Da: c.chantegrel
Oggetto: news from the border! (June 23)
Data: 23 giugno 2009 12:18:19 GMT+02:00
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 23, 2009
The International Movement to Open the Rafah Bord
March for the Martyrs
Wednesday, June 24, Noon
Rafah, Egypt
On the eleventh day of a sit-in camp at the Rafah, Egypt border, the International Movement to Open the Rafah Border, (IMORB) activists have sustained the sit-in to protest the prolonged siege of Gaza.
The group of three US citizens and two Egyptian journalists awaits more participants but are concerned that border police are turning people back. An Australian delegation has been unable to get to the border area for four days. A second international delegation is expected to join the sit-in camp soon.
A number of journalists were prohibited from joining a press conference at the Rafah camp .on June 22. One news reporter did come to report on the camp. Mohammad Alhour, www.factjo.com, told the IMORB that the other journalists were threatened with losing their primary government ministry jobs if they attended the IMORB conference.
An earlier press conference welcoming the ambassador to Japan, a government sanctioned event, had brought a large media contingent to the Rafah border area. The Japanese ambassador had come to announce that Japan would join the US government in a high tech border surveillance project.
Pressure to remove Egyptian homes and Bedouin farms from the Rafah border area has increased. The Egyptian government attempted such evictions in 1996, sparking an uprising, Intifada Masura. To quell the uprising, some deaths occurred and the leader was jailed.
Separately, the IMORB plans a March for the Martyrs (shohadeh) on Wednesday, June 24, noon, to commemorate the deaths of Gazans in the Israeli winter invasion.
The border is expected to be open for the sick and injured on this day.
A second Martyrs March is planned for Saturday, June 27, to recognize the fatality victims of the Siege of Gaza.Border authorities have said that the border will be open June 27, 28 and 29. ” They have promised this many times before, only proving to be untrue, disappointing many Palestinian families and individuals,” announced Ellen Graves of Western Mass. USA.
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