Border slayings of Sudanese migrants must end – rights group

November 14, 2008 (CAIRO) – Darfuri and other Sudanese migrants in
Egypt are at risk of being shot by border guards as they flee to
Israel, said a human rights group in a 90-page report. Egyptian border
police have slain 35 migrants since July 2007, according to Human
Rights Watch (HRW) and recent news reports.

The victims, including women and children, are generally shot to death
at the border with Israel. Overall, fourteen of those slain were
positively identified as Sudanese. Since 2006, over 13,000 refugees,
primarily Sudanese and Eritrean, have passed through Egypt and crossed
the Sinai border into Israel.

Egyptian and Israeli officials claim that most of the migrants are
drawn to Israel by better economic opportunities, but HRW contends
that many Sudanese migrants fleeing to Israel are legitimate asylum
seekers.

Sudanese refugees are subjected to pervasive racism in Egypt and are
the target of repeated detentions encouraged by Sudan’s embassy in
Cairo, according to interviews that HRW conducted with refugees.

“One time, the police pulled out my left thumbnail,” said a Dinka
youth who now lives in Tel Aviv. “And the last time they beat me
really badly. I was bleeding from my tongue, and my lower back and my
arm still hurt. There was no help from UN(HCR); they told me to tell
the police,” the youth told HRW.

Darfuri and Southern Sudanese residents in Cairo said that they faced
detention and torture for belonging to groups as innocuous as a Fur
dance troupe.

“The lack of social and economic integration in Egypt is not new and
does not, by itself, account for the recent surge of migration from
Egypt to Israel,” says the rights group.

One major catalyst for the flights from Egypt is a greater sense of
insecurity after police broke up a sit-in of 2,000 Sudanese asylum
seekers in Mustafa Mahmoud Park outside UNHCR’s Cairo office on Dec.
30, 2005, resulting in the death of at least 27 Sudanese. Hundreds of
Sudanese were arrested and since that time the number of Sudanese
fleeing to Israel increased markedly.

HRW also notes, “it is practically impossible for poor non-Egyptians
to find work in the formal economy due to quotas and other
requirements.” And since Western countries have curtailed the number
of Sudanese that they are willing to resettle, some Sudanese in Cairo
are left with two options: returning to the Sudan, where they fear
militias, landmines and the costs and hazards of the journey back—or
striking out for Israel through the Sinai.

Those who are caught on either side of the border, whether in Egypt or
Israel, are at risk of being deported to their home countries, where
some of them face possible torture, execution or persecution.

Authorities also separate migrant families and incarcerate them in
poor conditions, the rights group alleges.

HRW implies that both Egypt and Israel have violated international
legal obligations incumbent upon them as signatories to the 1951
Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol.

These alleged violations include Israel deporting 48 mostly Sudanese
migrants in August 2007 and a further 91 in August 2008, and Egypt
forcibly returning approximately 1,200 Eritreans in June 2008, which
resulted in at least 740 arrests and detentions at Eritrean military
facilities in Wei. Regarding these returnees, it is known that some
Eritrean migrants are deserters from the army, and Eritrean
authorities have allegedly executed or tortured deserters.

HRW interviewed 69 migrants and government officials and refugee
rights organizations in both Israel and Egypt, but the researchers
were refused access to detention facilities in both Egypt and Israel.

(ST)