“The [Canadians] have been contacting the Canadian embassy in Cairo with no answer whatsoever. Our government is completely ignoring us.”
Passports confiscated, protesters told to board buses
Canadian demonstrators at the checkpoint were told by authorities to board buses in order to retrieve their passports, without any other details, according to Harker.
What difference is it to the Egyptian government if 80-odd Canadians are there? Can’t help suspecting this is a favour to our government (or elements within it).
What likely happened is that Egypt (or no country for that matter) doesn’t like people to come by exclusively to protest at the border of a hostile nation as that would invite problems from said hostile nation.
They don’t have to agree with Israel, they also don’t have to allow people in steering potential skirmishes with a hostile nation
It’s definitely speculation on my part (and I almost made a joke about that conspiracy theories in my comment), but it didn’t occur to me anyone might try to invite hostilities. I was especially surprised they couldn’t even get a response when contacting Canadian officials. It would be easy for them to just communicate some kind of simple response.
What difference is it to the Egyptian government if 80-odd Canadians are there? Can’t help suspecting this is a favour to our government (or elements within it).
Conspiracy much?
What likely happened is that Egypt (or no country for that matter) doesn’t like people to come by exclusively to protest at the border of a hostile nation as that would invite problems from said hostile nation.
They don’t have to agree with Israel, they also don’t have to allow people in steering potential skirmishes with a hostile nation
It’s definitely speculation on my part (and I almost made a joke about
thatconspiracy theories in my comment), but it didn’t occur to me anyone might try to invite hostilities. I was especially surprised they couldn’t even get a response when contacting Canadian officials. It would be easy for them to just communicate some kind of simple response.I agree with you on their point being conspiratorial.
Egypt also has a very repressive government and has the worst possible CIVICUS rating of “closed”.
https://monitor.civicus.org/country/egypt/
They have cooperated with Israel around their genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine too.
They are neither humane nor reasonable in their treatment of protestors, including Canadians.