Jew World Order

In Cairo, Egypt, as in the world over, the fate of the migrant, especially those forced from their countries due to violent waves of political instability and civil unrest is not one of movement. The romantic image of the wandering, nomadic migrant, in their struggle to seek refuge is, as a matter of fact, a rare exception to the rule of an immeasurably abysmal stagnancy among mass populations of asylum seekers. African refugees in Egypt are a case in point, no different than detainees, largely marginalized to joblessness, homelessness, and other forms of chronic social depravity in an inhospitable host country that may as well be an open-air prison.

In Egypt, there are no refugee camps. Internally displaced Egyptians often share disturbingly unkempt neighborhoods together with tens of thousands of African migrants, mostly from Sudan. In Egypt, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is essentially a prison warden, overseeing the amassing swarms of refugees who regularly pour in from the southern border. As seen time and time again, and most starkly in the Mustafa Mahmoud Square Demonstration in 2005, when over 20 Sudanese migrants died as Egyptian riot police stormed an estimated two thousand Sudanese refugees encamped at a sit-in at a protest outside the UNHCR office in an affluent district of Cairo.

On the 17th of April, the UNHCR Regional Representative in Egypt, located in 6th of October City, released a list of asylum seekers who were interviewed in the last two years. 6th of October City is about a forty-five minute drive by minibus from downtown Cairo. On the way, new residential and commercial developments prop up in the flatland desert horizon, with a staggeringly pompous display of mall strips and middle-class American-style suburbia appearing like mirages in the haze of the minibus exhaust.

The Ahl-El-Sudan Charity Association offered to post the interview results for the community in 6th of October City. Prior to the rumored event, word went around in the community that UNHCR-Egypt would reduce the wait times for those seeking a refugee status determination interview from 2020 to 2016, and from 2016 to 2015. Those whose names appear on the list represent an enviable few who will have the privilege of meeting with UNHCR officers in person. The first interview for asylum seekers recognized by the UNHCR office is known as a refugee status determination (RSD) interview. On the list released by the UNHCR on April 17th, dates were presented next to names, signifying the well-anticipated day when an asylum seeker can approach the UNHCR, and in the process may receive a Blue Card.

The Blue Card further recognizes the forced migrant, or the asylum seeker, under the legally instituted term, refugee, entitling that person to basic health care, social and educational services from UNCHR’s partners in Cairo. Most importantly, to refugees, is the monthly living allowance provided by Caritas – Egypt, provided as part of the UNHCR’s Blue Card refugee status determination. Most forced migrants living in Egypt do not have Blue Cards, and therefore are deprived the necessary monthly allowance of aid provided to those who are legally recognized. Those asylum seekers without Blue Cards are also further subject to second-class status in Egypt without the right to access basic health care, or to enroll their children in local schools. Due to the fact that Egypt made several reservations to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Blue Card holders in this tactless and irreverent oft-receiving refugee host country are still not guaranteed basic living assistance, or means to social mobility.

In this way, the term “refugee” is a politically, and socially charged term, often meriting the use of “asylum seeker” and “forced migrant” in its place. The reason why most migrants use the term, or self-identify as “asylum seeker” instead of “refugee” is to correctly identify themselves and the great majority of African migrants who struggle to survive in Egypt, as they direly manage to seek legal recognition as refugees from their local UNHCR office. Egypt is also a place where people migrate to from all over the world in search of economic opportunity. The term “asylum seekers” more accurately defines those who emigrated from their home countries in search of a safer society in which to live. Forced migrant is also another term to describe asylum seekers, as most remain in the midst of a continuous exodus, not only from their countries of origin, but from an altogether inhospitable region.

After receiving an invitation to an initial refugee status determination interview, asylum seekers then must wait, many times in desperation, and in a condition of great suffering. As a result of the inhumane, and exclusive system, many asylum seekers see opportunity only by taking advantage of the system. At their first refugee status determination interview, many migrants will fake stories, consequently twisting the perception of refugee status among UNHCR officers, and NGO affiliates. Among the forced migrant populations of Cairo, Egypt, the stereotypes and trends of “success stories” are well rumored, as they travel speedily amid the idling restaurateurs and café night owls who haunt Cairo’s migrant communities, often for years and years on end. 

