The Bible teaches us that Moses and Aaron went in, and told the Pharaoh of Egypt, “Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, ” that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness in Exodus 5:1. These were the order given by God 1550 years before Jesus time. In the Biblical Exodus Hebrews crossing the Red Sea from Egypt to the Promised Land passed through the Sinai Peninsula over 40 years after being over 400 years slaves in Egypt. Today in the beginning of the 21st century, after over 40 years of symbolic independence many Africans are fleeing from the new pharaohs of dictatorial Africa. Those who cross Egypt to find a save heaven to Israel are victimized with unseen brutality from Egyptian Border Guard. They are fleeing from decorators who grip power and put their people in through inhuman treatment not seen in the Biblical or colonial periods, particularly in the famine affected horn of Africa.
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The police brutality and the incoherence of the Egyptian politics with Africans are highly demonstrated with the resent massacre of the African refugees crossing the Sinai to Israel. The recent or the flagrant massacre of the Sudanese refuges in Cairo in day light is a shameful act too.
Egypt as a historical country is at a cross road seeking an Africans support against the recent Nile basin act. Such in human brutality against the Africans will not serve her national and regional interest over the Nile Waters. These assassinated refugees are the same running from the dictators who are menacing to dam the Nile waters from Egypt. Egypt must be a country of exile and support for the Africans in distress. How can an Egyptian shot and kill an African running away from Damming dictators of the East Africa? Egyptian police has been known for its brutality against its own citizens and worst for Africans in recent days. The days of Gamal Abdel Nasser who made Egypt the home of Africans in exile is now made a far away souvenir by the new breed of Egyptian forces.
The recent shooting bring is in mind to many an answered interrogations preparing the coming hopefully democratic election in the country to change the ruling dynasty :-
-Who gave the Egyptian boarder gourds order to shoot the innocent Africans ?
-To whose interest are they committing this in human act?
-Is this act committed for the for the interest of the Palestinians or Israelis?
– Are they killing in the name of the interest of Egypt, or just massacring favor of Horn of African dictators?
These are innocent refugees who are leaving the territory of Egypt to word Israel who are shot cold bloodedly. This is a mere act of pure impunity and if it continues to be considered as a racist Massacre against Africans. Egypt is just playing on the interest of the African dictators. And this brutality will not change the position of these African Pharaohs towards Egypt concerning the Nile waters rather demonstrates Egyptian weakness by not forcing the international water sharing polices against these Damming New generation of Water Dictators. Egyptian police has proved its impunity in her continues imposition of martial law for the last 30 years in the country. Egypt’s 30 years of state of emergency gives the national police force all the powers to overstep the right to peaceful assembly, arrest individuals without warrant and hold detainees indefinitely without charge. Recent killings in the daylight a young journalist is the best living example of such impunity. Khaled Said Qasem was beaten to death by undercover police shortly after he posted a video online that showed police officers splitting profits from a drug deal. The 28-year-old was arrested in an Internet café by plainclothes policemen and taken out to the street where plainclothes security men then fatally attacked him, according to witness accounts recorded by IFEX members. Although the police initially said that Said Qasem died because he swallowed drugs before his arrest, photos of his bludgeoned body have been widely circulated on social media websites in Egypt. On 3 July 2010, two police officers were charged with torture, but not murder, in relation to Said Qasem’s beating. Such brutality is playing in the hands of the extremist forces in the country and destroying her image as a safe haven for international tourists. At several public demonstrations held throughout June to protest the brutal police killing of activist Khaled Said Qasem in Alexandria on 6 June 2010, dozens of protesters were beaten and arbitrarily arrested, report the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI),
Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
African killed on the borders are not African Jews immigrating to Israel via Egypt, they are rather simple African innocent refugees. The African Jews have their proper channel and are flowed to Israel in thousands officially. If they were Jews running from Africa to join the promised land that the Egyptian police shot dead, it would have been a worldwide scandal for their rescues. And the state for Israel would have not been a silent complicit for such in human act around its borders. According to Egypt’s official MENA news agency, the Egyptian officials that the smugglers killed the refugees. These authorities are misinformed since it is well known in Khartoum and Cairo that all pass-men get their cash before their departure. And well distributed among the guards and the smugglers of Egypt and Sudan. And the killings were mere massacre by the un paid border guards who did not have a share. Mostly the guards and the smugglers are working hand in hand. According to our collected information it happens even those guards who are a part and parcel of these highly lucrative human trafficking business fight each other victimizing the refugees. Often disagreement flares between the different smuggling guards and start shooting at the smugglers and refugees. Egypt’s interior ministry confirmed as usual that an investigation was under way into the incident, this just a face saving declaration as seen in the past with no suit. In the recent killing an official at the ministry declared that in one day a lady and two Eritreans were killed on Egypt’s border with Israel, and that three people were wounded. Fifteen others were arrested by Egyptian border police. In total, the group consisted of three-dozen African migrants attempting to flee has been brutally killed in the last three months crossing to Israel. Many refugees are buried on the road to exile without anyone knowing who they are and why they were killed. Many young girls are victim of rape and inhuman treatment others are killed even crossing too the Libyan side of the border from Sudan. Egypt of 21st century must not be the pharaoh of 16th cen.BCE who fights the Hebrews crossing to the Sinai to the Promised Land.
