacked them with sticks, injuring three officers and 30 policemen.
“The police force had been deployed there to secure the evacuation and
end the illegal settlement,” the ministry said, adding that the refugees
had been taken to “temporary camps”.
It added the refugees would be allowed to return to their homes. “They
want to kill us,” shouted one protester as he was frog-walked towards a
bus. “Our demands are legitimate, it is our right to protest here, the
only right we have”.
The police force — which numbered close to 5,000 for the operation —
initially used water cannon in a bid to disperse the refugees. The
protesters had been sleeping under the polluted Cairo sky for three
months, fighting temperatures which have dipped well below 10 degrees
Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) with plastic sheets, cardboard and
blankets.
A 21-year north-south civil war in neighbouring Sudan which ended a year
ago had displaced some four million people, while an ongoing conflict in
the western region of Darfur has also forced scores to flee the country.
The refugees are demanding that the UN refugee agency review cases of
asylum-seekers whose applications it has rejected and resume resettling
refugees in third countries, mainly the United States, Canada and
Australia.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has offered to provide
more assistance to the refugees but has refused to resettle them in a
third country. But most of the Sudanese refugees say they simply want to
leave Egypt, where they say the UN office has ignored their plight.
“The trust is gone. We will be happy if we end up in any other country,
but look how this Arab country is treating us, just because we are
black. It’s a disgrace,” Paul, a young refugee from the southern
Sudanese city of Juba, told just before being evacuated. “They are
telling us to go back because the war is over, but it’s not so simple,”
said George Oliver, a 20-year-old from the same region.
“There are people here from all parts of the country who have had
problems with the army. I seized from the street in Khartoum and drafted
by force in the military. Now I am here, if I go back to Sudan, they
will find me,” he said.
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