Egypt 
Mass arrests of Egyptian street children

afrol News, 19 February - Egyptian authorities are condemned for systematic mass arrests of street children under inhumane conditions. There are reports of street children being victims of police violence, sexual abuse and being denied food and medical aid while detained.

According to a new report by the US group Human Rights Watch, more than half of all Egyptian street children have been detained at one moment after the new Egyptian Child Law, which came into force in 2001. Most had done nothing illegal, except living in the streets.

- The government says it arrests children to protect them, says Clarisa Bencomo, a Human Rights Watch researcher. "The reality is that most of these children are back on the street within a week, in even worse shape than before. Instead of protecting children, the police abuse them and steal whatever money they have," she adds.

The categories "vulnerable to delinquency" and "vulnerable to danger," set forth in Egypt's Child Law ostensibly to protect vulnerable children, according to the report have become a pretext for mass arrest campaigns to clear the streets of children, to obtain information from children about crimes, to force children to move on to different neighbourhoods, and to bring children in for questioning in the absence of evidence of criminal wrongdoing. 

The report found that police in Cairo routinely beat children with batons, whips, rubber hoses and belts, and transport them in dangerous vehicles, often with adult detainees. Children held in overcrowded and dirty adult police lockups must bribe guards or beg from criminal detainees to obtain food and bedding. Children who are transferred to the overcrowded al Azbekiya juvenile police lockup receive only marginally better treatment, and may be detained with children significantly older or who have committed serious crimes. 

Ms Bencomo also warns that "children are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse, both in and out of custody." The group's report especially emphasises on police at adult and juvenile police lockups using "degrading sexual language to humiliate both boys and girls." It further criticises police for not protecting children from attacks by adult detainees.

In the interviews made by the US group, especially young girls had brought up sexual abuse at the al Azbekiya juvenile police lockup, which was "notorious for sexual abuse and violence against girls detained there." Girls also reported feeling pressure to engage in sexual relations with police on the street as the only way to obtain police protection from sexual violence by other men. 

- The children come in from the police stations beaten up, and tied together with ropes, confirms a social welfare expert at a Cairo Juvenile Court. "They smell horrible-even the detention room downstairs smells bad and is filthy. [In the police stations] the police beat them and hang them from their feet and use electricity on them. I've seen a seven-year-old come in with his face swollen from the blows."

The report further slams Egyptian authorities for not routinely monitoring conditions of detention for children, investigating cases of arbitrary arrests or abuse in custody, or appropriately disciplining those responsible. 

- In many cases, children are detained illegally for days before going before the public prosecutor, and in some cases children are arrested and released without ever leaving the police station, the report notes. "Police often do not notify children's parents about arrests, and children who have fled parental abuse or who lack guardians have no one to turn to for assistance." 

The Human Rights Watch report is based on a large number of interviews of Egyptian children living or working on the street, police staff, the public prosecutor, social workers and judges at juvenile courts. The US group regularly cries out against the human rights situation in Egypt and at earlier occasions has revealed cases of torture and political oppression.

The group called on the Egyptian government to ensure street children "receive the special protection and assistance they are entitled to under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to ensure that arrest, detention or imprisonment are used only for children charged with criminal acts, and should always be a measure of last resort, and for the shortest possible time."

 

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