The noose tightens

[barb162]

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/776/eg5.htm

The noose tightens
Sudanese asylum-seekers scattered in churches and hospitals around Cairo tell Gamal Nkrumah about the horrors of the New Year's Eve police raid on their camp

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On 1am Friday morning 4,000 armed Egyptian police stormed a park close to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Cairo in Mustafa Mahmoud Square, Mohandessin, where an estimated 2,000 Sudanese asylum-seekers had staged a sit- in to protest against their situation in Egypt. The police raid lasted for four hours and according to Egyptian officials resulted in the deaths of 27 Sudanese asylum-seekers. Human rights groups, as well as the refugees themselves, put the death toll higher, at more than 100. Some 75 policemen were wounded in the operation.


The pre-dawn raid is one of the most racist episodes in Egypt's modern history. The refugees were camped on a traffic island on one of Cairo's main thoroughfares. Not surprisingly, the spectacle of hundreds of Sudanese refugees camping out in the open had attracted much media and public attention. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry announced that it was deporting 645 Sudanese it classified as "illegal immigrants".

Questions are now being raised about how Egypt has failed Sudanese asylum- seekers. And it is not only the authorities who are implicated, but the public as well. Sudanese people, particularly southerners, face daily harassment in the streets of Cairo. They are subjected to racist taunts, and insults hurled from the unemployed. Egyptians are understandably angry at the deplorable conditions they face, including joblessness and disfranchisement, and it appears they have been unable to resist the temptation of scape-goating the estimated five million Sudanese residing in the country.

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[cliss]

1. How terrible.

This is the kind of news you don't hear in the U.S. You have to be outside this country to find out what is happening in the world.

Or stay tuned to the DU. Thanks for posting.