The Egyptian military’s campaign against Muslim insurgents in northern Sinai is harming thousands of civilians and risks turning more people against the government, Human Rights Watch said in a report yesterday.
The government has evicted 3,200 families over the past two years and razed hundreds of hectares of farmland and thousands of homes in its bid to destroy smuggling tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip with Egypt’s northern Sinai Peninsula, the rights group said.
“Destroying homes, neighborhoods and livelihoods is a textbook example of how to lose a counterinsurgency campaign,” Human Rights Watch director of the Middle East and North Africa Sarah Leah Whitson said.
Photo: EPA
“The Egyptian authorities provided residents with little or no warning of the evictions, no temporary housing, mostly inadequate compensation for their destroyed homes — none at all for their farmland,” the organization said in a statement.
The Egyptian government wants to create a buffer zone along its border with the Gaza Strip to destroy a cross-border network of tunnels. The government accuses Muslim militants of using smuggling tunnels to move between Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza, which is ruled by the militant group Hamas.
The remote territory is characterized by hardscrabble towns, desert and mountainous areas suitable for guerrilla operations. Some disaffected local Bedouin tribesmen in the region, which suffers from economic hardship, have turned to smuggling, organized crime and, in some cases, radical Islam.
The Egyptian government has been battling a long-running insurgency in the region, which escalated after the military ousted former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013 amid massive protests against his rule and cracked down on radical Muslim groups.
A local Islamic State affiliate has been claiming responsibility for militant attacks in northern Sinai. While violence has largely been confined to the region, bombs have also hit other parts of the country, including Cairo.
Human Rights Watch said the US had trained the Egyptian military to use “sophisticated tunnel-detecting technology” to find and destroy tunnels and avoid wiping out entire neighborhoods.
The organization also said it received video footage showing a US-made M60 tank shelling a building to demolish it. It called on the US to access the area and make sure its weapons are not being used in violation of human rights.
As Egypt fights insurgents in northern Sinai, “it should do so in a way that does not arbitrarily harm civilians and violate their right to housing and their protections during forced evictions,” the organization said.
Northern Sinai has been largely closed off to media, and it is difficult to independently verify reports from the area.
Egypt’s military spokesman, Brigadier General Mohammed Samir, declined to comment on the Human Rights Watch report, referring questions to the government spokesman.
Government spokesman Hossam Qawish, Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid and presidential spokesman Alaa Youssef did not answer calls to their mobile phones seeking comment.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was