No justification for such violence and loss of life
By Mahgoub El-Tigani
Dec 31, 2005 — “I am deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic events early today in Cairo,” High Commissioner António Guterres said in Geneva (UNHRO: 30 December 2005). “Although we still do not have all of the details or a clear picture of what transpired, violence left several people dead and injured. There is no justification for such violence and loss of life. This is a terrible tragedy and our condolences go to all the families of those who died and to the injured.”
Interviewed by the Jazeera Channel, an Egyptian resident placed the blame on the way the crisis was handled: “These humans have problems in their own country and Egypt is their second home. Killings and battering will never solve their problems.” Apparently, a large Sudanese and Egyptian public were devastated by the sudden decision to eliminate the protest camp by violence: “the authority should have shown more tolerance to resolve the conflict.” “The massacre is a crime against humanity arranged by the Egyptian Security with the blessing of both Egyptian and Sudanese governments,” announced the South Center for Human Rights in Cairo.
Several human rights organizations, however, asked the High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva “to conduct an immediate full investigation on these regrettable events to prosecute the killers, compensate the victims, and attend the needs of the protesting refugees.” The Cairo-based South Center “condemned the killings of 10 Sudanese nationals and the injuries of 79 others by more than 25,000 police assaulting forces in Cairo” (Friday, December 30, 2005). The Center held accountable the United Nations Refugees Office in Cairo and urged the UNHCR “to maintain refugee protection by international law.” From Washington, D.C., December 30, 2005, however, Human Rights Watch advised, “President Husni Mubarak should urgently appoint an independent commission to investigate the use of force by police.”
Although many Sudanese men tried to defend their families against the assaulting forces, the Jazeera camera documented massive police brutality on the terrorized women and the children who hadn’t enjoyed much sleep since their touching Christmas celebration the night before at the small yard they lived in for 3 months at the Mustafa Mahmoud’s mosque square. What a tragedy! The massacre took place since the early hours of the Muslim dawn prayers! Horrifyingly, the security offensive spread a climate of disdainful contempt, racism, and hate vis-à-vis the Sudanese refugees: “They were doing everything dirty. They disturbed the tranquility of residents. They even roamed the residential area!” complained an Egyptian resident of the Muhandiseen’s fancy neighborhood to the Jazeera Channel (Friday, Dec 30).
The Egyptian Ministry of Interior released an official account of 10 refugees killed and many other refugees and policemen injured. And yet, Ben Curtis of the Associated Press in Cairo reported later in the day that “security officials said at least 20 refugees, including three children, died in the melee. An official Interior Ministry statement said 12 protesters died and 74 police were wounded. But other ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, put the number of dead at 20.” From the refugees’ part, “Boutrous Deng, one of the protest leaders, told the Associated Press that 26 Sudanese were killed. He said the dead included 17 men, two women and seven children.”
In Khartoum, Ali Karti, the state minister of foreign affairs, expressed sorrow for the huge losses and accused “the UN, as well as the migration agencies that distort the image of Sudan to lure the migrant people to live abroad.” The minister of the NIF-controlled National Unity Government did not blame his government for its shameless negligence of the refugees’ situation in Egypt or the suffering of the Sudanese displaced people in the borders with Chad, or the other states for decades.
Little mention was reported about the Sudanese opposition effort to end the crisis. Only Sadiq al-Mahdi, the distinguished leader of the Ansar and the Umma Party, was credited with prior talks on the matter with the First Vice President Silva Kiir in Khartoum before a field visit to the protesting refugees in Cairo, besides his public sympathy and direct negotiations with the UN Office and the Egyptian authorities to release the tension.
Unfortunately, these good efforts did not succeed; and the Umma Office in Cairo, said Watts Roba Gibia, a writer on refugee affairs, “issued a statement calling on refugees to accept the UNHCR agreement and end the sit-in protest.” Gibia further noted that “four ministers from government of national unity were empty handed without any concrete plan. So many prominent figures both Egyptian and Sudanese and Churches tried, but all was in vain.” (Sudan Tribune: Dec. 27).
