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Sudanese jihad fallout in Egypt. From AP, with thanks to JE:
CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian police turned water cannons on Sudanese war refugees and beat them with sticks Friday, brutally clearing out a squatters camp in a city park. At least 10 people were killed, the government said.Hundreds of Sudanese have been living in the park since September to protest the U.N. refugee agency's refusal to consider them for refugee status. They want to be resettled in a third country, such as the United States or Britain, rather than go home after a peace deal ended the 21-year-long civil war in Sudan.
In Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, expressed his shock and sadness over the violence and deaths.
"Although we still do not have all of the details or a clear picture of what transpired, violence left several people dead and injured," Guterres said. "There is no justification for such violence and loss of life. This is a terrible tragedy and our condolences go to all the families of those who died and to the injured."
In a showdown played out during the first five hours of Friday, the protesters dismantled their plastic sheeting and cardboard, but most refused to leave on buses brought in to take them to camps elsewhere in Cairo.
Shortly before dawn, thousands of riot police encircled the camp, set up near the refugee agency to draw attention to the refugees' demands. Police fired water cannons at the protesters, then invaded the park when the Sudanese refused to leave.
Protesters could be seen fighting back with long sticks that appeared to be supports for makeshift tents.
Police beat the unarmed migrants with batons, continuing to hit them even as they were being dragged to the buses. One officer carried a girl of about 3 or 4 years old who was unconscious. An ambulance worker said the girl was dead.
A policeman clubbed a Sudanese man with a tree branch as two officers hauled the refugee away.
Authorities said 10 protesters were dead and 23 police wounded. Boutrous Deng, a protest leader, told The Associated Press that 15 Sudanese were killed, including two children.
Officials at the South Center, an independent Sudanese human rights group, said 1,280 refugees were taken by bus to three locations outside Cairo. In a statement faxed to AP in Cairo, the group described the police assault as "savage."
Posted by Robert at December 30, 2005 8:08 AM
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The only surprise is that there happened to be witnesses who were not silenced, and that some of them reported the event. But this kind of thing happens everywhere in the Arab and Muslim world. What happens to dissients, or their families, in Morocco? See the book of Mona Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi. What happens to rioters in Tizi-Ouzou when they demand to be allowed to use Berber, when the Algerian police and army come in? What happened a few months ago to Kurdish protesters in Syria, or what about that little massacre in Hama (not the big massacre under Papa Assad, but the tiny one)? And now do the Saudi police treat non-Saudi Arabs, or non-Arab Muslims, or non-Muslims, in that carefully-calibrated but very short sliding scale, the one that flips the alphabet and goes from B (Brutality) to A (Atrocity)?
And can you guess how, once the Americans are no longer around (and eventually the Americans will no longer be around, for they will realize that creating a loyalty to "Iraq" that transcends ethnic and sectarian loyalties will not be possible, will simply be a waste of American time, lives, money, and other resources) the "Iraqi" police will behave when it disciplines other "Iraqis"? How will the Shi'a "Iraqi" police treat Sunni Arab "Iraqis," how will the Sunni "Iraqi" police treat Shi'a "Iraqis," how will the Sunni and Shi'a Arab "Iraqi" police treat Kurdish "Iraqis," how will the Kurdish "Iraqi" police treat Sunni Arab
"Iraqis,", how will the Sunni, and Shi'a, and Kurdish "Iraqis" treat the Christians of Iraq, who hardly count as "Iraqis," in the view of almost (not quite) all Muslims in Iraq, at all?
Welcome to the Muslim Middle East. And a special welcome comes to you from Egypt, Land no longer of the Pyramids or the Copts, but of Nasser and Saint Sadat and Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Egyptian police are only doing what comes naturally. The Egyptian government was doing what came naturally in the recent election farce (is Ayman Nour still in that cage, or has he gone to prison). The farcical comments from farcical Western governments, farcically treating these farcical places as reasonable countries, advanced countries, Western countries, and pouring money and every kind of government and NGO support into them, thinking that the governments, and those they rule, exhibit the same rationality, the same logic, have the same hopes and dreams as those in the West do (as if Islam could not supply another hope, and another dream), the same scrupulosity about the use of force.
All nonsense. All phrases, parroted all over the West, left unquestioned, then accepted, then pretend-believed as an Article of Faith.
And in that Pretend-Belief about everyone being the same in the whole wide world, and especially that Muslim vision for the world corresponds, but for a tiny dispute here or there (to be easily resolved by giving Muslims what they want, as over those pesky and quite unnecessary Israelis), exactly to what Infidels see. No real dispute, no quarrel, no problem. Some extremists. On both sides. Some "misunderstandings" to be cleared up by Dialogues of Civlization. Enough such Dialogues, and that Greater Understanding, lasting -- oh, about 30-40 years -- and everything, in Western Europe at least, will be settled.
And there will no longer be any problem, as will be demonstrated by the absence of complaints, from all those non-Muslims who will by then have come to "understand," and are beginning to see the light.
Posted by: Hugh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 30, 2005 9:48 AM
This is a report on the BBC website from a Sudanese asylum seeker named Napoleon Roberts (which name says a lot about the refugees, in itself)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4569662.stm
And it's always the children who suffer most.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at December 30, 2005 1:32 PM
I heard Radio Monte Carlo about this incident yesterday evening, 12-31-05. They said that 25 Sudanese were killed by the Egyptian cops [I believe that I heard "vingt-cinq," although there was some interference]. Well, the incident --"massacre" anybody?-- will get swept under the rug because Egypt is a "moderate" Arab country and an "ally in the war on terrorism."
Posted by: Eliyahu at January 1, 2006 12:17 AM
Il Foglio of 2 Jan 2006 reports 26 Sudanese killed in this incident.
Anyhow, the Sudanese refugees did not get any especially bad treatment. After all, the Egyptian govt treats native Egyptians the same way. When Saint Sadat was alive, scores of Egyptians were slaughtered by the cops in bread riots and similar protests.
at January 2, 2006 6:08 AM
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