Adventists are still missing after thousands of Egyptian police officers broke up a squatter camp near the Cairo offices of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, church officials said Wednesday, January 4.
The Middle East Union (MEU) of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination said Betty Asenzo
Bernard was killed December 30 when police forced him and at least 3,500 other Sudanese
migrants to end their protest for better treatment of refugees and better living conditions.
The UNHCR said "up to 2,500" Sudanese migrants had been demonstrating in Cairo’s Mostafa
Mahmoud Park since 29 September, many of whom were also seeking resettlement in the West. In addittion "several members of the Adventist congregation [in Cairo] are still missing," MEU added.
Most protesters had been sleeping outside in temperatures that reportedly dipped below 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit), using plastic sheets, cardboard and blankets. "Violence erupted when thousands of police attempted to forcibly remove the protesters with truncheons and water cannon," explained MEU in a statement obtained by BosNewsLife. "In the process [at least] 27 protesters were killed and 11 injured."
The Associated Press (AP) news agency quoted Egyptian security officials as saying that 25 refugees died, although a protest leader put the total at 26. Other unofficial reports put the figure closer to 216 dead, MEU added. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancies in reported numbers.
PROTESTERS DEPORTED
MEU claimed some protesters were already deported to Sudan because they had misplaced
their identity papers. Egypt confirmed it is to deport 654 Sudanese refugees who were violently evicted from the protest camp in the Cairo park.
Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Fatma el-Zahraa Etman said they would be flown home Thursday, January 5, because "they were found to be illegal immigrants or refugees",
AP reported.
The Egyptian government stressed it regretted the deaths at the camp but defended the way the police had ended the three-month sit-in, news reports said.
Presidential Spokesman Soleiman Awad was quoted as saying that Egypt had no choice but to
intervene as the UNHCR office had asked the Egyptian authorities three times to break up the sit-in.
UN "SHOCKED"
However United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the UNHCR both expressed "deep shock and sadness" over the confrontation. "Both also voiced regret that the situation was not resolved peacefully and through dialogue, as UNHCR had strongly urged," the UNHCR said.
The 21-year north-south civil war in Sudan, which ended a year ago, displaced about four million people, while the continuing conflict in the western Darfur region has also forced scores to flee.
Tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees fled to Egypt, including Christians. Nearly 80 of them regularly attend the Sudanese Adventist Church that meets in Cairo, reported the Adventist Press Service
Human Rights Watch and other activists have expressed concern about the police violence.
PRAYERS URGED
The president of Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Middle East, Pastor Kjell Aune, said that the "Sudanese community in Cairo is grieving because of this deeply frustrating situation, having lost family and close friends."
He said he had reminded supporters that "the Sudanese need prayers as they try to come to
terms with an uncertain future." (With reports from Cairo and BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos).
