Seventeen Egyptians, working and living in Kuwait, were deported Saturday for violating the emirate's labor and immigration law, a Kuwaiti security official said.
EGYPT: Kuwait deports 17 ElBaradei supporters
April 11, 2010 | 10:11 am
The decision came one day after as many as 25 Egyptians -- including the deported -- were arrested in a Kuwait suburb following their organizing of a gathering to support potential Egyptian presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei and his National Front for Change.
Speaking to media on condition of anonymity, Kuwaiti sources added that the activists violated labor and immigration laws by gathering without official permission. While Kuwaiti officials have yet to comment on either the arrests or the deportations, Egyptian Foreign Ministry officials said they have heard about the news only from the Egyptian media.
The Egyptian ambassador to Kuwait, Tarek Farahat, said that "despite not being informed of any deportation decisions, Kuwaiti authorities have full sovereignty to extradite anyone living on its soil."
The deportations were criticized by local and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, which issued a statement saying Kuwait was enabling Egypt's repression by harassing ElBaradei's supporters.
"Kuwait's state security should stop arresting and deporting expatriate supporters of ElBaradei," read the statement. "Kuwait should immediately release all remaining Egyptian detainees and allow those deported to return to their homes in Kuwait."
Hassan Nafaa, the National Front for Change's general coordinator, expressed his bemusement at the Egyptian authorities' silence on the matter so far. The Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Youm reported on Sunday that Kuwaiti parliament insiders believe the Egyptian embassy in Kuwait is behind the deportations after it led local authorities to the activists' movements.
Following his return to Egypt on Feb. 18 after stepping down from his post as head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, ElBaradei formed the National Front for Change to pressure President Hosni Mubarak's regime for democratic reform. ElBaradei hopes that amending the constitution can help him and other independent candidates to run in the 2011 presidential elections.
-- Amro Hassan in Cairo
Photo: ElBaradei among some of his supporters. Credit: Victoria Hazou / AFP
April 11, 2010 | 7:52 am
With Mohamed ElBaradei and opposition groups pressuring the government for reform, one might have thought that President Hosni Mubarak would be doing more to persuade Egyptians to have faith in his nearly three-decade-old regime.
Instead, the government recently has made a number of political missteps. Even before ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, emerged as a possible presidential candidate, the government experienced financial setbacks that angered many Egyptians. For more than a week last month, for example, families faced an increase of about $6 in the price of butane gas tubes for stoves and water generators.
"I make less than that sum per working day, so how can I spend it all on butane? I once had to wait for four hours to find a tube, which I had to pay 35 pounds [$6.31] for," Mohamed Tolba, a security guard, told The Times.
Days after the butane crisis, the country confronted a shortage of diesel gas, which is used in tens of thousands of trucks, buses and cars as a substitute for the more costly benzene. The problem caused a transportation crisis for the myriad Egyptians who rely on fleets of privately owned minivans rather than public buses.
"For days, we used to have long queues of small buses and trucks desperate to get their vehicles fueled," Abdel Gawad Khalifa, a worker at a gas station told The Times. "We couldn’t fulfill the demands because the amount of diesel we were getting was way below the normal. I personally don’t exactly know why diesel was scarce, but I know for sure it was."
Officials blamed both crises on agents and wholesalers, who they said withheld large amounts of butane and diesel gas to increase prices. Most Egyptians, however, weren’t convinced; they blamed the government for creating the shortages.
&"5">Photo: An April 6 protester is held back by plainclothes officers. Credit: Associated Press