Over 100 Canadians boarded a plane intending to join a global anti-Israel protest at Egypt’s border with Gaza but were detained at the border by authorities upon arrival.
Canadian protesters participating in the Global March for Gaza in Egypt began sending videos and alerts to their allies in Canada, announcing that they had had their passports taken and were being detained by Egyptian police.
The group put out a call to action, calling on Canadians to bombard the Canadian Embassy in Cairo to “intervene” after over 100 people with Canadian visas were detained by Egyptian police at the border near Ismailia.
Dr. Yipeng Ge, a Canadian doctor who joined the activists at the border, released a video explaining that protesters have been detained for at least five hours. Despite saying protesters were given no timeline for their detention, he noted activists were told their passports would be returned if they went on a bus to the airport, where they would be deported.
He said some Canadian protesters had been released and were on their way back to the Cairo airport hours ago. On the bus back to the airport, activists recorded themselves chanting “F&$k you Israel,” and “F#@k you Egypt.”
Before being detained, hundreds of anti-Israel protesters gathered at the border, chanting “Free Palestine.”
Protestors were recorded being manhandled by Egyptian police at the airport, as a woman can be heard yelling “free free Palestine” in the airport.
Ge and the protest group claimed they were being “lawful according to local Egyptian laws,” though Egypt has strict laws about protests not authorized by the Interior Ministry and security at its border.
As reported by the Times of Israel, Egypt’s foreign ministry denies that the protesters were given any authority to protest by the Egyptian state.
“Egypt asserts the importance of putting pressure on Israel to end the blockade on the (Gaza) Strip,” Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement before the protest. “Egypt will not consider any requests or respond to any invitations submitted outside the framework defined by the regulatory guidelines and the mechanisms followed in this regard.”
Before arriving in Cairo, the Canadian protest group filmed themselves chanting “Free Palestine” in English and Arabic on the airplane ride there.
The Global March for Gaza boasted it would bring activists from 80 different countries to march on the border crossing and demand that Israel let aid through and stop fighting Hamas.
Global Affairs Canada, or Canada’s foreign affairs minister, has not released a statement.