cairo stories

I just read this eyewitness account (by an Egyptian blogger, Nora Younis) of the police raid on an illegal Sudanese refugee camp in a Cairo park last week, in which the police killed at least 23 refugees and removed most of the rest to "state security" camps. The story and pictures are appalling. According to a report the head heeb has linked to, as many as 265 may have actually died. Now UNHCR has obtained a temporary extension of time to interview the remaining refugees and determine whether their asylum requests are legitimate. If, as it sounds, many of them are not eligible for deportation, then why the hell didn't anyone listen to their claims earlier?

My friend Matt is living in Cairo and attends a language school near the park where the refugees had been camping, across from the UNHCR building. You can read his thoughts on the matter (and stories of life in Masr, from playing sax for the soundtrack to a pop single called--of course--'ya habibi,' to a quest to visit the El-Al office in Cairo, to Eid al-Adha preparations) at his blog City of the Living.

My friend H (who works with food security in refugee and immigrant communities here in Seattle) and I were wondering the other night whether or not the US is accepting many asylum requests from Sudanese refugees, from Darfur or otherwise (much of the recent immigrant/refugee population in Seattle is East African, mostly Somali and Eritrean). I can't locate much information, but some Homeland Security statistics I found made it clear that the vast majority of asylum cases at the moment are from Latin America or China.