Refugee Rights in Egypt: Cairo’s African Refugee Demonstrators Call for Peace and Civil Rights in Syria, Sudan and Egypt

April 28th, 2014

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Background to the Refugee Experience in Cairo

In the following months after the January 25th Revolution in Cairo, African refugees, asylum seekers, and forced migrants in Egypt were as desperate as ever. After one Sudanese woman, a mother of two, was dismissed from the UNHCR offices, and subsequently denied financial assistance, she became suicidal. Eyewitness reports tell of a UNHCR officer who rudely instructed her to leave, expressly stating that there would be no assistance to her and her children. The Sudanese woman then proceeded to pour benzene on every part of her body in front of the office. If not for a few valiant first-responders she would have burned to death. In front of countless of her fellow community, and peers, who were at UNHCR protesting that day, she was rescued, taken to a hospital to receive treatment for her burns.

To any outsider, who is not aware of the profound plight of refugees in Egypt, the Sudanese woman’s actions may seem extreme, and while they certainly are, they are not unfounded. Tens of thousands of Sudanese seek asylum in Egypt alone, not to mention the overwhelming numbers of refugees who pour in from all over Africa seeking various forms of refuge in the continent’s largest metropolis. Like many migrants all over the world, their fate is patience, to bide time, waiting for the response of the largest international organization on Earth, the United Nations, as their individual cases are mediated by NGOs, and service providers, such as AMERA (Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance).

The UN offers resettlement, and assistance programs to refugees in lieu of Egypt, which made reservations to articles 12 (Personal Status), 20 (Rationing), 22 (Public Education), 23 (Public Relief), and 24 (Labour Legislation and Social Security) of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The reservations effectively disallow refugees, and especially non-Arab, African asylum seekers, the right to access public relief and humanitarian assistance, as they are institutionally marginalized as second-class citizens. As the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants states, “It is virtually impossible for refugees to work legally in Egypt.” Most of Egypt’s refugees are hopelessly unemployed, and in dire need of educational, and professional opportunities, especially those further ostracized by race, ethnicity, and religion, as is the case with African refugees in Cairo.

While much of Egyptian refugee policy is a consequence of the already tempestuous ill regard for domestic nationals, further heightened by the injustices of the Mubarak era, the tragically significant populations of Sudanese, and African refugees are largely unnoticed by local, and foreign media. IRIN, a humanitarian news and analysis service to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a post-revolution study of Egypt’s refugees in 2013, quoting Aly Mahmud, a Sudanese refugee and the founder of the refugee employment aid NGO Makerem African Society, “Life in Egypt for refugees has moved from bad to worse after the revolution.”

Nonetheless, by the summer of 2011, Tahrir Square became a symbol of freedom in the Middle East, with such unusual instances of solidarity as young Egyptian men banning in solidarity with Shia Bahraini victims of riot police. Then, on June 1st of 2011, Egypt’s mass groundswell of action in the name of social and political freedoms cleared the air for an impossible sight. The Darfurian flag was seen flying in front of the Sudanese Embassy, in Garden City, Cairo. For four hours, Sudanese-Darfurian women called for the trial of Omar Al-Bashir, and the implementation of a no-fly zone in Darfur for the protection of civilians, as well as petitioning the release of conscientious detainees in prisons, and to stop the killing and raping of women in Darfur.

Introducing Abdel Rahman, Sudanese-Darfurian Educator

Abdel Rahman Siddiq Hashim walked among the women who demonstrated with timely impact before the front steps of their embassy. For over a decade, Abdel Rahman has lived in Cairo, Egypt as a forced migrant, and asylum seeker, with intermittent official recognition under UNHCR’s enviable refugee status. Abdel Rahman is from Darfur. For him, to see the sight of his peoples’ flag, flying above his empowered countrywomen was as clear a sign of change as any he had ever experienced.

Yet, that sign of change would prove merely symbolic, as Abdel Rahman was swept into the post-revolution fervor of Egypt in the midst of a serious and violent upheaval. As an educated Sudanese man compelled to escape the unspeakably awful realities of life in Darfur in the early 2000s, Abdel Rahman arrived in Egypt after attempting to find residence in Syria, and Libya. Egypt, he attests, has been, by far, the most enduring place to live as a refugee, particularly as a well-educated African with a mind to serve one’s community. El-Wafaa Refugee Culture Center was a result of Abdel Rahman’s ambitious vision for community service and social advancement amid the refugee populations of Egypt.

In September of 2006, the El-Wafaa Center opened, and later became a successful English language learning institution, and community-based organization under Abdel Rahman’s direction, receiving students from all over Africa regardless of ethnic, religious, or tribal backgrounds. El-Wafaa translates as The Fulfillment, from the Arabic. This founding social basis was an underappreciated, pioneering effort for his community, as with the greater NGO community networks. English teachers from the American University in Cairo, from Europe, and elsewhere, arrived to the despairingly modest, and sorely underfunded El-Wafaa Center. In Ain Shams, an impoverished refugee neighborhood widely known for its diverse migrant communities, nearly 300 students benefitted from the Center’s programming by the end of the first year.

