Peace and Justice Post

By Middle East correspondent Anne Barker

ABC News, Dec 31, 2009

Foreign activists staged a sit-in to protest against Egypt’s stance. (AFP: Victoria Hazou)

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More than 1,300 international peace activists from 40 countries, including Australia, are in Egypt this week.

The self-styled “freedom marchers” include prominent authors, lawyers and journalists, many of them Jewish.

They had hoped to cross the border to Gaza for a planned protest today against Israel and its economic blockade of the area, but they too have fallen victim to the blockade.

When the peace activists arrived in Cairo, the Egyptian government all but banned them from travelling even to the Egyptian side of the Gaza border.

Two days ago, Egyptian police detained one group of protesters who had managed to cross the Sinai Desert and effectively placed them under house arrest on the grounds the march was illegal and the situation in Gaza was too sensitive.

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