Egypt: African migrants’ murder on border reveals growing problem
Bikya Masr
10 September 2009
Is Israel the only hope for Egypt's Africans? -T.A.
CAIRO: At least four Ethiopians were killed and three others were in serious condition as of Wednesday evening, reports revealed from al-Arish, some 30 minutes from the Egypt-Gaza border. They had been shot dead by Egyptian border security after they attempted to cross the largely unprotected Sinai border into Israel.
The killings are the deadliest reported incident on the border and come only days before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Cairo on Sunday.
International rights groups have been up in arms over the increasing violence along the border in the past two years.
“Enough is enough. This incident is further proof, if any should be needed, that the Egyptian authorities have yet to direct their forces on how to avoid killing migrants trying to cross the border,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International. “They must assert greater control over their forces at the border and take away their license to kill.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a detailed report last year that criticized the Egyptian government’s “shoot-to-stop” policy that has left scores of Africans dead.
Since May, Egypt has killed at least 12 Africans along the border and an end to the killings seems as distant as ever.
The Egyptian government claims the use of force along the lengthy desert border in the Sinai Peninsula is part of its counter terror strategy against smuggling, but HRW said in its 90-page report published last year, titled “Sinai Perils: Risks to Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Egypt and Israel,” that the migrants killed on the 266-kilometer (130-mile) border pose no threat to the border guards that have opened fire.
Israel has long called on Cairo to do more in inhibiting the movement of people across their border, but HRW was critical of the Jewish state, saying that potential asylum-seekers should not be immediately returned to Egypt where they could face deportation to nations with well-documented human rights violations.
“Both Egypt and Israel have responded to this cross-border flow with policies that violate fundamental rights,” said the report.
In Israel, many activists have started questioning the government’s policy of return, suggesting that as Jews those seeking a reprieve from genocide should be given the opportunity to remain.
The most recent incident, with Ethiopian migrants, has highlighted the difficult lives that African refugees often find in Egypt.
Many Africans in Cairo boast of friends who have succeeded in making the border gauntlet into Israel. Ahmed admits that despite turning back from his own plans to cross into Israel, he knows that success in the Jewish state can be a reality.
“I have a number of friends who have told me of the joy they are having in Israel, where they work and have a life again,” says Somali refugee Ali Ahmed.
But that hope has been dashed for dozens of Africans who have been met with bullets.
One of the reasons Africans living in Egypt seek Israel is the poor conditions they experience in the country. Ranging from unemployment, racism and lack of funds, the Africans are distraught at their lives, unable to find a niche in Egypt.
Many of Egypt’s tens of thousands of refugees are Sudanese. Since 2003, nearly all the Sudanese coming into the North African nation are from the war-torn Western Sudan region of Darfur, but thousands of other Africans, including a few thousands from Somalia have attempted to make Egypt their temporary residence.
Tawer Ali, Secretary-General at the Cairo-based New Sudan Research and Strategic Studies Center and community leader in the refugee dominated town Arba’a wa Nos(Four and a Half), believes that the situation facing the refugee population in Egypt has driven many to seek a better life in Israel.
“Refugees are very frustrated with the formalities of the UNHCR [because] they are slow moving. Some of them [refugees] have had eight years here, some seven years,” Ali, a refugee himself, told Bikya Masr.
The UNHCR has officially stopped granting refugee status as per a request from the Egyptian government, which has made the living situation extremely difficult for Africans. Without UN refugee status, the likelihood of gaining asylum in a third nation is becoming almost nonexistent for thousands of refugees.
“People are losing hope,” began Abdullahi Osman, a Somali refugee and head of the NGO SOMO, “I have gone to a number of embassies with people to try an get them resettled, but without the proper documentation, many countries are not willing to give people asylum. It is frustrating.”
“Without a place to call home, many have decided to find a way to get to Israel to start over.”
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