The victims even confirmed that their respective dictatorial governments of the Horn of Africa who asked Egypt to shoot them at sight if they got caught crossing to Israel. In other words it is considered for many muslin countries in Horn as a betrayal to Islamic principles and engulfing the principles of Zionism by crossing to the occupied territories. Thus they become victim of atrocities. But this will give no reason for the Egyptian to shoot them and torture them when they are in Egypt. The Sudanese were shot on the streets of Cairo with impunity not only caught crossing the borders to Israel. Egypt must make her house in order and respect Internationale human rights.
These continues impunity against the Africans must be condemned and the culprit must come to justice and an independent enquiry must immediately established by the UN to stop the Egyptian continual cold blood massacre of the African innocent refugees running away from injustice and harsh dictatorship at home. Please make your appeals.
By Prof. Muse Tegegne
Make your Appeals to save the Life of of Africans
Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in Arabic, English or your own language:
– expressing concern that men and women have been shot dead by Egyptian security forces since the beginning of , as they attempted to cross the border into Israel,
– noting the order of the military prosecutor to have an autopsy on Mervat Mer Hatover and calling
calling on the authorities to order a thorough and impartial investigation into the killings inline with the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, to make the result of this investigation public and to bring anyone found to have used excessive or illegal force to justice,
– reminding the authorities that Egypt\’s security forces, including border police, are required to use lethal force only when their own lives are in immediate danger.
APPEALS TO:-
Interior Minister
Minister Habib Ibrahim El Adly
Ministry of the Interior
25 Al-Sheikh Rihan Street
Bab al-Louk
Cairo, EGYPT
Fax: +20 2 279 0682
Email: moi@idsc.gov.eg
Salutation: Dear Minister
Minister of Defence
Mohamed Hussein Tantawi
Ministry of Defence and Military Production
23 July Street
Kobry el Obba
Cairo, EGYPT
Fax: +202 22906004
Email: mod@afmic.gov.eg
mmc@afmic.gov.eg
Salutation: Dear Minister
COPIES TO:
President, national human rights council
Dr Botros Botros Ghali
National Council for Human Rights
1113 Corniche of the Nil-
Midane Al Tahrir-
Specialized National Councils Building- 11 floor
Cairo, EGYPT
Fax: +20 2 2574 7497/14
Email: nchr@nchr.org.eg
The long road of death, massacre in Sinai
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN 08/18/2010
They are hung from trees by metal chains attached to their arms and provided with plastic bags to collect their urine to drink when they are thirsty. They are gang raped, tortured with electricity and held prisoner in desert camps. When they escape they are shot, either by their Beduin captors or by Egyptian police. These savage and disturbing details, published piecemeal over the years, are just a part of the picture of what is being done in Egypt’s Sinai desert to African migrants. The story probably begins with the end of the Ethiopia-Eritrea War in 2000, the beginning of the Darfur genocide in 2003 and the end of the war in South Sudan in 2005, each of which in its own way created numerous refugees. In December 2005, Egypt began cracking down on African migrants, in one infamous incident many (between 10 and 60) were massacred by police attempting to clear a park of their encampments. This helped provide incentive to travel further afield, with Europe a tough destination, they trickled into Sinai and thence to Israel. Eritreans, who now make up the majority of refugees (10,000+), have been arriving in Israel since 2007. In that year it was reported that 48 African refugees deported to Egypt by Israel had been abused and then disappeared. One migrant claimed Egyptians imprisoned him and “poured boiling water on his body.” At the time Egypt was busy trying to get rid of the refugees, sending them back to Sudan if possible. Criticism about the “disappearances” was raised by activists in 2007 mostly to complain that Israel should stop its “hot return” policy of immediately returning refugees to Egypt. One report alleged that 139 refugees had disappeared. What the disappearances highlight is the increasing brutalization meted out to Africans in Sinai beginning in 2007. Between July 2007 and October 2008, the media reported that 33 Africans were shot in Sinai while trying to cross the border into Israel. By March of 2010 more than sixty had been killed. The man charged with implementing the policy is General Muhammad Shousha, governor of