Once a refugee status determination interview has been conducted, the asylum seeker is liable to wait without word, and without assistance for an appalling term, which for many has meant over a decade of years lost without professional development, or educational opportunity. More often than not, this means to live in putrid squalor amid religious and ethnic intolerance, and to fend for one’s life under the thumb of the largest international organization on Earth, the UN. When an RSD file has been opened, and a determination has been processed, the re-opening of that file in order to reassess their case to provide urgent needs occurs very rarely. However, on that slight margin of hope rests the life of Abdel Rahman, who was recently contacted by UNHCR-Egypt about the reopening of his file, in light exceptional circumstances.

For Abdel Rahman, a respected community leader, English language educator, and professional translator from Darfur, Sudan, the night of March 23rd proved a curse that may turn into the blessing that saves his life from more of the excruciating oppression of daily survival in Egypt, as he has endured for over a decade. Whether or not his surviving a brutal attack in the streets of Cairo directly led to the re-opening of his file with the UNHCR remains to be seen. However, in response to what is basically another torn seam in the human rights lockdown of Cairo today, fifty concerned global citizens from around the world banded together to sign a petition asking for Abdel Rahman, and other emergency cases to be immediately re-opened by the UNHCR.  

On June 18th, Abdel Rahman arrived at the UNHCR office with the petition. The successfully conducted interview in and of itself was a landmark victory in his struggle to receive due recognition as a refugee in need of basic services, and more, simply to be seen by those authorized to help. He was promised the issuance of his Blue Card two weeks following the interview. For Abdel Rahman, and countless others, the Blue Card is the only chance at legal resettlement outside of Egypt, and Sudan, to a place where rebuilding a life, and the chance to support oneself, is at least possible. For most refugees in Egypt, however, the UNHCR poses an ultimate, however mediated challenge, further obstructed, if not ideally facilitated, by NGOs.

Among service providers, academics, aid workers and others affiliated with the local NGO networks in Cairo that intend to assist refugees in their case processing with UNHCR-Egypt, as well as in their daily life, there is a great rift, which is often met with the overarching, best practices term, “participation”. Refugee-focused NGOs in Cairo facilitate everything from the translation of documents to psychosocial services with the aim to help refugees, forced migrants, and asylum seekers achieve the practically unanimous goal of resettlement. Yet, as the founder of the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University, and oft-seen figurehead in Cairo, Dr. Barbara Harrell-Bond OBE said at a 2010 course titled, “Refugee Participation: Where is the Voice of the Refugees?” held at the American University in Cairo’s Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS), “Good intentions are the road to hell.”

The infamous demonstration at Mustafa Mahmoud Square, one of the key moments in the history of African refugee struggles in Cairo, originated with students of an Egyptian journalist who taught a course on refuge rights. The students planned a peaceful demonstration outside of the UNHCR office, after which about twenty of them were jailed. Regardless, at the time, foreigners and refugees felt a measure of safety within Mustafa Mahmoud Square. Initially, the police presence exhibited protective security for the peaceful demonstrators, sometimes even helping children to return to their parents within the park. Demonstrators formed committees for health, negotiation, discipline, as well as public forums and media relations on issues of racism, unemployment, and want of rights, as schools were organized for children, and food was brought in form the extended Sudanese community. All present had a mindset to ensure that their communal cause for resettlement was heard.

Three months after the sit-in began, the water cannons emerged, as the Egyptian government finally succumbed to UNHCR demands to break up the demonstration. ID cards, and other important documents were left behind by the demonstrators in a frantic dispersal, as detention centers began to fill across the country, many of the demonstrators dying in custody in far off facilities located in southern Egypt, as well as Alexandria and Giza. One of the leaders of the demonstration, originally from Eastern Sudan, was tortured in custody for nearly a week. NGOs opened their doors to provide psychosocial and legal services for those searching for family members, however, only twenty-seven corpses were found, and morgues only listed the names of men.

The demonstration had an even worse legacy for new arrivals, asylum seekers and forced migrants desperately needing to find a margin of basic refuge in Egypt, however were denied refugee status, as the UNHCR effectively closed its doors, a trend that many faith-based and medical NGOs also followed. The Egyptian journalist who taught the first demonstrators continued to encourage the spirit of the peaceful actions, as the American University in Cairo received a packed house when the leaders of the demonstration were invited to speak.

