Sudanese refugee protesters on the median of a Cairo boulevard
Dec 21, 2005 (CAIRO) — Families sleep on cardboard under soiled blankets, women bathe children on the curbside, there’s even a makeshift “prison” where troublemakers are tied to a tree — all on the median of a bustling Cairo boulevard where hundreds of Sudanese have formed a tiny village of misery.
Up to 2,000 Sudanese have lived in the camp for nearly three months in a sit-in protest against the U.N. refugee agency. At least three refugees have died, including a four-year-old boy who succumbed to pneumonia last week, the U.N. says, though the Sudanese put the number of deaths at more than 10.
The standoff may be reaching a deciding point. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it reached a deal with protest organizers to end the sit-in and start clearing the park Thursday.
But many Sudanese said they don’t accept the agreement, which falls short of a promise of resettling them, and will remain until they are promised the chance to move to the West.
“This is not enough for me and my five children,” Wilson Obuna Okeny, one of the refugees, said of the agreement. “I want to leave Egypt to any other country. Israel, South Africa, even Somalia. I don’t care for myself anymore but who will school my children? What will happen to them?”
The makeshift camp has transformed a small, fenced-in median strip only a little larger than a tennis court on the main boulevard in Mohandessin, an upper middle class neighborhood of the Egyptian capital — a strip lined with Pizza Huts, donut stores and other fast-food restaurants and cruised on weekends by cars of young Cairenes.
In the camp, a few blocks from the UNHCR offices, coughing children warm themselves around pots boiling tea on makeshift fires in the chilly winter nights. Orange tarpaulins are draped on the median’s few meager trees to afford a bit of privacy, but most families sleep out in the open, wrapped in sheets and blankets, lying side-by-side on the damp grass.
The refugees have organized themselves. Okeny, a 30-year-old from the southern Sudanese city of Torit, pulled back two blankets hung from tree branches to reveal two refugees inside, their hands tied to the tree limbs.
“We call that our little Guantanamo,” Okeny told The Associated Press, referring to the U.S. prison camp in Cuba. He said the two men were tied up for starting fights in the camp. “We have our own court to handle their case, but they’ll be released soon.”
The sit-in began Sept. 29 after the UNHCR stopped hearing the cases of Sudanese seeking refugee status in the wake of the January peace deal that ended Sudan’s 21-year civil war. Asylum-seekers, generally, must gain the status to gain resettlement in countries such as the United States, Australia and Britain.
The protesters have been demanding promises of resettlement, but the sit-in became a chance for the refugees to vent their multiple grievances, calling for better treatment in Egypt and protection from Sudanese authorities they say pursue them even in Egypt.
A leading U.S. refugee expert criticized the protest organizers for coaxing already disadvantaged Sudanese families out of their homes and into the park to press for demands that in some cases are not even in the UNHCR’s hands to meet.
“This is a terrible stalemate that represents a total breakdown of the relationship between the UNHCR and the refugees,” said Barbara Harrell-Bond, a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo and founder of an organization that helps refugees petition the UNHCR for refugee status.
“The bottom line is the UNHCR isn’t going to resettle the refugees, who by continuing to protest are only creating more problems for themselves,” she said.
The UNHCR deal offers the Sudanese interviews on refugee status and one-off financial assistance for housing, an offer Harrell-Bond described as generous.
But some protesters said Tuesday they needed more.
“I am not leaving this park until the UNHCR can guarantee my security,” 26-year-old Napoleon Robert from the southern Sudanese city of Juba said. “How do I know all my problems with be solved once I leave? How do I know I will be safe?”
Egypt has long offered Sudanese a haven from the various conflicts that have ravaged their country. About 30,000 Sudanese are registered as refugees in Egypt, and estimates of Sudanese living in this country have ranged from 200,000 to several million.
But Egypt, which suffers from high unemployment and strained social services for its own population of 72 million, offers the Sudanese little assistance. It usually does not allow their children to attend state schools and doesn’t help them find work. Many Sudanese also accuse Egyptians of discrimination and racism.
UNHCR spokeswoman Amina al-Korey said the agency has been trying to meet the demands of the protesting refugees, but it has no power to guarantee resettlement. “It is the recipient countries that decide who to take,” she said.
But she said the tragic sit-in can’t continue.
“These are human beings. It is not fair to have people living in such conditions, especially women and children,” al-Korey said. “We can’t just sit and watch them suffer.”
(AP)