north Sinai. For him it is quite clear; “of course it’s not a mistake that we shoot them, it’s necessary to shoot them. To deal with an infiltrator, he has to be fired at.” The migrants reported that the Egyptian border guards shot at women and children and that if they were captured alive they were then subjected to beatings and insults; “you are a Jew” and “you are the enemy of the Arabs and of Islam.” They also claimed that the Egyptians wanted to know who trafficked them. Suspicion of the Africans is part of a larger story. Some Egyptians argue that the smuggling is bad because it strengthens Israel; one Sinai resident claims “we are helping Israel. These migrants will go, take away Arabs’ jobs, work in agriculture and construction and it will all contribute to Israel’s plans.” The privately owned, independent Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm has done some intrepid reporting on other horrors experienced by the migrants while in Sinai. An Ethiopian named Youssef related that he had gone to Khartoum in Sudan to work in a hotel and was approached by a Sudanese man who promised him a job in Egypt. He boarded a truck with others from Sudan and Eritrea and was transported in five days to Sinai. There he discovered the lure of a job was a scam and instead he was imprisoned by his Beduin smugglers. They demanded $3,000 and told him they would then take him to the Israeli border. Another man named Ali, also from Ethiopia, experienced a similar bait-and-switch. He was beaten daily and told to phone family and raise money for his release. IN JANUARY the Israeli police arrested an Ethiopian and two Eritrean migrants for involvement in extortion and human smuggling. The three men had been hired by Beduin in Sinai to contact families of imprisoned Africans in Israel and extort money for the release of their family members being held in Sinai.
The Egyptian territory has become a human prison for African migrants.
When arrested the men had $100,000, evidently collected to be sent on to Sinai for the release of African refugees. The stories coming out of Sinai are horrifying. Migrants speak of desert camps run by the Rashida Beduin tribe. They are watched over by armed guards and tortured by being scalded with heated metal bars. Modern day slavery exists. One woman, Wizar Tasapai from Eritrea, was tied up and kept in a fuel tank and told her kidneys would be sold if her family in Israel didn’t pay $2,800. The Beduin told her cousin “the girl is in a bad condition. She is beaten and raped.” Her family paid the ransom to an Eritrean at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv and he transferred it to Beduin. The woman eventually made it to Israel. Rape seems to be a typical brutality carried out by the Beduin smugglers against African women. An Eritrean woman reported to the Israeli authorities in February 2010 that she had been raped by eight Beduin men in Sinai. A July 2010 report noted that women were often separated from the men and that they were all held in prisons underground. In the same month the bodies of 10 African migrants were found mutilated in Sinai. According to the Beduin of northern Sinai, the Egyptian security forces arrest them on smuggling charges. But a recent incident seems to contradict those claims. On August 14th it was reported that 300 Africans were being held prisoner at a Beduin camp. One of them managed to steal a weapon and free several others. In an ensuing gun battle six Eritreans were killed. Egyptian police fanned out from al-Mahdeyya village, south of Rafah and shot two fleeing Eritreans and arrested 17 others. There was no report that the Egyptians tried in any way to free those migrants being held captive. The Egyptian police seem primarily interested in killing or expelling the migrants. Today Sinai has become a human prison, a place of death, gang rape and murder. While initially many of the Africans were refugees it seems now that, as with the sex slave trade in Eastern European women that was a staple of the 1990s in Sinai, the slave trade in Africans in Sinai has become a business – one where victims are recruited and then transported to Israel only as a way to get rid of the human cargo. Israel has decent relations with Egypt’s security forces in Sinai. It is time to send the message that only a massive and coordinated crackdown on the Beduin smugglers will stop the flow of illegal immigrants, help Egypt’s image and end the hell that Sinai has become. The writer is a PhD researcher at Hebrew University and a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies
Egypt police clash with smugglers along Israel border
Egyptian policeman injured in a battle with group assisting African migrants to cross to Israel from Sinai.
