Clearing of Sudanese camp turns fatal
CAIRO, Egypt – A three-month standoff between Sudanese refugees and Egyptian authorities climaxed in bloodshed Friday when club-wielding police invaded a refugee squatter camp, setting off a melee in which as many as 23 Sudanese were killed.
Some refugees fought back, using tent poles as weapons. Egyptian Interior Ministry officials said 47 police officers were injured and blamed the deaths on a stampede.
The refugees set up the camp in a park in September to press their demands for resettlement in a Western country. They refused to return to their unstable homeland despite a January peace deal that ended years of north-south civil war.
After the peace agreement, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees stopped registering Sudanese for political asylum. Protesters resisted police orders and appeals from the Sudanese Embassy to leave.
At about 1 a.m. Friday, about 3,000 helmeted riot police surrounded the park, which is located in the relatively affluent Mohandessin district on the west side of the Nile River. They fired water cannons at some of the 2,000 refugees gathered there. After trying to drag people one-by-one onto buses for about two hours, the police invaded.
As is common with riot police in Egypt, the stiff rows of officers soon turned into a throbbing mob of uncontrolled baton swingers. Police pursued refugees to the buses and whacked them as they boarded. They hit women and children; at least two children died, Egyptian officials said.
Boutrous Deng, a Sudanese protest leader, said that 15 refugees were killed, including the two children. Hospital officials put the figure at 23.
By dawn, the park was cleared, and about 1,000 refugees were transported to police barracks outside the city limits, Interior Ministry officials said. Other Sudanese huddled in parks and on street corners elsewhere in Cairo.
Tension over refugee arrivals from the south is felt across North Africa. Sub-Saharan Africans, fleeing violence and hunger in their homelands, have flocked to countries along Africa’s Mediterranean coast. Many then board boats to try to reach Spain or Italy. The European Union has pressured North African governments to curb the migrant traffic to its shores.
The exact numbers of Sudanese in Egypt is not known, but estimates range from 200,000 to 2 million.
Egypt’s Interior Ministry said police were responding to the needs of the UNHCR, which, according to a ministry statement, had received “threats to attack the commission offices and its members.” The ministry also asserted that the refugees ignored a Sudanese Embassy deadline for them to abandon the park or face the consequences.