Eyewitness: ‘I was standing on bodies’ – BBC

Dec 30, 2005 (CAIRO) — Sudanese asylum seeker Napoleon Roberts told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme how Egyptian riot police forcibly moved him, along with some 3,000 others, from the park in Cairo where they have been living in protest for the past three months.

We have been kept here, in a military barracks, since this morning.

I would say that right now there are about 1,700 of us here.

There’s no water for drinking and no bathrooms.

People are staying still, suffering from their wounds on their bodies.

It’s very discomforting.

We don’t know what is happening – no-one from the government has spoken to us, to tell us why we have been moved here.

Dragged

They dragged us from the park where we had been living in protest to here. They sprayed us with water canons and then beat us with sticks.

Some people have been killed.

I have heard some of the refugees that came on the first bus say that up to 48 people are dead.

When the police were dragging me out of the park and beating me, taking me to the bus, I was standing on bodies, moving on top of them.

They were underneath me. Lots of people were just lying on the ground.

When the police first began firing everyone with the water canons a lot of us, mainly babies and the elderly, fell down.

Trampled

They were then covered with plastic sheets and so everyone was going over the sheets that were over the bodies.

I would say because of this that the majority of the deaths are among the aged and the children.

They were trampled when we tried to escape being attacked by the police in the park.

And since we have been here in the camp some people have also died from their injuries.

Around me more than 100 are injured.

This morning two people died right here in the barracks I am in.

There are some two doctors assisting the wounded but it is not enough.