The Sudanese community in Egypt sheds bitter tears over the brutal crackdown on asylum-seekers a fortnight ago, reports Gamal Nkrumah This week Egyptian authorities released 164 Sudanese migrants forcibly evicted from a park next to the Cairo office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Mustafa Mahmoud Square, Mohandessin, Giza. The ugly incident attracted much world attention with the UN, the international media and human rights organisations criticising the brutal and heavy-handed manner in which the Sudanese asylum-seekers were cast out of the park. The asylum-seekers are loath to return to Sudan. They have long pleaded with the UNHCR to give them refugee status so that they can apply for relocation to the United States, Canada and Australia. The UNHCR, which says that it is cash-strapped, has retorted that the demands of the asylum-seekers are "unreasonable and unrealistic". In the immediate aftermath of the onslaught, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry announced it was deporting 645 Sudanese it classified as "illegal immigrants". However, the ministry later rescinded and said it was giving more time for the UNHCR to examine their status. "I was reviewing the conditions at Al-Qanater Prison all day and most of the asylum-seekers bitterly complained about their detention," Mohamed Fayek, head of the Cairo-based Arab Organisation for Human Rights, told Al-Ahram Weekly. Fayek reports that asylum-seekers say their conditions in prison were "reasonable". He explained that they were well fed and medically cared for. "Still, there are eight- month pregnant mothers among the Sudanese detainees. There are bodies that have not yet been buried and the relatives are distraught. It is a tragedy and that cannot be denied." Fayek, a member of the National Council for Human Rights called on the government to set up an investigations committee to identify those responsible for the brutal treatment and killing of the Sudanese asylum-seekers. The savagery of the police was completely unjustifiable. Fayek confirmed that at least 29 people died while many are still unaccounted for, underlining there would have to be absolute transparency during any investigation. "Those who killed the Sudanese must be brought to book," he said. Members of the parliamentary opposition concur. "We need to probe the implications of the massacre and identify those responsible. We shall pursue this issue in the People's Assembly," Hamdi Hassan, spokesman of the parliamentary bloc of the Muslim Brotherhood, told the Weekly. The asylum-seekers themselves expressed horror at their treatment at the hands of the security forces. "There are seven children who were orphaned in Al-Qanater Prison. The youngest is a few months old and the oldest is barely 11," Hanadi Fadel-Youssef, a lawyer and human rights activist, told the Weekly. Their parents were killed in last month's violence. Fadel-Youssef notes in appreciation the support -- moral and material -- of human rights groups. "Many Egyptian, Sudanese and international humanitarian and human rights groups have bandied together to ease the suffering of the Sudanese asylum-seekers in Egypt," she added. Fadel-Youssef expresses outrage that no Arab country officially criticised the handling of the affair by the Egyptian authorities. Egyptian independent and opposition papers, however, were highly critical of the way in which the authorities handled the crisis. "Shame on Egypt," Al-Arabi newspaper said. "Prosecute the murderers and dismiss the interior minister," the paper added. "The Interior Ministry lost its mind and killed 20 Sudanese in the Mohandessin massacre," Sawt Al-Umma said. "The night the human conscience was lost," Al-Osbou described the appalling incident. For their part, Egyptian authorities insist that the Sudanese are in Egypt illegally, but nonetheless last Thursday agreed to give the UNHCR 72 hours to interview the asylum- seekers and determine whether they are bona fide refugees. To some human rights groups, like the London-based Amnesty International, the 72 hours stipulation was but further indication of the callousness of the state, the group expressing "serious concerns" that "72 hours may not be long enough for the UNHCR to identify all those who are refugees or asylum-seekers." UNHCR officials agreed, warning that it needed more time to review the files of hundreds of asylum-seekers. "This was not enough [time] to do a thorough status- determination examination," says Dessalegne Damtew, deputy representative of UNHCR in Cairo. The UNHCR issues only a limited number of blue cards that show that the bearer is officially acknowledged by the UN body as a refugee. Others are issued with so- called "yellow cards" -- UNHCR-issued identity cards that show that the bearers are asylum-seekers. The 165 detained Sudanese asylum-seekers released last week were either blue or yellow cardholders. It remains a scandal that at least 29 people had to be beaten to death and that only the international outrage that ensued forced authorities to address the asylum-seeker issue. The Sudanese asylum-seekers had complained that they were being kept in a state of limbo and that their papers were not thoroughly or speedily examined. Their complaints seem to have been corroborated by the subsequent demands of the Egyptian authorities. The Sudanese asylum-seekers say now that they were pawns in a tug-of-war between the Egyptian authorities and the UNHCR. "The UNHCR had refused for three months to re- examine the cases of Sudanese asylum-seekers whose requests had been rejected," said an Egyptian presidential spokesman. "Now that the UNHCR has changed its mind, we want to give the asylum- seekers a chance to stay in Egypt and have their files reviewed," he added. The date set by the Egyptian authorities for the UNHCR to assess the status of the Sudanese asylum- seekers expired Sunday, but the Egyptian government granted the UN body more time to ascertain the status of the asylum-seekers and stayed deportation orders. "One-hundred-and-ninety-one women and children remain in detention, while 73 others have been released," said UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort. The majority of those still in prison are neither recognised by the UN body as refugees (blue card holders) nor as asylum-seekers (yellow card holders). There are some 464 Sudanese asylum- seekers still in detention -- 80 women and 108 children in Al-Qanater Prison; 174 men in Abu Zaabal Prison; and the rest in Shebeen Al-Kom and other detention centres, Fayek explained. "We must not deport any Sudanese. After all, there is the "four freedoms agreement" which stipulates freedom of movement between the two countries," Fayek added.
