Egyptian police move in on Sudanese protest camp

Egyptian security troops fired water cannons at hundreds of Sudanese refugees early today and forced them to dismantle a protest camp where they had lived for three months, demanding resettlement outside of Egypt.

Sudanese men took apart tents and packed up their belongings from the camp, which was set up on the central reservation on a boulevard in an upmarket neighbourhood of Cairo. Women and children sat huddled on a nearby kerb.

Thousands of security forces moved in before midnight and closed off the area, surrounding the camp. In the early hours, the Sudanese began dismantling the protest camp, while white buses waited nearby to transport them away.

But when many of the Sudanese refused to leave even after the camp was dismantled, police fired water cannons, drenching the protesters. Still, the protesters remained.

Hundreds of Sudanese have lived in the camp since it was set up on September 29 as a protest against the United Nations refugee agency nearby. At least three refugees have died, including a four-year-old boy who had pneumonia earlier this month.

At times, the Sudanese numbered up to 2,000, crammed on to the central reservation divider that was just a little larger than a tennis court.

A spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Cairo, Astrid Van Genderen Stort, said the UNHCR was monitoring the protesters’ removal and hoped “everything is done with peaceful means”.

The sit-in began after the high commissioner stopped hearing the cases of Sudanese seeking refugee status in the wake of the January peace deal that ended their home country’s 21-year civil war.

Asylum seekers generally must gain the status to be resettled in countries such as the US, Australia and Britain.

The high commissioner announced last week that it had reached a deal with some of the protest leaders, promising to resume hearing some cases and offering a one-time payment of up to £400 for housing.

But most of those in the camp rejected the deal, saying they wanted promises of resettlement abroad.

The UNHCR said it could not make any resettlement promises and urged the protesters to leave. The organisation “could do nothing at this stage”, Stort said today.

About 30,000 Sudanese are registered as refugees in Egypt and estimates of Sudanese living there have ranged from 200,000 to several million.

But Egypt, which suffers from high unemployment and strained social services for its own population of 72 million, offers the Sudanese little assistance and the Sudanese complain of discrimination by Egyptians.