10 Sudanese refugees killed in clashes with Egyptian police,

Dec 10, 2005 (CAIRO) — Ten Sudanese refugees have been killed in clashes with police trying to clear their camp in a city park, Egypt’s Interior Ministry said in a statement Friday.

“There was a stampede that left 30 of the protesters injured, most of them the elderly and young and they were immediately taken to the hospital where 10 of them died,” said a ministry statement.

Several refugees were wounded when phalanxes of riot police armed with sticks and shields stormed the small square where the Sudanese had been camping at around 5:00 am (0300 GMT).

An AFP reporter saw several people being dragged away from the mayhem, as the refugees — including dozens of women and small children — tried to resist their evacuation.

It was not immediately clear whether any of the protesters died in the violent evacuation nor was it possible to determine the nature of the injuries.

The refugees were forced into dozens of buses lined up on one of the main thoroughfares in Cairo’s upmarket neighbourhood of Mohandessin, ending a standoff that had lasted most of the night.

“They want to kill us,” shouted one protester, as he was frog-walked towards a bus. “Our demands are legitimate, it is our right to protest here, the only right we have.”

The police forces — who numbered close to 5,000 in the neighbourhood for the operation — initially used water cannons in a bid to disperse the refugees.

The protesters had been sleeping under the polluted Cairo sky for three months, fighting temperatures which have dipped well below 10 degrees Celsius lately with plastic sheets, cardboard and blankets.

A 21-year north-south civil war in Sudan which ended a year ago had displaced some four million people, while an ongoing conflict in the western region of Darfur has also forced scores to flee the country.

The refugees are demanding that the UN refugee agency review cases of asylum-seekers whose applications it has rejected and resume resettling refugees in third countries, mainly the United States, Canada and Australia.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has offered to provide more assistance to the refugees but has refused to resettle them in a third country.

But most of the Sudanese refugees explain they simply want to leave Egypt, where they say the UN office has ignored their plight.

“The trust is gone. We will be happy if we end up in any other country, but look how this Arab country is treating us, just because we are black. It’s a disgrace,” Paul, a young refugee from the southern Sudanese city of Juba, told AFP just before being evacuated.

“They are telling us to go back because the war is over, but it’s not so simple,” said George Oliver, a 20-year-old from the same region.

“There are people here from all parts of the country who have had problems with the army. I seized from the street in Khartoum and drafted by force in the military. Now I am here, if I go back to Sudan, they will find me,” he said.

It was not immediately known where the security forces drove the refugees to.

(AFP/ST)