By DPA Policeman Magdy Abdelghany, 23, was injured in the exchange of fire. He is currently being treated in el-Arish hospital. The smugglers and the group of migrants they were assisting escaped and are believed to be hiding in the Sinai desert, police said. Separately, police confirmed that a Russian man had been arrested while trying to cross the border into Israel on Tuesday. He said he had paid smugglers 1,000 dollars to help him reach Israel, where he hoped to find work. The man is being held in el-Arish prison, and the Russian embassy in Cairo has been informed of the case. Smugglers and migrants regularly try to enter Israel illegally, often to find work. In many cases, police open fire on them, though human rights groups have sharply criticized the growing number of fatalities. The 250-kilometre-long border is guarded on the Egyptian side by a maximum of 750 policemen.
Wed, 18/08/2010 – 16:04 Almasryalyoum
Rafah–An Egyptian policeman has been injured following clashes with a group of Bedouins who were trying to smuggle a number of Africans across the Egyptian border to Israel, security sources said. A security source told Al-Masry Al-Youm that Magdy Abdel Ghany, 22, received minor injuries from the clash, which took place late Tuesday night south of the Rafah border crossing. Ghany’s attackers managed to flee, according to the source. At least four African immigrants were killed on Saturday in clashes with smugglers in the Egyptian city of Rafah. Egypt has been complaining of a rising tide of African migrants crossing its borders to Israel, assisted by Bedouin gangs. Israel says 20,000 African immigrants have made it into Israel through Egypt since 2007. International organizations accuse Egypt of using excessive force when countering illegal migration by Africans to Israel. Egypt has defended its approach as a means of protecting its sovereignty and national security. Already this year Egyptian security forces have killed 23 African immigrants on route to Israel; in 2009 the number was 19. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
According to Reuters, the violence brings the number of migrants killed near the Egypt-Israel border this year to at least 28, up from 19 in 2009. Twenty-four of those killed this year were shot dead by Egyptian security forces and four by smugglers.
According to the UNHCR , the latest victim was killed first two months of 2010. The great majority of the people killed since Egypt and Israel agreed to toughen border controls in Sinai in the summer of 2007 are reported to have been from Sub-Saharan Africa — in particular from Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia.
At least 33 were reported killed in the Sinai between July 2007 and October 2008. After a six-month period when there were no reported shootings, at least 19 more would-be migrants or refugees are believed to have been shot dead between May and December 2009. The victims are said to include several women and at least one child.
“The fact that these shootings stopped for six months, and then resumed, strongly suggests that the killings follow a pattern that does not appear to be random,” the High Commissioner said.
Witness Describes Refugee’s Death
Please infrom UNHCR to the follwing Adress:
Learn more about the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Navi Pillay:http://www.ohchr.org/EN/AboutUs/Pages/HighCommissioner.aspx
Click here to visit OHCHR website: http://www.ohchr.org
OHCHR Country page – Egypt: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/MENARegion/Pages/EGIndex.aspx
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – Media Unit
Rupert Colville, Spokesperson: + 41 22 917 9767 / rcolville@ohchr.org
Xabier Celaya, Information Officer: + 41 22 917 9383 / xcelaya@ohchr.org
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