Powder keg Sinai: Egypt's Bedouins demand rights

Following the attack on a natural gas pipeline, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) on Monday warn of more violence to come on the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. "The Sinai is like a powder keg because the Mubarak regime has denied the rights of the Bedouins who live there," stated the head of the Africa section at the STP, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen. "Police brutality and unfair trials are intended to intimidate and silence the Bedouins. These attempts have obviously failed." Not only in Cairo, but in the Sinai as well there have been many demonstrations in recent days against the Mubarak regime. The Sinai is faced with increased instability, which is observed with growing concern in neighboring Israel.

The export of natural gas to Israel and Jordan had to be stopped following the explosion on the pipeline. It is not known at this point who is responsible for the blast. "There are many groups in Egypt that have an interest in interrupting the controversial supply of gas to Egypt," said Delius. In June 2010 Egyptian Bedouins carried out an attack on a pipeline to protest the government's disregard for their rights. Although little damage was done, the authorities responded with a wave of persecution and had hundred of Bedouins arrested.

At that time, there were already more than 3000 Bedouins in jail, arrested arbitrarily and sentenced after unjust trials. They are victims of a wave of arrests made from 2004 to 2006 in reaction to three terror attacks on neighboring Israel. Most of those arrested were not charged with involvement in terrorist attacks. Rather, they were arrested under a blanket suspicion of "threatening national security" because they had called for public protests against police repression and the marginalization of the Bedouins. Others were accused of involvement in smuggling people and goods into Israel and the Gaza Strip.

"Certainly there are some Bedouins involved in smuggling, as more than 80 percent of the indigenous people, primarily in the northern Sinai, are unemployed," reported Delius. "But it is sheer discrimination to put an entire population under general suspicion and treat them as criminals." The Bedouins are calling for the release of those arrested, a stop to police repression and punishment of police who systematically disregard Egyptian law. Furthermore, they demand recognition of their land rights and more economic development in the Sinai. The expansion of tourism has helped few Bedouins. Many have been permanently ousted from their land by new hotel construction. There are 12 tribes totaling almost 600,000 Bedouins in the Sinai.