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Egyptian Policy Imperils Refugees, Migrants at Israel's Door
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"But they still shot him," Adam recounted, saying an Egyptian officer placed his rifle against her cousin's side and pulled the trigger. She said the officer later told her he did so because he was following orders from Sudan's president.
More than 20,000 Sudanese are registered with the Egyptian offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees as war refugees or asylum seekers. Of those, about 3,000 refugees are from Darfur, where U.N. officials say fighting between government-backed Arab militias and African rebels has led to the deaths of as many as 450,000 people, most of them civilians, and driven an additional 2.5 million from their homes.
In Egypt, Darfuris and other Sudanese say they struggle to feed their families and encounter discrimination and violence from Egyptians, who view them as competition for jobs. In 2005, Egyptian riot police killed 27 Sudanese demonstrators in Cairo seeking U.N. help to leave Egypt.
Asked whether U.N. refugee officials had discussed the border shootings with Egyptian authorities, spokeswoman Abeer Etefa in Cairo said, "I'm sure it has been brought up many times."
"We basically are advocating for . . . not using force excessively along these border lines," Etefa said. "Having said that, no refugee is above the law."
Sudanese, many of them from Darfur, make up the largest number of those killed in the shootings. The dead include at least five women and a 7-year-old girl, according to Egyptian officials' accounts to news media and rights groups.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said most survivors it had interviewed stated that Egyptian security forces had shouted warnings or fired warning shots before shooting at their groups. Either way, the shootings were illegal, because the unarmed migrants posed no physical threat, said Bill Van Esveld, a researcher with the group.
"In every case I know of where migrants and refugees have been killed, the police have not been under fire," Van Esveld said.
Another Darfur refugee, 32-year-old Fawzia Mohammed, said Egyptian forces opened fire on her and her three children as they tried to cross into Israel in March with about 30 other migrants. She said no warning shots were fired.
"The police saw us, and right away they started opening fire," she said. She and some other migrants stopped and raised their hands, or fell on their children to shield them. Five in her group died, she said.
Refugees' accounts of the two episodes could not be independently verified. Human Rights Watch said it had collected similar testimony from a survivor in a third shooting in which migrants said they were fired upon without warning as they sat or lay on the ground. In the case of Hagga Abbas Haroun of Darfur, whose death in July 2007 was the first killing confirmed by Egypt as it escalated force against the migrants, Egyptian border police came upon the migrants as they slept near the frontier at night, relatives of the dead woman said.
Haroun, seven months pregnant at the time, was shot in the head as she slept on the ground with her 2-year-old child, according to accounts by her family. The Egyptian autopsy report said she died instantly.
