36 What the Sudanese Protesters Wanted

I’ve noticed that a lot of the news stories on the Sudanese protesters have been confused. That’s natural. It’s a confusing situation, and from the dozen or so interviews I’ve had with the refugees, it’s clear that there’s a lot of contradictory information floating around. This whole thing is a mess.

In the spirit of helping journalists, researchers, and interested readers abroad make sense of what led up to this situation, I thought it would be helpful post a copy of the protesters’ requests verbatim, without comment (though I hope readers will comment). A protest leader gave me this in hard-copy in November:

  1. The Sudanese refugees object the UNHCR programme of compulsory voluntary repatriation.
  2. We object the local integration.
  3. We object the unfair crertaria the UNHCR applied on the Sudanese refugees
  4. We refuse to distinguish between Sudanese refugees according to their ethnic backgrounds and/or geographical zones.
  5. We refuse the arbitrary detention for Sudanese refugees without guilty
  6. We request the UNHCR to consider Sudanese refugees status determination as individuals not as a group.
  7. We request not to apply the four freedom principles between Sudanese government and Egyptian government on Sudanese refugees.
  8. We request the UNHCR to protect Sudanese refugees from the Sudan national conference personnels.
  9. We request the UNHCR to register Sudanese asylum seekers on arrival.
  10. We request the UNHCR to search for the missed Sudanese refugees.
  11. We request UNHCR to care about vulnerable categories as elders, minors without family members and women at risk.
  12. We request the UNHCR to re-open the closed files of all Sudanese refugees.
  13. We request a radical solution for all Sudanese refugees, problems otherwise move them to another country where there is no discrimination.

[tags]Sudan, Egypt, Sudanese Refugees, Human Rights[/tags]

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  1. […] Elijah Zarwan, an American human rights activist who lives in Cairo, has been following the protest by Sudanese refugees against discrimination and mistreatment in Egpyt, including a number of key posts about the violent dispersal of the refugees on December 30th. His most recent post includes translations of some Arabic-language blog posts about the refugees and the violence they’ve faced. Elijah leads off with a translation of a long post by Alaa, an amazing young man who’s a leading light in both the arab Open Source movement and the Kefayah movement: The scandal is that people have started to believe what the newspapers say […]

    Pingback by …My heart’s in Accra » Elijah on Sudanese refugees in Cairo — January 18, 2006 #

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