Nubians escalate demands to return to their lands, plan for protests

A number of activists in Forkund, a Nubian village in southern Egypt, have decided to start an open strike to protest the inclusion of their village in a state-backed land development project.

In August this year, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi passed decree 355, designating 922 feddans of state-owned land to the new Toshka development project. Much of this land is Nubian and Nubians will not be granted rights to its exclusive use. In 2014, a presidential decree (444) affecting Nubians was also issued, and later passed by Parliament, designating certain border areas as military zones that are not to be inhabited, including 16 Nubian villages.

Both decisions, Nubians say, have crushed their dreams of return — a hope that had been rekindled with the 2014 Constitution which mandates that the state to work on giving Nubians access to their lands within 10 years.

On Saturday, activists marched toward the project location before police forces prevented them from continuing. Nubian lawyer Mohamed Azmy told Mada Masr that a meeting was organized by the protest organizers for Monday to explore different possible escalating mechanisms, before it turned into a major conference attended by many Nubians. A decision was made at the meeting to start a strike in mid-November.

“We decided that a sit-in will start on November 19, when a march of cars will collect Nubians from different villages and head to Toshka. It will be like a caravan, with food supplies and tents. We will protest until our demands are met,” Azmy asserted.

Azmy explained that Nubians will wait until after November 11, a day that may see nationwide protests, dubbed as “The revolution of the poor.”

“We understand the conditions that the country is going through,” he said. “And we are giving the state a chance to study our demands and to respond to them before we go into full strike.”

A number of Nubian activists already started a strike on November 5 inside the headquarters of the General Nubian Union in Aswan, where all preparations for the upcoming strike are taking place.

Meanwhile, independent Nubian groups and civil society organizations are working on collecting historical documents and evidence to file an official complaint against the Egyptian government before the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR). The complaint is against the two presidential decisions, and aims to order Nubian return to 44 villages that they were forcibly evicted from in the 1960s, in accordance with constitutional guarantees.

Nubians in southern Egypt were displaced a number of times in the 20th century. The first wave of displacement was with the building of the Aswan Low Dam by the British in 1902, when its height was raised on two different occasions in 1912 and 1933, and again with the building of the Aswan High Dam by former President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1963-64.

Article 236 of Egypt’s Constitution mandates the state to work on giving Nubians the right to return to their lands within 10 years, as well as committing the government to propose plans to develop the land and preserve Nubian culture.

A major conference was held in September by a number of Nubian organizations in Daboud village dubbed “Return is a right.” Participants recommended the state establish a body to develop Nubia and address the decision to stipulate Nubian land as a military zone, giving the government three months to comply with the demands before the involvement of international courts. Nubian parliamentarian Yassin Abdel Sabour, coordinating this conference, previously told Mada Masr that he will work with state bodies during these three months to find a solution to Nubian demands.

Azmy, clarified, however, that these recent escalations are not related to Sabour’s initiative. “It is a youth movement that is unconnected to the September conference. We represent a large sector of angry Nubians who are calling for their rights.”