Sinai Perils: Risks to Migrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers in Egypt and Israel

Human Rights Watch (Organization) · Bill Van Esveld

Jan 2008 · Human Rights Watch

About this ebook

Since 2006, over 13,000 refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants have passed through Egypt and crossed the Sinai border into Israel. The majority arrived in Israel since 2007; at times, in early 2008, over 100 people per night reportedly crossed the border. Both Egypt and Israel have responded to this cross-border flow with policies that violate fundamental rights. These violations, particularly on the Egyptian side, have become more numerous and more acute over the past year. In August 2007, Egyptian border police shot and beat to death four people trying to cross from Egypt into Israel, according to Israeli soldiers who said they witnessed the killings. The Israeli soldiers, who believed the migrants were Sudanese, were close enough to hear the migrants "screeching in pain until they died," one soldier said. Egyptian border police have killed at least 33 migrants and wounded dozens more attempting to cross into Israel since the first known fatality, a pregnant Darfuri woman, died in June 2007.