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01/04/2006:

"UN Agency Blamed for Sudanese Refugee Deaths"

WASHINGTON, Jan 1 (IPS) - Arab and Middle East civil society groups are accusing a United Nations agency of collaborating with Egyptian police in action which caused the deaths of at least 25 Sudanese refugees in a downtown Cairo park on Friday.

The refugees, including women and children, have been staging a public sit-in for the past three months protesting their treatment by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and were demanding relocation to a third country.

But Friday evening, a police force of nearly 4,000 officers cordoned off the Sudanese encampment, fired water cannons at them and beat them indiscriminately. Hundreds were dragged into buses and transferred to unknown destinations.

Some 25 people died in the clashes and a stampede, while dozens were injured. Eyewitnesses told the local press that the refugees abandoned their belongings and suitcases in the park as they fled the crackdown.

Egyptian civil society groups decried the use of force in a statement on Saturday and called what happed a "massacre" and "a full-blown crime committed by Egyptian security forces in collaboration with UNHCR against unarmed refugees, most of whom are women, children and elderly".

Some 2,500 Sudanese refugees have been gathered at the park since Sep. 29 saying they would not leave until the UNHCR agreed to resettle them in European countries, as reportedly promised. They had fled Sudan after years of civil war.
ipsnews.net

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