Human Rights Watch faults Egypt's 'shoot-to-stop' policy In a report released Wednesday, the group says 33 refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers have been killed since 2007 while trying to cross into Israel.
Cairo Sadiq Sahour came to Egypt from Darfur in 2004 after government militias burned down his village. He wanted to find a better life for his family, but in Cairo he found no work and little assistance from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). So in July 2007, he and his wife, Hajja Abbas Haroun, made an increasingly popular – and dangerous – decision for refugees and migrants. They resolved to smuggle themselves into Israel.
Skip to next paragraph Related Stories Israel to grant Darfur refugees citizenship Sudan's 'genocide' lands at Israel's door .With their infant daughter in tow and a second child due any day, they traveled to the Sinai town of Al-Arish and paid Egyptian smugglers $250 per person to ferry them to the border area. As they drew near, says Mr. Sahour, Egyptian border police approached the group of 12 adults and several children and opened fire.
Ms. Haroun and her unborn child were killed instantly. Many of the others were arrested, tried, and sentenced to heavy fines and a year in prison.
"The police came and shot us from close up," Sahour says. "They could see that there were women and children."
In a report released Wednesday, US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) says a disturbing new Egyptian policy has arisen seemingly in response to Israeli pressure on Cairo to control the flow of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers across the border. They call it a policy of "shoot-to-stop."
"Egyptian border police are using lethal force to stop refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers from crossing into Israel," says Bill Van Esveld, author of the HRW report. "That is a violation of the standard under international law, which Egypt is held to: if you do not need to use lethal force to protect human life, that you don't."
In the past two years, more than 13,000 people have been smuggled into Israel, the report states. Thirty-three others, including children, have died at the hands of Egyptian security forces in the remote border zone.
Egypt maintains that the use of force is needed because smuggling networks represent a threat to national security.
"We do not shoot migrants, we shoot infiltrators," said Lt. Col. Yasser Ahmed Ali, commander of the Liasion Agency with International Organizations, a branch of the Egyptian military working with multinational forces in Sinai, speaking to reporters in September.
Haroun's death occurred just weeks after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met to discuss the border issue. After the meeting, Israel announced it would return migrants and asylum seekers to Egypt, which promised to treat them humanely. Activists say many returnees were never heard from again.
Mr. Van Esveld says such returns are illegal under international law, and that the group faces inhumane treatment.
Michael Kagan of the American University in Cairo Faculty of Law says that the US and the UNHCR can provide valuable leadership on the issue.
"Egypt must understand that shooting pregnant women and 7-year-old girls [the youngest victim] is not what the international community wants, and it is not what the United States wants," he says.
Post: #11 Title: Re: مصر يا اخت بلادى انت اليوم فى خانة اعدائى /بوست توثيق وملاحقة ومتابعة Author: Hisham Amin Date: 10-21-2010, 01:43 PM Parent: #10
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Who's Blogging» Links to this article By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, February 27, 2006
CAIRO -- On a dirt lane in the poor Arba wa Nus neighborhood, Malles Tonga, a Sudanese refugee, spoke loudly about the brutality of Egyptian police and blamed President Hosni Mubarak for their behavior.
Suddenly, an Egyptian merchant emerged from a nearby dry-goods store, shouted an Egyptian slur for black Africans and yelled: "If you don't like it here, go home!"
The use of the expletive exemplifies the plight of Sudanese who come to Egypt as refugees: They fear going home, but the welcome mat in Egypt, always thin of resources and tolerance, is almost threadbare.
The situation of Sudanese in Egypt brings to light the special difficulties refugees face when they flee a war-ravaged and impoverished land for another poor country. Egypt is in many ways an inhospitable place for its own citizens. In Arba wa Nus, Egyptians share with the Sudanese arrivals the neighborhood's open sewers, dusty alleys, lack of plumbing and precarious chockablock housing.
But dark-skinned Sudanese Christians stand out among the Egyptians, typically lighter-skinned Muslim Arabs. Human rights workers say the Sudanese are subject to taunts, discrimination and violence.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has registered about 24,000 Sudanese refugees here, but independent observers estimate there are hundreds of thousands. Unlike in some other African countries, Sudanese in Egypt are not granted blanket U.N. refugee status, which would open the possibility of resettlement.
Under a bilateral arrangement, Egypt permits Sudanese to live and work in the country, but U.N. approval for asylum results only after a laborious interview process.
A breaking point for many Sudanese came on Dec. 30, when hundreds of riot police stomped through a makeshift camp in central Cairo to clear it of 2,500 refugees, trampling or beating to death 28 people, among them women and children, according to witnesses.
Few outside witnesses saw the melee, and accounts in this article were pieced together from Sudanese refugees. In late September, a few refugees had gathered at Mustafa Mahmoud park in Mohandessin, an upper-middle-class neighborhood, to demand full refugee status from UNHCR, with the possibility that they could be resettled somewhere in Europe, the United States or another wealthy country.
The refugees were worried that they would be forced to return to Sudan. Many had fled southern Sudan, the scene of a 21-year civil war that pitted black African separatists, most of them adherents of traditional beliefs or Christianity, against a Sudanese government run by Muslim, Arabic-speaking northerners who had tried to impose Islamic law on the country. A peace agreement was signed in January 2005, but the refugees reject the notion that repatriation to Sudan is either safe or viable. Roads are still mined, villages are bare and violence flares on occasion. A separate civil war rages in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
The number of refugees involved in the protest grew, unusual given Egypt's ban on any gathering of more than five people. The demonstrators set up plastic tents and formed their own security contingent.
Riot police began to gather on the night of Dec. 29. Big blue troop trucks surrounded the square and officers aimed water hoses at the demonstrators. After midnight, with the desert cold gripping the city, water was poured on the camp. Some of the police yelled, "Give it to them. They need a shower," witnesses said.
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Post: #14 Title: Re: مصر يا اخت بلادى انت اليوم فى خانة اعدائى /بوست توثيق وملاحقة ومتابعة Author: Hisham Amin Date: 10-21-2010, 01:56 PM Parent: #12
تسلم يا عليش يا غالى
Post: #15 Title: Re: مصر يا اخت بلادى انت اليوم فى خانة اعدائى /بوست توثيق وملاحقة ومتابعة Author: Hisham Amin Date: 10-21-2010, 02:06 PM Parent: #14
Post: #16 Title: Re: مصر يا اخت بلادى انت اليوم فى خانة اعدائى /بوست توثيق وملاحقة ومتابعة Author: Hisham Amin Date: 10-21-2010, 02:08 PM Parent: #15
Post: #17 Title: Re: مصر يا اخت بلادى انت اليوم فى خانة اعدائى /بوست توثيق وملاحقة ومتابعة Author: Hisham Amin Date: 10-21-2010, 02:11 PM Parent: #16
انهم يمارسون القتل والتعذيب ضد ابناء جلدتهم
فمابالك بنا؟؟؟؟؟؟؟؟
Post: #18 Title: Re: مصر يا اخت بلادى انت اليوم فى خانة اعدائى /بوست توثيق وملاحقة ومتابعة Author: Hisham Amin Date: 10-21-2010, 02:14 PM Parent: #17