Sudanese refugees forced to dismantle protest camp in Egypt
Dec 29, 2005 (CAIRO) — Egyptian security troops in full riot gear forced hundreds of Sudanese refugees Friday to dismantle a protest camp where they had lived for three months demanding resettlement outside of Egypt.
Sudanese men took apart tents and packed up their belongings from the camp, which was set up on a small median on a main boulevard in an upper-class neighborhood of Cairo. Women and children sat huddled on a nearby curb.
Thousands of security forces moved in before midnight and closed off the area, surrounding the camp. In the early hours Friday, the Sudanese began dismantling the protest camp, while white buses waited nearby to transport them away.
Hundreds of Sudanese have lived in the camp since it was set up Sept. 29 as a protest against the U.N. refugee agency, located nearby. At least three refugees have died, including a four-year-old boy who succumbed to pneumonia earlier this month.
At times, the Sudanese numbered up to 2,000, crammed onto a median divider a little larger than a tennis court.
A spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Cairo, Astrid Van Genderen Stort, said the UNHCR was monitoring the protesters’ removal and hopes “everything is done with peaceful means.”
The sit-in began Sept. 29 after the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees stopped hearing the cases of Sudanese seeking refugee status in the wake of the January peace deal that ended their home country’s 21-year civil war.
Asylum-seekers generally must gain the status to be resettled in countries such as the U.S., Australia and Britain.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees announced last week that it had reached a deal with some of the protest leaders promising to resume hearing some cases and offering a one-time payment of up to $700 for housing.
But most of those in the camp rejected the deal, saying they wanted promises of resettlement abroad.
The UNHCR said it couldn’t make any resettlement promises and urged the protesters to leave. The organization “could do nothing at this stage,” Stort said Friday.
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, and the Sudanese complain of discrimination by Egyptians.
(AP/ST)