NYT: Egyptian Police Kill at Least 23 Unarmed Sudanese Migrants

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-egypt.html?hp&ex=1136005200&en=72ace17e8b0ac6da&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Egyptian riot police rushed into a crowd of unarmed Sudanese migrants early this morning, killing at least 23 people, including small children, after the group refused to leave a public park it had occupied for three months hoping to pressure United Nations officials to relocate them.

The police tried for hours to persuade thousands of men, women and children to leave the small square, hosing them with water canon, surrounding them with cordons of riot police, imploring the women and children to board buses, and repeatedly warning that they would be removed forcefully.

But the crowd was desperate, having moved with all their possessions, suitcases loaded with clothing and family photographs, jewelry and kitchen wares, into what amounted to a traffic island in a middle class neighborhood. They hoped the authorities would declare them refugees and send them abroad. They had fled war-torn Sudan, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Cairo - across from where they camped out - told them that they were not eligible for refugee status or for relocation because it was safe for them to return home.

When the police charged, women and children tried to huddle together, and to hide under blankets as some men grabbed for anything - tree limbs, metal bars - struggling to fight back, witnesses said. The police hesitated, then rushed in with full force, trampling over people and dragging the Sudanese off to waiting buses, the witnesses said. Some people were trampled.

How much military and law enforcement assistance does the US provide Egypt?

It would cost nothing to take care of these people, but the authorities are so afraid of getting more that they behave like barbarians.

of brotherhood and love for all human beings.

They held out for relocation to a country that is neither Sudan nor Egypt and in no way accepted settlement inside Egypt. Egypt was going to foot the bill. So I don't see how this is Egypt being cheap at all.

How cheap is it to let them stay there?

To the point that even though the outcome was way worse than the Egyptians seem to have had in mind, those people may be better off 6 months down the road than if they'd stayed in that place and had serious outbreaks of diseases that people with modern sanitation just don't get.

Has nothing to do with cost. The sooner you understand that, the better. There's a reason the UN doesn't try to keep people cooped up in places like that. It may seem heartless and cruel but, it's seeming heartless out of compassion when we're talking about the dry, hard facts of displaced persons and human sanitation.

I read this article prepared to accept the Egyptians being barbarians about this, pure and simple. It wasn't that pure and simple when I saw the details. The cops handled this badly after being handed a situation that no nation in the world could tolerate forever and after every effort to plead and negotiate. In other words, yes, they messed up - but those civilians gave them an immense amount of help, including resistance using improvised weapons capable of wounding and killing officers.

As much as I resent it, this article actually made me feel sorry for the cops as fellow human beings. They got pushed past the breaking point and their third world riot control training kicked in, because a riot is what they were faced with. They should not have been faced with it. Those people should have listened to reason. Those people should not have sought arms. Human nature to do so, yes, but they provoked this by refusing to accept that the community of nations simply does not permit what they asked for. Taking a small piece of Egypt hostage was NEVER going to change that. They couldn't accept it and this is the eventual result.

Not that I don't understand. But that is, nonetheless, the result, an entirely predictable one that apparently they were QUITE HAPPY WITH because they decided it was better to provoke a situation where their own people might get trampled to death in the ensuing 'battle' because it would make people like you condemn the Egyptians for barbarism and maybe get the sympathy of the world working. To that extent it worked. I don't think it'll change anything in terms of their physical outcome, but hey, blood makes for good propaganda, especially when we're conditioned to blame Egypt in advance.

Your apparent premise that there was just no way
to deal with this but what was done does not convince
me.