CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt has expelled 600 Eritrean asylum seekers in a week, an Egyptian security official and a human rights activist told AFP as the UN urged Cairo to stop the deportations.
"Six hundred asylum seekers have been sent back to Eritrea this week and 600 others are about to be expelled," Mustafa Abul Hassan, of the Hisham Mubarak Centre human rights association, told AFP.
"We have told the Egyptian government that if they are expelled to Eritrea, they risk being arrested or tortured," said Abul Hassan, who heads the centre's Aswan office in southern Egypt.
An Egyptian security official speaking on condition of anonymity said that 400 Eritreans were expelled on Wednesday while 200 others were sent back to their country overnight June 11 and that some 600 others will be expelled "soon."
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has expressed alarm at the massive expulsions and urged Egypt to stop deporting asylum seekers from Eritrea, saying they could face great risks in their home country.
"People who could well be at risk in their home country should never be sent back before their asylum claims have been properly addressed," Arbour said in a statement released earlier in Geneva.
"Egypt should respect its international obligations not to send home anyone who could face torture or other serious forms of ill treatment, as may well be the case with those who have apparently been deported in recent days."
Arbour welcomed however Egypt's decision last Sunday to allow the UN refugee agency to have access to Eritrean asylum seekers in order to determine their refugee status.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees 1,503 Eritreans are registered with the agency in Egypt as refugees and asylum seekers.
The forced deportations have sparked local and international condemnation.
Eighteen Egyptian non-governmental organisations sent a letter to Interior Minister Habib el-Adli on Thursday to express "their opposition to massive expulsions of Eritrean asylum seekers," according to a copy received by AFP.
The NGOs called for an "immediate stop" to the expulsions.
Last week Amnesty International said most asylum seekers returned to Eritrea "are likely to be arbitrarily detained incommunicado in inhumane conditions from weeks to years."
Hundreds of Eritrean asylum seekers have reached Egypt via its southern border with Sudan, either hoping to receive permanent refugee status, or to sneak into Israel illegally.
In a related development, Egyptian police shot dead an African man on Thursday as he tried to cross the border into, a security official said.
The victim's nationality was not immediately known, the official said, adding that 12 other migrants from Sudan, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana who had attempted the same crossing were arrested.
Over the past year, Egypt has arrested dozens of illegal immigrants, mostly Africans, trying to cross into Israel from the Sinai in search of work. At least 14 have been shot dead on the border this year alone, the official said.
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