CODEPINK Stages Protest at Egyptian Embassy in DC in Response to Detention, Beating, and Deportation of CODEPINK Co-founder Medea Benjamin


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 5, 2014


Contact: Alli McCracken, CODEPINK Organizer, 860 575 5692, alli@codepink.org

    Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK Co-founder, 415 235 6517, medea@codepink.org


CODEPINK Stages Protest at Egyptian Embassy in DC in Response to Detention, Beating, and Deportation of CODEPINK Co-founder Medea Benjamin


Where: Egyptian Embassy, 3521 International Ct NW, Washington, DC 20008

When: 12:00 noon, March 6, 2014


Washington, DC –– CODEPINK activists will stage a protest in front of the Egyptian embassy to demand justice for Medea Benjamin and an end to the detention of dozens of peaceful activists currently stuck in the Cairo airport waiting to enter Egypt to go to Gaza. They will call on the Egyptian government to stop its blockade of Gaza and let the 100-women international delegation into Egypt so it may pass through the Gaza border in time for International Women’s Day.


When CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin landed at the Cairo airport in Egypt, authorities detained her, held her overnight in a cell, and in the morning beat her to the point that it broke her arm, then violently deported her to Turkey. A few hours later, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead MaGuire and her colleague Ann Patterson, also with the delegation, were deported from the Cairo airport with no explanation.


Now the Egyptian authorities are blocking most of the remaining delegates from entering Egypt and traveling to Gaza. Around 40 French women and 6 members of the American delegation have been stuck in limbo for hours at the Cairo airport, stripped of their passports and denied any food or explanation for their situation. Some have been threatened with deportation.


“We didn’t come here to cause problems with Egypt,” said Cayman MacDonald of the CODEPINK DC office, currently stranded in the Cairo airport. “We came here to stand in solidarity with the women of Gaza who are in a much more dire situation. extremely restricted to basic necessities, including food and electricity, because of the Israeli blockade. Even if the Egyptians turn us away we want the women of Gaza to know that the international community.


Medea Benjamin will be at the embassy protest and available for interviews.


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