Sadly, by the 8th of August 2013, after faring two years amid the hectic, and uncertain post-revolution social climate, the El-Wafaa Center was closed. As with many community leaders who stand with vulnerable minorities and attempt to form a common cause, only to assist their own communities, as is the case with Abdel Rahman, they receive the brunt of the hardship, and all the more so when times are bad. The Egyptian landlord who rented the Center location to Abdel Rahman then proceeded to confiscate his Sudanese passport, and all of the Center’s material resources. Later, in one last, futile effort to resuscitate the Center by registering with the Ministry of Social Affairs in Egypt, Abdel Rahman was at the very least able to donate all of El-Wafaa’s furniture and teaching materials to the Father Philip Sina Center for Secondary Education, another shoestring refugee education community center in Cairo.

African Refugees Strengthen Demonstrations in Cairo

As the post-revolution years progressed leading up to the inevitable closing of El-Wafaa, which had served hundreds, if not thousands of community members during its eight year run, Abdel Rahman joined the increasing numbers of demonstrators who emerged from Cairo’s African refugee communities. In in the wake of solidarity actions with Syria’s forced migrants, the popular rush to mass mobilization in Egypt spread throughout minority communities, calling for common, and independent social justices through a common voice.

As the civil war raged in Syria, Cairo’s Tahrir Square also became home to Darfurian and Syrian solidarity. In 2010, Abdallah Hanzel, an activist from Darfur, raised a Syrian child to his shoulders in front of the Arab League Headquarters, both smiling for the camera, and wrapped in the Syrian flag. During a protest in front of the Sudanese Embassy in 2012, Abdel Rahman found himself standing with Syrian forced migrants with banners calling for justice, and peace.

On April 17th, the Sudanese Embassy again found its nationals organizing on behalf of overwhelming anti-government sentiments. Young and old attended, from near and far, at the Embassy, located in downtown Cairo, in Garden City, only a short walk from Tahrir Square, in an antique, colonial neighborhood beside the Nile. One young man, named Rasheed, a forced migrant from Southern Kordofan, Sudan, commuted to the protest grounds from 6th of October City, a sister city of Cairo, about an hour’s drive away by minibus.

Rasheed is also a talented singer, and in 2010, with the fellowship of Abdel Rahman and his El-Wafaa community resources, collaborated on an international research project with the Consortium for Peace Studies, an organization based at the University of Calgary in Canada. That same year, Rasheed was enrolled in classes as a promising student at St. Andrew’s United Church Refugee Services, one of the foremost educational institutions in Cairo available to refugee youth, as it offers a marginal degree of certification.

In a persistent demonstration of civil concern, hundreds of protestors, men and women, including observant Egyptians and media representatives, have lined the streets outside of the Sudanese Embassy in the past months. Their activism continues until today. The intensity of anti-government protests among Sudanese people has amplified following the September 23, and more importantly the October 3, 2013, when thousands of protestors in Sudan faced brutal, and lethal force from government police, leading to the deaths of 27 peaceful demonstrators.

Most recently, Rasheed, and Abdel Rahman could be seen chanting slogans clear as day, and proudly amid the cacophony of drums, street noise, and the bold green, red, white and black of the Sudanese flag. One Sudanese man holding a banner, and donning a Sudanese flag-colored cap spoke eloquently for the media about how a democratic, and secular Sudan, as with the recurrent issues of peace, and civil rights applies to all Sudanese, as to all Arabs.

Sudanese compatriots, residents of Cairo, looked on with rooted, and solemn regard, while not without a measure of anxiety, to attend leaders-in-diaspora, as with the core demonstrators at the Cairo protests. Chanting slogans amid the many holding signs, common rhythms often overcame the whole group, turning every demonstrator into a musical eruption of unanimous clapping, and vocalizations in unison. Young men mostly took the center platform, speaking to the core demonstrators from among the attendant observers to proclaim a passionate speech, which were always met with total, and vocal unity among all, without exception. Plainly well-organized, the demonstrations were a show of unity, and social coherence, demonstrating, and exhibiting peaceful public engagement in the name of democracy, secularization, and people power.

As Abdel Rahman wrote in an email correspondence on April 26 of the protests,

The protestors were a collective of concerned, grassroots activists, representing a diverse spectrum of Sudanese people residing in Cairo as refugees and migrants who share a common vision. The primary purpose of the protests in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo was to bring the internal human rights violations situations in Sudan into the global media spotlight so that the UN and the international community can put more pressure on the government in Khartoum to stop its massive brutal campaign of arresting university students and shooting peaceful demonstrators with live ammunition. The government should respect human rights and freedom of association of Sudanese people according to the Universal Declaration and related Geneva Conventions.

Abdel Rahman Survives Brutal Assault, Re-Opens UNHCR File

“African refugee rights’ groups say refugees and migrants are frequently the victims of unprovoked arrests and disappearances, while also struggling to feed themselves and pay rent,” reads the 2013 IRIN report, meant to promote understanding about life as a refugee in post-revolution Egypt. Truthfully, brutal assaults are more common than reported in Cairo, where many forced migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees alike experience such a degree of marginality from institutional recognition, that they remain silent.

