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Palestinian human rights activist prevented from

participating in international conference in Cairo

Ref: 8/2001

Date: 26 January 2002

Egyptian officials at Rafah Border Crossing denied entry of PCHR Deputy Director Jaber Wishah into Egypt this week. He and his wife, Dr. Amna El-Sharbassi, were forced to spend a whole night at the crossing waiting with others under inhuman and degrading conditions before being forced to return to the Gaza Strip. Wishah was en route to participate in an international conference organized by the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies on “Terrorism and Human Rights,” to deliver an intervention of the legality of national liberation movements, particularly Palestinian and Lebanese ones. Wishah himself was a prisoner in Israeli jails. He was sentenced to life in prison, but spent 14½ years in prison and released on 9 September 1999. Egyptian police told Weshah that he was denied entry into Egypt because his name was on their “blacklist.”

PCHR Director Raji Sourani faced the same problem when he wanted to travel to Brussels through Cairo International Airport to deliver a speech before the European Parliament on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in April 2001.

PCHR condemns the denial of entry of Jaber Wishah into Egypt, as this measure prevented him from contributing to raising awareness on the current Israeli-US aggression against the Palestinian people.

PCHR had already published several reports on the daily suffering of Palestinians at Rafah Border Crossing and the inhuman and degrading treatment they received as a result of measures taken against them there.

PCHR calls upon the Egyptian authorities:

1.  

   1. To stop inhuman and degrading measures taken against Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, including patients, religious pilgrims, students and ordinary people.

   2. To remove Jaber Wishah from the “blacklist,” as such a list is designed for criminals and terrorists rather than for human rights activists.