Word: egypts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Eritrean Yirgalam Beyene's tired eyes swell with tears as she recalls the day her son was killed. One night in April 2008, Beyene found herself lying in the cold sand of Egypt's vast Sinai desert, nervously eyeing the barbed-wired fence that separated her from her destination: Israel. Only a few hundred meters away, the fence along the border was low enough to jump. But Beyene, who was there with her three children and a group of some 20 asylum seekers from Eritrea, Darfur and southern Sudan, knew that before they reached the other side they would have...
...people currently seeking asylum in Israel. Over the past two years, as routes to Europe through Libya and Morocco have closed off or become more difficult to traverse, thousands of migrants have headed to Israel. But the route, which usually takes them from the Horn of Africa through Egypt's Sinai region and then across the border, has its own dangers. In Europe, coast-guard patrols might try to turn back boats full of refugees and asylum seekers, or detain people only to send them home later. The luckiest ones may end up being accepted for asylum and then dispatched...
...Egypt, the response can be more immediate. Nongovernmental organizations such as the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the African Refugee Development Center say that Egyptian border police have shot dead several hundred migrants seeking to cross the border into Israel for work and asylum over the past few years. "From both Israeli soldiers and refugees who crossed the border we can tell for sure that the Egyptians almost always shoot, they shoot to kill and very often they hit the asylum seekers," says Sigal Rozen of Hotline, an independent group that helps asylum seekers in Israel. At the Israeli cemetery...
...though that's not the army's job," he tells TIME. "During heated periods, we hear shots fired three, four times per week," Gilinski says. "Out of groups of maybe 10, only one or two get through the border. The others are shot at or surrender and return to Egypt." (See TIME's video "Jerusalem's New Secular Mayor...
...ordeal is not over even when refugees make it to Israel. Sigal Rozen says Israel operates an unofficial "hot return" procedure, under which it deports asylum seekers to Egypt provided they crossed within a certain area of the border. Rozen says this policy is illegal by international law "as Israel receives no guarantee that these people will be treated humanely on the other side...