CAIRO, 31 December 2005 — Some 2,000 Egyptian policemen clashed with Sudanese refugees as they cleared a protest camp early yesterday morning. At least 12 protesters were killed and 74 security officers wounded in the clash, according to an official statement from the Interior Ministry.
Scuffles with police continued through dawn, and an Interior Ministry official who wished to remain anonymous told reporters that as many as 20 protesters had been killed, including three children. The Associated Press quoted one protest leader as saying as many as 26 refugees have been killed: 17 men, two women, and seven children.
“Definitely more than ten refugees were killed, perhaps as many as 30, nobody knows for sure,” Hussein Adam, a Darfurian refugee who has been living in the camp since September, told Arab News. “We can only speculate regarding the number of the injured, but we saw well over 30 wounded men, women and children on the ground,” Adam said.
Police were attempting to clear a makeshift camp in a square near the local headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some 2,500 protesters, refugees of the violence in neighboring Sudan, have been camping there for the past eight weeks demanding official refugee status, which would allow them to be relocated to a third country. They claim to have been discriminated against by their Egyptian hosts.
“We had given the protesters several warnings and had asked them to disperse and evacuate the area numerous times over the past three months,” an Egyptian police officer said on condition of anonymity. “They did not heed the warnings and so they had to be forcibly removed.” Police were seen using water cannons on protesters, as well as beating some with batons as they tried to clear the camp.
“We watched from the other side of the street as the security forces attacked the camp with water canons, batons, and tear gas. There clearly was an excessive use of force,” said Adam. “The remainder of the people left standing were rounded up and crammed into transport trucks. Nobody knows their current whereabouts but we heard that they were taken to various prisons, police stations, and detention centers in Giza, Tora and Dokki,” Adam added.
