Rights Group Asks Why Egypt's Police are Gunning Down Migrants
ICC Note
Egyptian police have killed more than 30 African asylum seekers who were trying to cross the border into Israel . The African asylum seekers come from countries such as Eritrea and Sudan where they are forced to leave due to violations of rights, including Christians who fled their countries fearing persecution. The Egyptian government must stop killing these innocent asylum seekers.
By Joseph Mayton
11/14/08 Egypt (Middle East Times)-African migrants trying to sneak into Israel from Egypt along the lengthy Sinai border, often with little more than the clothes on their backs, are being gunned down by Egyptian police carrying out a new "shoot-to-kill" deterrence policy, a human rights group says in a damning report that also claims Israel may be involved.
The Egyptian government has defended its use of force in the Sinai Peninsula as a critical part of a counter-terror strategy against smuggling.
But Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its 90-page report titled, "Sinai Perils: Risks to Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Egypt and Israel ," that the migrants who were killed on the 266-kilometer (130-mile) border posed no threat to the border guards who opened fire.
"The Egyptian government should send a clear message to stop shooting the defenseless, harmless and [non-threatening] people on the border," HRW researcher Bill Van Esveld told journalists at Cairo 's Press Syndicate during the release of the report.
Israel has long told Cairo to do more to inhibit the movement of people across their border. But the rights organization was also critical of the Jewish state, saying that it should not immediately return to Egypt potential asylum-seekers where they could face deportation to nations with well-documented human rights violations.
Some 13,000 Africans have made it into the Jewish state since 2006, while 33 people have been killed since June 2007 and scores of others injured along the border, highlighting the ongoing struggle that rights groups have with Cairo and Israel .