In desperation, the greater Sudanese and African migrant community formed “cargo cults” feigning immediate resettlement, as individuals returned to the park to hang pictures of the murdered, raped, and the missing children. All of those tragically lost, or traumatized during the course of the demonstration were considered a “product of mismanagement” as the slogans shouted from the park. The community continues to confront all of the outstanding issues that were addressed from September 26th to Friday the 30th of December 2005, when a peaceful demonstration by Sudanese refugees at Mustafa Mahmoud Square in downtown Cairo ended in a massacre.   

On the 27th of December 2005, the Egyptian press published a statement by the then Foreign Minister of Egypt, Ahmed Aboul Gheit stating that the government would use force to “clean up the park”. On reading this statement in a daily newspaper, Abdel Rahman went to the Mustafa Mahmoud Square immediately. As he arrived, he met with the leaders of the sit-in, advising everyone to leave the park based on the facts of the news report. Abdel Rahman was, and is, a trusted and respect community leader, and educator, in which case his fellow nationals listened to his literate interpretation of the news. However, he did not expect the response that he received, especially on recommending that an urgent public meeting be held to warn each and every demonstrator of the impending dangers, as directly stated by a government minister. Abdel Rahman continued to convey the apparent risks for demonstrators who would chose to continue the sit-in. Those risks, which turned out to be correct, were, as Abdel Rahman told the demonstration leaders, the loss of lives of Sudanese people.

In response, the leaders of the demonstration accused Abdel Rahman of working in the interest of the UNHCR, espousing a conspiracy that the UNHCR offered him a resettlement deal in exchange for convincing demonstrators to leave. Of course, that was awfully wrong, as Abdel Rahman tells the story almost ten years later, still waiting patiently for his Blue Card to be issued. As Abdel Rahman attests, a Mr. Nazar, who led the demonstration on that day then ordered his assistants to tie him to a tree, aptly titled, the “Tree of Guantanamo”. Other organizers began to punch Abdel Rahman in the face. 

As he sat there tied to the Tree, friends and acquaintances of his in the park at the time rushed over to disagree with their leader, and allow Abdel Rahman to walk free. They backed him up, and it worked, as they could prove by testimony that he was indeed a tireless worker for refugee rights, and also an employee of the AMERA (Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance) legal aid office. Later that week, following his disastrous visit at the park, Abdel Rahman listened to the terrible news broadcast by BBC radio early in the morning. At the time, he remembers, children were missing, as the Sudanese people mourned the deadly conclusion of the demonstration at Mustafa Mahmoud Square, ended abruptly by Egyptian riot police. 

More recently, on May 7th, the Ahlam Association for Development & Capacity Building in Cairo presented a new community-based project called, Munzalak – Refugee Voice Project at the American University in Cairo to a conference of NGO workers and refugees. The intention of Munzalak is to provide a platform for refugee voices to be heard by policy makers and service providers in Egypt. However, based on a community poll conducted by Abdel Rahman, who attended the conference, the majority of the refugees present to hear the presentation objected to participation on the grounds of the reputation of the founder of the Ahlam Association.

Apparently, refugees are willing to express their views on the Munzalak website, however the founder of the Ahlam Association, Ahlam Mahdey Saleh, was formerly, and is presently considered by the community to be pro-government, meaning a supporter of the current Sudanese leading political party, the National Congress Party, headed by the infamous Omar al-Bashir. While no documentary evidence is currently available to link the founder of Ahlam Association with the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), many Sudanese intellectuals, including professor Mohammed Mustafa Al-Majzoub, have written constructive arguments of her strong connections to state security in Sudan. For this reason, most are opposed to full participation with Munzalak. For most of the Sudanese asylum seekers and refugees in Cairo, the actions of the Sudanese government are directly related to their search for asylum outside of their home country.

The founder of the Ahlam Association is a graduate from the Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman, Sudan, and is widely considered as an absolute terror in the public opinion of refugees in Egypt. She is implicated as a former informant of the Sudanese security state, backing the Arab paramilitary-armed militias who have committed globally infamous acts of genocide, as they continue to perpetuate the savage murder of the indigenous people of Darfur, and of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan. That her name is attached to the Ahlam Association further ensures a measure of control, and focused exclusion, as well as impunity with respect to the standard transparency and accountability procedures of nonprofit organizations.

