One month after the massacre of Sudanese refugees in Cairo the absolute number of dead is still unknown

The true extent of the massacre of Sudanese refugees in Kairo exactly one month ago is still being covered up by the Egyptian government. This serious charge was brought by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) on Monday. "Statements of eyewitnesses and relatives indicate that more than 200 refugees could have been killed in the police operation, among them children as well”, reported the GfbV expert Ulrich Delius. The Egyptian authorities maintain up to the present day that 27 people were killed in the forcible clearance of a park on 30th December 2005. Some 3000 refugees from the genocide region Darfur and from the South Sudan had been waiting there for months for a transfer to other countries.

Eyewitnesses have according to the spokesmen of the refugees confirmed the deaths of 76 asylum-seekers. 189 further persons are still missing. Support from the authorities in clearing up the fate of those missing has not been forthcoming from the authorities.

The Sudanese are constantly being hindered in their attempts to find in the hospitals of the Egyptian capital, injured children who were taken there by rescue workers after the massacre. The return of the corpses to the relatives has also been refused.

"The Egyptian authorities disregard elementary humanitarian standards if they do not even allow the relatives of those killed to bury their dead according to the rites of their religion”, criticised the GfbV. Some of the dead were transported in refrigerated containers to the Sudan in cooperation with the Sudanese embassy without the bereaved families being notified.

The secret transport of the corpses raises the question whether the object is to prevent an independent investigation into the causes of death, said Delius. "It is in fact extremely unlikely that all victims of the massacre were killed by the water-cannons and the following panic, as the Egyptian authorities assert”, said Delius. This suspicion can only be dispelled by independent forensic doctors.

The 30,000 Sudanese refugees who live officially in Egypt and the several thousand applicants for asylum have been complaining for years of racism and xenophobia.