Egyptian border guards shot and wounded a 20-year-old Ethiopian man who was among a group of African migrants trying to cross illegally into Israel, the German Press Agency reported yesterday.

• On September 15, two Eritrean men were shot dead by Egyptian border guards and three seriously wounded while trying to make the Sinai crossing.

• On September 13, border guards wounded an African migrant woman and arrrested 18 men from Ethiopia and Eritrea who were trying to cross illegally into Israel.

• On September 10, four Ethiopians were reported killed and three others seriously wounded in another incident involving border guards.

• On September 1, police killed an unidentified African migrant and wounded another in the border area. Eleven other migrants – 10 Ethiopians and one Eritrean – were arrested.

All told, more than 40 migrants have been shot attempting to cross into Israel during the last 18 months. According to Amnesty International, no known investigation has been carried out by the Egyptian authorities into any of the shootings.

African migrants face many problems in Egypt, including racism and the difficulty of finding work, and regard Israel as offering them a brighter future. Many are prepared to pay smugglers $1,000 to help them cross over.

Israel has been pressing Egypt to tighten up control of the shared border but, as human rights groups point out, that is no excuse for killing illegal migrants.

“The Egyptian authorities have yet to direct their forces on how to avoid killing migrants trying to cross the border,” Malcolm Smart of Amnesty said recently. “They must assert greater control over their forces at the border and take away their licence to kill.”

Last year Human Rights Watch published a report, Sinai Perils, on the risks faced by migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt and Israel. It called on Egypt to halt the use of lethal force against border crossers and stop deporting them to countries where they risk persecution or ill-treatment. It also called on Israel to halt forced returns of migrants to Egypt, where they face military court trials and possible unlawful deportation.

Many of the migrants come from war-torn parts of Africa, such as Sudan and Somalia, and are probably entitled to refugree status. However, there are problems obtaining recognition through the UNHCR in Egypt.

In 2005, thousands of Egyptian riot police brutally evicted a group of Sudanese migrants who had set up a protest camp in Cairo, killing at least 20 of them.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 20 September 2009.