In Geneva, the UNHCR claimed it “maintained a constant dialogue and several mediation efforts, always emphasizing that such situations needed to be resolved peacefully.” For months before the Friday massacres, however, the Sudanese refugees had been asking the UN Office to invalidate an earlier decision suspending the UN obligation to review refugee applications. “Although the decision in question promised to enable certain cases to obtain the benefits of refugee-status, it urged the bulk of the remaining refugees to return voluntarily to the Sudan.” Accordingly, “the UN Office has not fulfilled its promises to the refugees; instead, the Office showed continuous negligent response to the refugees’ needs,” asserted the Sudanese SHRO-Cairo and the Egyptian South Center for Human Rights
Earlier in October 2005, the Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo Office urged the UNHCR to kindly put an immediate end to the suffering that Sudanese refugees in Egypt have been experiencing. “A refugee petition emphasized that “the UNHCR Regional Office in Cairo stopped registering all Sudanese asylum Seekers for Refugee Status Determination (RSD) interviews since June 2004. The decision by the Regional Office had been probably based on the encouraging process of the Sudanese peace negotiations that led to the subsequent adoption of a Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005 with a special reference to South Sudan, which emphasized the urgent need to return refugees to their homes in decent conditions.”
“In actual fact, however, the expectations of the UNHCR Regional Office have not yet materialized: the programs of a permanent peace and a working development have just started in the South; and yet, civil war and political instability continue to ravage other regions in Western and Eastern Sudan. Due to these devastating conditions, SHRO-Cairo believes that the call by the Regional Office on the Sudanese refugees in Egypt to voluntary return to the country was not addressed to these realities. It is, therefore, hoped that the Regional Office would seriously consider changing both its enforceable call and decision to help promote the legal protection of refugees – the core mandate of the UNHCR – their safety, and their right to obtain decent opportunities in other hosting States,” emphasized the Organization in October 2005.
By December 30th, however, the authorities were already decided on the matter and SHRO-Cairo (Sudan Tribune: December 30) “condemned in the strongest terms possible the use of violent force against the refugees’ peaceful gathering, which was a clear expression of the long-standing problems between the protesting refugees and the UN Refugees Office in Cairo. The Organization holds the UN Office responsible for the occurrence of these regrettable events since the Office neglected the problems of the refugees and has indirectly called on the Egyptian authorities to deal with the refugees. The latest official statement by the UN Office indicated the failures of the Office to negotiate with the refugees before occurrence of the launched attack today. That Office statement had clearly transferred the refugees’ problem “unto the hands of Egyptian authorities.”
“The UNHCR is genuinely aware of the situation of human rights in Sudan, in general, and the urgent need to support the newly-signed peace accords so that the uprooted Sudanese people can begin return in decent conditions, in particular. The organization equally notes, as has been repeatedly urged by the Sudanese peoples and the United Nations responsible authorities, including the UNHCR, that the country would be facing a humanitarian crisis with the return of millions of people without sufficient provision of housing, education, health, drinking water, income-generating employment, and the other basic needs and necessary services,” SHRO-Cairo addressed the High Commissioner in October 2005.
The root causes of the refugees’ tragedy in Egypt, as well as similar tragic situations of the Sudanese exiles in Syria, Jordon, and Lebanon, or the displaced millions in Darfur or the South have been organically founded on the heinous crimes against humanity committed for long decades by the Sudan’s central governments in the first place, especially the war-mongering National Islamic Front that developed civil wars and motivated generations of the Sudanese youth to prefer the suffering of degrading living conditions abroad to the brutalities and loss of human dignity under military hegemony inside their homes.
The unsettled political crisis of Sudan has certainly escalated the impoverishment of the vast majority of the population of whom large segments of the persecuted youth, the powerless women, the abused children, and the ailing elderly would continue to face the extra-judicial killing or the notorious displacements under the negligence, recklessness, and criminality of the authoritative bureaucracies at home, or to endure the brunt of brutalities outside their borders..
The Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo Office expected “the UNHCR would consider workable possibilities to: 1) Suspend the June 2004 decision by the Regional Office (Cairo) that unfortunately removed the legal protection of refugees and the right of refugee applicants to seek asylum in refugee receiving nations; 2) Ensure necessary humanitarian support for the refugees in Egypt, which includes financial, educational, health, and employment assistance; 3) Provide legal protection to all refugees without reference to any conditional ethnic or regional affiliations; 4) Interview all new applicants or the pending cases; 5) Expedite resettlement procedures with the hosting nations to complete the asylum of the adopted cases; 6) Ensure the safety and the freedom from degrading treatment for all refugees and applicants; and 7) Pay additional attention to the situation of women, children, and the elderly refugees or refugee-seekers.”
The human rights and democracy groups will pursue with the refugees these vital agenda. On the other side, the United Nations highest official for the protection of refugees affirmed: “There is no justification for such violence and loss of life.” Can we dream, then, of fair measures to bring about real protection to these victimized humans, anywhere, anytime, in the eve of a new year, along with the human rights struggles and the UN assurances of a better world, despite the dehumanizing bureaucracies and their inhuman bureaucrats?!