Refugees Killed in Cairo Protest  

Refugee Rights News
Volume 3, Issue 1
February 2006

In the wee hours of December 30 last year, Egyptian riot police moved to disperse a group of approximately two thousand of Sudanese asylum seekers and refugee protesters who had been camped in a central Cairo square since late September. The operation quickly turned violent and a large number of refugees were killed and injured in the resulting melee.  

No one expected the peaceful demonstration would have turned that deadly and ugly. But it did. Chaos reigned and by all accounts tens of refugees were killed. The number of deaths reported, however, varied; the Egyptian government put the death toll at 27 while the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Cairo said to 265 died.

The genesis of Cairo protests was in late September when the refugees took to the streets to protest the “intolerable conditions” in which they said they were being forced to live (See “Sudanese Refugees Take to the Streets in Cairo,” in the November 2005 edition of Refugee Rights News.)

The government of Egypt claimed that the forced dispersal of the protest was a response to the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the camp; “[t]he disastrous situation in the square where they stayed needed an immediate attention.” It stated that it had received a number of urgent requests from UNHCR to “take appropriate measures to resolve the situation.”  

Confusion and Outrage

In contrast to the view of the Egyptian government that “extreme tolerance” was used in the dispersal operation, eyewitness reports indicated that there was unwarranted use of force and violence. Apparently the demonstrators were doused many times with water cannons before they were pulled one by one from the crowd and forced to board public buses that transported them to detention centers outside the city. Many were beaten and trampled in the melee.

The incident drew huge criticism from both national and international human rights organizations.

A coalition of Egyptian NGOs including the El Nadim Center for the Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct an investigation into the incident. The call for an independent investigation was supported by a number of international organizations including the International Refugee Rights Initiative, Human Rights Watch, the Refugee Council USA and the Ethiopian Community Development Council.

Amnesty International called on the Egyptian government to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions to participate in the investigation. Other organizations focused on the need to bring to book members of the police and security forces found to have behaved improperly or to have used excessive force to account for their actions. Some Egyptian NGOs sought the resignation of the Minister of the Interior Habib el Adly, whom they called to resign as a result of the incident.  

Detention and Status Assessment

Between 2,000 and 2,500 refugees were detained by Egyptian police in the wake of the incident. Initially there were fears that some of the protesters would be deported, and there were reports that 100 refugees were summarily sent home. NGOs and UNHCR swung into action to prevent a mass deportation. The International Refugee Rights Initiative was among the NGOs who called for the UNHCR and the International Red Cross to be given access to the detainees. Ultimately many of the documented 1,500 refugees were released and UNHCR was given access to the detention facilities to assess the needs of the detainees.

On January 8, the Cairo office of Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA) while welcoming the fact that UNHCR had been given access to the detainees, expressed concern about the lack of information and uncertainty about the situation of the detainees. The organization pointed out that the 72 hours allowed to UNHCR was too short a time to assess the needs of so many refugees. AMERA called on UNHCR to extend interim protection to all those in need of assistance, contending that there were many complicated legal issues which required time to explore. It argued that the interim protection should be seen as in interim injunction.

AMERA also pointed out that all Sudanese nationals possessed rights to residency in Egypt under the Four Freedoms Agreement which had came into effect in September 2004. They argued that these rights should also be considered in deciding whether or not to deport individuals.

In fact, several extensions of the deadline were granted and UNHCR was able to complete interviews with all the detainees. By January 11, UNHCR was able to verify the identities of 164 registered refugees who did not have their documentation when they were arrested or whose documentation had been lost or destroyed during the police operation. A week later, a humanitarian release was granted for all women, children and natives of the crisis region of Darfur.

By the end of the screening on January 26, UNHCR was able to identify an additional 14 persons, verified as asylum seekers or refugees. The agency recommended that these individuals be released immediately and that the remaining detainees, who had been found not to be in need of international protection, not be deported. Several days later, on January 30, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs guaranteed that none of the remaining detainees would be deported, paving the way for the release of the final 156 detainees on February 11.

While the immediate situation of those refugees and asylum seekers who survived the forced dispersal of the protest is now resolved, there are still many who have not yet been permitted to bury their loved ones. Many bodies have still not been released by the authorities, and return to Sudan has not been permitted. Second, the long term framework for the protection of refugees in Cairo, including the dynamic between the key actors which created the conditions for this horrific disaster, must be addressed. The first step is an independent investigation of the incident which will identify those responsible for how the tragedy unfolded, both at the level of the State authorities and of UNHCR. While it is clear that the deaths which resulted on the night of 30 th December were as a direct result of a police operation, there are a raft of outstanding questions about the nature of UNHCR’s response to the protest as a whole, its cumulative approach and attitude to the refugee communities. UNHCR’s Office of Internal Oversight must engage to review whether the acts and omissions of individuals contributed to the violent outcome.