The Ahlam Association itself has a corrupt, and racist history, especially in reference to its work in the Kalama refugee camp south of Nyala, the capital city of South Darfur, from 2006-2007. For this reason, as refugees presume, the staff at the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) at the American University in Cairo have chosen this organization to host the current media coverage of refugees in Cairo. Known for its pro-Arabism stance, CMRS often stages the debate, and focus for much of the NGO, academic and media coverage that refugees in Cairo receive from outside of their community. This poor relationship disillusions many refugees in Cairo from participating in such programs, and only further widens the gap as service providers seek to meet the needs of Cairo’s swelling refugee population.

In this context, many refugees in Cairo see the current NGO, academic and service provision network in their communities as nothing more than a continuation of the oppression that they faced in their home countries. As Abdel Rahman wrote via email correspondence in the week following the Ahlam Association’s conference at AUC on May 16th, “The Egyptians’ refugee-oriented policies as an Arab country will not, and never will agree to support development projects or media projects that empower the large African refugee population on its soil. That is why they chose the Ahalam Association to host the Munzalak project with naïve European and American volunteers.”

Many foreign volunteers, who often intern at the many refugee-oriented NGOs in Cairo, are not aware of the history of the Ahlam Association’s registration as an association in Egypt. Refugees, however, are uniquely aware as a community constantly attempting to build their status and legality as a unique, and industrious community in Egypt. Evidently, the Ahlam Association’s registration was disconcertingly quick, receiving their charity number in less than two months in a country with a relatively unhurried pace, where it is expected to take at least more than one year to successfully register a nonprofit organization.

Refugees in Cairo consider the Munzalak project an early failure with respect to community participation, and instead, are patiently waiting for to participate with more credible organizations based at the American University of Cairo, such as Student Action for Refugees (STAR). As a supporter of Abdel Rahman’s now defunct educational facility, El-Wafaa Refugee Culture Center, STAR has been working closely with refugee communities for decades, focusing specifically on English language learning, however inviting other community-minded projects such as food banks, and outreach programs.

In Cairo, the genocide that so many African refugees miraculously survived south of the Egyptian border continues, however slowly, and deliberately, or at best ignorantly, as committed through socio-economic and political marginalization. On June 13th of this year, the UNHCR Global Trends Report publicized that 51.2 million people around the world face the same challenge, a figure that represents a historic precedent unseen since WWII. The refugees of Cairo are not alone, and their numbers increase as global solidarity movements align on behalf of the struggle of forced migrants everywhere. Still, the question remains: Who will answer their call for equal rights amid such unprecedented waves of statelessness, instability, and terror?

In response to the growing need to lend support to the mounting popular struggle in the name of refugee rights in Cairo, a crowd-funding project has been launched. The strategy is to advocate on behalf of the voice of the refugee community in Cairo, with grassroots, community-based perspectives placed in the center of the debate. As part of a bimonthly advocacy strategy, the crowd-funding project will support journalists and foreign correspondents in Egypt in the midst of an increasing climate of silence, imprisonment and oppression. Most notably, Egyptian authorities sentenced three Al-Jazeera journalists to up to ten years in prison on Monday June 23rd. Global demonstrations, and vigils emerged immediately from such organizations as the BBC, and the UN, in protest of the Egyptian judicial system’s wrongful imprisonment of journalists on charges of spreading false news and aiding a terrorist organization.

This project, which stands in solidarity with journalists in Egypt, is titled, “Refugee Dispatches: Cairo, Egypt” and is a collaborative effort, uniting with such globally renowned organizations as Kickstarter, Nation of Change, and Reporters Without Borders. Moreover, as part of a solidarity action to support Abdel Rahman’s resettlement out of Egypt, another petition will be released upon his receiving a Blue Card, which is expected in the approaching weeks. As concerns refugee rights, it is important that the extended networks of community members, and the public at large, are aware of the struggles that forced migrants, and asylum seekers face today in achieving a measure of socio-economic stability. The global community is first and foremost needed in this particular human rights struggle, as transnational rights become more and more pertinent into the 21st century. With the Old World imperialistic models of nationalism and imperialism falling flat, and away, the neglected, marginalized, and surviving peoples of the world, in this case indigenous Africans turned refugees, are being heard clearer than ever on the dusty haze of today’s global horizons.