The Egyptian military has forcibly evicted thousands of families in the Sinai Peninsula in violation of international law, Human Rights Watch (HRW) asserted in a report today.
In its report, the New York-based rights group said about 3,200 families in Sinai had been forcibly evicted – and had their homes demolished – within the past two years.
The Egyptian authorities plan to create a “buffer zone” along Sinai’s border with the Gaza Strip in a move Cairo says is aimed at eliminating the cross-border smuggling tunnels allegedly used by militants.
According to HRW, the Egyptian army has recently destroyed almost all the buildings and farmland within one kilometre of the border using controlled explosives and diggers.
The rights group also said the Egyptian authorities provided residents with little or no warning of the evictions and no temporary accommodation.
It went on to note that residents had received inadequate compensation for their destroyed homes and none at all for devastated farmland.
What’s more, it asserted that affected Sinai residents had been given no effective means of challenging their evictions, the demolition of their homes, or the inadequate compensation packages received.
“[The Egyptian authorities] failed to observe international law protections for residents facing forced eviction and may have violated the laws of war by disproportionately destroying thousands of homes in their effort to close smuggling tunnels,” HRW said.
“Egypt must explain why it didn’t use available technology to detect and destroy the tunnels and instead wiped entire neighbourhoods off the map,” Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa, said.