Sudan govt apologizes for police assault on Egyptian workers at 3arabawy

Sudan govt apologizes for police assault on Egyptian workers

Published by Hossam el-Hamalawy February 22nd, 2007 in Diplomacy, Egypt مصر, Human Rights حقوق إنسان, Labor عمال, Sudan

From the Daily Star Egypt…

The Sudanese government has offered an apology to Egypt for the mistreatment of four Egyptian workers at a police station in Khartoum.
Sudan’s Interior Minister Al-Zubair Bashir Taha apologized on behalf of his government to the Egyptian government and promised that an investigation will begin immediately.
Egypt’s Ambassador to Sudan Mohammed Al Shazly and General Consul Ayman Badie submitted medical certificates to Taha as evidence that four Egyptian workers had been subjected to torture with electric wires at a Khartoum police station.
Sources at the Egyptian embassy in Sudan confirmed to Al-Masry Al-Youm that Khartoum state police had arrested 21 Egyptians and 9 Sudanese after a fight had erupted at a construction site.

Click on the photo below to read the full report…

[Above: Photo of one of the Egyptian workers tortured by the Sudanese police. The pic was taken by a Sudanese blogger, and were published on Wael's blog.]

I’m not expecting anything out of the “investigation” the Sudanese police is supposedly launching. When the Egyptian police massacres Sudanese refugees in the middle of one of the country’s public squares, and when the Egyptian police treats Egyptian citizens in its custody like this and that, then how can we expect the Sudanese police to treat the poor Egyptian workers in any ways different?

2 Responses to “Sudan govt apologizes for police assault on Egyptian workers”

Feed for this Entry

1 Faisal Feb 23rd, 2007 at 12:24 am

Actually, there is a difference that has to be made here. In my experience, the Sudanese government will usually turn a blind-eye to incidents concerning southerners, which most, if not all, the Sudanese refugees were.

Of course, this was because the Northern Sudanese government was the main reason behind their refugee status. Now, I know that the situation has changed, somewhat, since the signing of the peace accords between the different factions, it’s just that I feel that the comparison doesn’t apply completely.

Having said that, the Sudanese government is much its Egyptian counterpart in it’s strong in-built tradition of never admitting to mistakes. It will probably punish one or two small-fry policemen and say that it was an isolated incident.

At the end of the day, and as you said Hossam, the Egyptian workers will not be vindicated.
2 muhanad Feb 23rd, 2007 at 3:17 am

It would be sad if this incident was to damage sudanese egyptian relations.
this incident appears to be most likely a dispute between workers,that got out of hand,and when the police got involved they were possibly to heavy handed,and any police officer found to be involved should be investigated.
However there might be a large possibility that some of the injures were aquired in the original incident between the workers.
In regard to the assuption that this might be revenge to the treatment of sudanese refuges in egypt i think this is unlikely because a period of time has past between then and now.
at most this is an isolated incident with no link to political events.

Search

3arabawy on Twitter

Court adjourned. Tomorrow more witnesses will b heard. Monday experts will testify. 7 hrs ago