Racism- The Arab world's dirty secret

Photo- February 2006: A Sudanese man is beaten by Egyptian
riot police. Egypt is under fire over the deaths of 25 Sudanese
refugees after riot police wielding sticks and water cannon forcibly
removed hundreds of demonstrators camped outside UN
offices in Cairo. (Click picture for story)

Mona Eltahawy writes of the widespread racism in the Arab world:

We are a racist people in Egypt and we are in deep denial about it. On my Facebook page, I blamed racism for my argument and an Egyptian man wrote to deny that we are racists and used as his proof a program on Egyptian Radio featuring Sudanese songs and poetry!

Our silence over racism not only destroys the warmth and hospitality we are proud of as Egyptians, it has deadly consequences.

What else but racism on Dec. 30, 2005, allowed hundreds of riot policemen to storm through a makeshift camp in central Cairo to clear it of 2,500 Sudanese refugees, trampling or beating to death 28 people, among them women and children?

What else but racism lies behind the bloody statistics at the Egyptian border with Israel where, since 2007, Egyptian guards have killed at least 33 migrants, many from Sudan's Darfur region, including a pregnant woman and a 7-year-old girl?

The racism I saw on the Cairo Metro has an echo in the Arab world at large, where the suffering in Darfur goes ignored because its victims are black and because those who are creating the misery in Darfur are not Americans or Israelis and we only pay attention when America and Israel behave badly. (Read it all)

Related:

1. "These are not men- they are animals": Egyptians "lynch" 4 Sudanese trying to cross border to freedom in Israel.

2. Arabs capture black slaves in the Sudan:

After the slave raid, Bok, a Christian, told the audience he was taken to the Muslim North to work for one of the Arab raiders’ families as a child slave for the next decade. During the pitiless trip north, the little Dinka boy witnessed the depth of racism, cruelty and religious hatred of his captors and their world towards black Africans when an Arab slaver cut off the leg of a Dinka girl who would not stop crying because she had seen her parents butchered in the market place. Upon his arrival at his master’s home, Bok was to experience himself this racial viciousness when he was immediately surrounded and beaten by the masters’ children who called him “abeed” (slave), an Arabic word also used for black Africans in general. ((Read article))

3. Black refugees from Arab terror meet persecution in Egypt-- but some manage to escape to freedom in Israel: From Darfur to Israel: Surviving a Genocide; Making a New Life

4. Some related articles on Newsvine by topic: Arabs, Egypt, racism, Sudan, videos,



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(Cross-posted on A Deeper Look)