Tragically, on March 23rd, at 10:00pm, a hired thug in the district of Maadi, located in greater Cairo, targeted Abdel Rahman. According to Abdel Rahman’s account, the thug hit him in the head with an empty glass bottle at the supermarket where he was buying some needs. The assailant later baselessly and incorrectly claimed that he saw Abdel Rahman with a certain woman, and proceeded to take Abdel Rahman’s identity card. At that point, bystanders in the neighborhood looked on, and intervened, dragging the thug away as he struggled to continue the attack, returning Abdel Rahman’s ID card.

Widely known, and respected in his community, and with a professional record, having worked for AMERA, the American University in Cairo, and the UN itself, as a translator, and community educator and leader, Abdel Rahman immediately went to the police station in the Al-Basatin neighborhood, where he was allowed to file a complaint with the criminal investigation department. On April 15th, at 11:30am, Abdel Rahman visited the UNHCR-Cairo office, and submitted an application to reopen his file, attaching all relevant documentation from 2001 to the date, concerning his record as a refugee who had previously filed a case with UNHCR-Egypt.

The grounds of his refugee status application remain, as a member of one of the African indigenous peoples of Darfur, known as the Zaghawa, who faced genocidal policies mounted by Omar Al-Bashir, for which the Internatonal Criminal Court accused him in 2008, and 2010. The Sudanese government, and other non-state organizations such as the Janjaweed militia are infamously known to be responsible for the unabated killing of Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit people, and the looting and burning of their villages.

Gathering his files to report to UNHCR as soon as he could manage, Abdel Rahman noted various cases of surreptitious malevolence throughout his period of residence in post-revolution Cairo. These incidences included written threats left at his apartment door, asking colleagues for his daily routine, telephone harassment, among other forms of psychological terror and abuse. Abdel Rahman proceeded to include such incidences in his official report as he applied to reopen his file with UNHCR.

During several demonstrations in Cairo, Abdel Rahman publicly expressed his marked disdain for life in authoritarian regimes, as during his participation in vigils at the Sudanese Embassy to condemn and denounce crimes against the innocent people of Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and the Blue Nile. Another vigil he attended was held at the Sudanese Embassy in solidarity with Egyptian journalist Shaimaa Adel, who was arrested by security forces in Sudan on charges of publishing news about demonstrations against Khartoum in 2012.

In his application, Abdel Rahman has also drawn attention to a dear friend, and co-participant in vigils held at the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo, who died under mysterious circumstances in 2013. The death was described as a traffic accident, however, many of his friends, including Abdel Rahman note that he was clearly in danger due to his sincere stance against the crimes of the current government regime in Sudan. Friends, and collegial activists remember him chanting with his wife, also active in women’s rights, both addressing the Sudanese ambassador, Mr. Kamal Hassan Ali during a protest held at one of the ambassador’s speeches in 6th of October City. During the event, the ambassador was unable to continue with his speech because of the fervent chanting led by Abdel Rahman’s friend, and wife, who denounced the actions of the Sudanese government with respect to human rights, and war crimes.

Because of certain connections that Abdel Rahman bears to this day, and has suffered throughout his long term as a refugee in Cairo, he is reopening his file with the UNHCR office in Cairo. Abdel Rahman is expressly, and ardently a global citizen who demonstrates for peace and civil progress on behalf of the rights of all people, including, especially, the citizens of his current host country of Egypt, however inhospitable its policies may remain with regard to human rights, as with his unique, and authentic experience as a refugee from Darfur.

On the same day that Abdel Rahman submitted his application paperwork to UNHCR’s Cairo office, he received a slip. A small, seemingly insignificant piece of paper, with barely legible penmanship, which confirms the receipt of his application, is the only palpable hope that he has in his monumental search for justice. Now, waiting for a phone call from the UNHCR Cairo office, Abdel Rahman is in a position that many forced migrants, asylum seekers and refugees find themselves in Egypt, oftentimes fifteen years down the road, or longer. Yet, they wait, desperately, in cafes, on street corners, and in community centers, holding out an ever so slight hope that their case will be processed, that they will find a place to call home, where they can finally live with basic, human dignity.

For these reasons, a MoveOn petition, was started, to support those seeking to reopen their files with UNHCR-Egypt, and to assist Abdel Rahman with his case, specifically, in light of the emergency circumstances that he currently faces. In response to this initial measure of response, an International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) representative, based in New York City, noted, “My colleagues with expertise in this area think that the case will not be reopened unless this is requested by Geneva.”

Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges that such cases pose, it is absolutely essential that there is a response. In the post-Mubarak era of the Middle East, the people of Cairo have not stopped calling out to the international community, and it is not only the voices of Egyptians that resound, but of those people often neglected, and underrepresented, whose struggles are complex, yet whose lives example a shockingly underappreciated individual, and community strength.

Source Article from http://www.nationofchange.org/refugee-rights-egypt-cairo-s-african-refugee-demonstrators-call-peace-and-civil-rights-syria-sudan-a