By Jaime Ortega.
On Friday, while another wreck of a boat full of migrants attempting to arrive at the coast of Lampedusa left dozens of bodies, 12 people died drowned shortly after leaving the coast of Alexandria. The ship was carrying 150 refugees, Syrians and Palestinians trying to leave Egypt to Europe.
In recent weeks, the Egyptian authorities have intercepted 13 illegal barges, filled with Syrian exiles who seek by all means leave the country. They pay approximately $3,500 per person to enroll in a journey to an unknown but harrowing end. It’s the last exit to the suffering crackdown by Egyptian authorities after leaving behind a country at war.
According to UN data, cited by Amnesty International (AIl), 946 Syrian refugees in Egypt have been arrested in recent weeks , of which 724 among them children – are still under arrest. In a report published on Thursday, entitled We can not live here anymore : Syrian Refugees in Egypt asks Cairo to end this “abhorrent policy of illegal detention and forcible return of hundreds of them.”
“The Egyptian authorities have an obligation to protect anyone who has left the conflict in Syria to find a safe place as a refugee. At present, Egypt is violating its international obligations radically to protect even the most vulnerable refugees , “says Sherif Elsayed Ali , head for immigration of the NGO , based in London.
According to AI, many detainees remain in custody even after the prosecution has ordered his release. They claim that not even humanitarian organizations have access to refugees and that the only alternatives are to accept the deportation of the illegally detained indefinitely. As a result , dozens of families have returned to part by force.
Figures from the Refugees United Nations Agency (UNHCR ) state that there are currently some 125,000 Syrians in Egypt, although unofficial estimates Egyptian Foreign Ministry put the figure up to 300,000 .
During the year -long presidency of Mohamed Morsi, Islamists promoted an open door policy for Syrians who decided to leave his country forced by the circumstances. But after the overthrow of President elected in the polls by the military, the government tightened the conditions of the entry root cutting the flow of migrants .
The new authorities dictated that the Syrians who came to the land of the Nile due before a visa are not required and a special permit issued by the regime of Bashar al-Assad . The campaign against the Syrians had already spread to the streets , where they were accused of supporting the Islamists and even lead to clashes with security forces in recent demonstrations prior to the coup.
Amnesty International is not the only NGO that condemns abuse that these citizens are subjected too, but other local associations as the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information also warn of the situation. The Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmi , denied in a recent interview in Cairo that the problem had intensified under the auspices of the current interim government . “We are not forcing anyone to leave the country,” Egyptian Foreign Minister justified .
