Syrian refugees arrested, face deportation from Egypt
Syrian refugees, including women and children, are being detained by the Egyptian authorities under difficult conditions with constant threats of deportation, as some critics describe their treatment as a kind of torture.
CAIRO — Syrian families arrested while trying to enter Egypt without authorization are terrified by the Egyptian authorities’ threats to send them back to war-torn Syria, human rights activists say.
The international conventions and treaties Egypt has signed criminalize the deportation of asylum-seekers back to the country they fled, because of the risk to their lives — even if they are attempting to enter the country illegally.
The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), a civil society organization helping refugees in Egypt, revealed that dozens of Syrians have been arrested in the past three months on the Egyptian-Sudanese border.
In a Sept. 29 statement, ECRF described the unacceptable detention conditions of the Syrians. The commission pointed out that they face threats of further violations of their human rights and of being handed over to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
