Hundreds of Sudanese have been released from police detention camps onto the streets of this city with no money, no place to live -- and in many cases, no shoes -- three days after riot police attacked a squatter camp set up as a protest to press the UN to relocate the migrants to another country.
The walled-in courtyard of Sacred Heart Church here was packed on Monday with men and women searching for a blanket, a meal, a place to live, word of a lost relative, anything that might help rebuild a life after the police charged their camp on Friday. The attack officially left 26 dead, including seven small children, and many others injured.
"It is a terrible situation," said the Reverend Simon Mbuthia, a priest at Sacred Heart, a Catholic church, as he considered the crowd of people looking for help.
"The government here has done nothing," he said.
Abdul Aziz Muhammad Ahmed, 29, sat shivering on the steps just beneath the metal door leading to Mbuthia's offices.
"I'm not sick," he said through a far-off gaze. "My daughter, Asma, was killed."
Asma was 9 months old, and her uncle said he dropped her when the police clubbed him.
"I haven't told my wife yet," Ahmed said. "She is already sick."
The government waited for three months before sending the police out to empty the squatter camp, in one of Cairo's more upscale neighborhoods.
The police yelled at squatters through bullhorns, ordering them to leave, and used water cannon when they refused. After the Sudanese remained defiant, the police attacked.
So many were left dead, and the international condemnation was so embarrassing, that President Hosni Mubarak has told the attorney general to investigate.
But the government's official position is that the Sudanese were to blame. Magdy Rady, the government's chief spokesman, said that the Sudanese injured their own people by trampling those who collapsed, and he said they also attacked the police, injuring more than 70 officers.
The Sudanese were unarmed and many were barefoot. The police were wearing riot gear, including helmets with face shields, and wielded truncheons.
"We are sorry," Rady said.
"What happened is unfortunate, it is sad, but it was not the intention of the police. The Sudanese pushed us to do this. They do not want even to settle in Egypt. They want to move to another country. We did not know what else to do. It was a very difficult situation," he added.
After clearing the park, the police took all of the Sudanese, about 3,000, to detention camps where they were asked for identification papers. Those with passports or UN documents allowing them to be in Egypt were being released.
Those without documents, or those who had twice been denied refugee status by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, would probably be sent back to Sudan, Rady said.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS