Residents clash with military in Matrouh to protest displacement for Talaat Moustafa Group tourism project, 1 person shot, 2 arrested

A resident of Jemima village in Matrouh Governorate was shot on Monday and two others were arrested during clashes which broke out between residents and soldiers in the Egyptian Armed Forces, according to three residents of the village who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.

A resident who witnessed the clashes said that they flared up when residents resisted the military’s attempt to take measurements of their homes in preparation for compensation and demolition to make way for the South Med tourism project.

The government holds a stake in the US$21 billion Talaat Moustafa Group project, which is set to be established on 23 million cubic meters of land in Egypt’s northwest, the prime minister said in July. 

The three residents of the village identified the injured person as Abdel Kader Safi Boulbakam, known as “Iqdurah,” who was shot in the upper left arm. He was transferred to a hospital in Alexandria and will require three surgeries, the sources said. 

According to a second resident of the village, military personnel were forced to leave the site after the clashes, without taking the measurements they’d come for.

Photos and videos circulated on social media showed young people in Jemima pursuing two armored military vehicles attempting to withdraw from the protest area after Iqdurah was shot. Protesters threw rocks at the vehicles amid gunfire which aimed to disperse the crowd.

The protests later spread to an area previously handed over by owners to the military, the resident said. Villagers expelled South Med contractors and their equipment from this area.

The three residents told Mada Masr that an Armed Forces official visited the village later that day, seeking to meet with tribal leaders and defuse tensions. The third resident said that villagers rejected his request to allow the military to take measurements, demanding instead that they be granted the opportunity to negotiate directly with investors and governorate authorities, insisting the military should not be involved in the matter.

The first resident, who witnessed the clashes, said that “residents refused to allow the military to measure their homes because we had informed them months ago of our objection to their compensation calculations.” They added that, beyond the low compensation offered, the military proposed that it cover only properties that people lived in, excluding compensation for agricultural lands where locals grow fig and olive trees.

According to the source, the military offered compensation rates of LE3,000 per square meter for wooden-roofed buildings and LE7,000 for concrete structures. “The only compensation available for agricultural land is LE1,000 per tree.” 

The third resident attributed the villagers’ anger to disruptions in promised work arrangements within the South Med project. Villagers who worked in subcontracting jobs weren’t paid for their work because the military delayed payments to the primary contractors in South Med, according to the source.

Similar incidents have occurred since the start of the year, with villagers in areas near Ras al-Hikma in Dabaa resisting what they described as attempts by Hesham Talaat Moustafa’s company to displace them without fair compensation, as several residents told Mada Masr at the time. The residents said that the situation escalated to altercations with personnel in the armed forces. 

Initially, intermediaries acting on behalf of Talaat Moustafa Group offered low compensation ranging between LE12,000 and LE15,000 per feddan, claiming that the government would seize lands for public benefit, given their proximity to the Dabaa nuclear plant. Residents refused, especially given that residents of Jarawla village near Ras al-Hikma had received compensation offers from businessman Naguib Sawiris of up to LE1.2 million per feddan, to establish his Silversands project. 

Jemima villagers had submitted an appeal in March to the president, of which Mada Masr obtained a copy. The appeal stated that residents were surprised in recent months when a military committee began marking parts of the land near Ras al-Hikma, setting coordinates and surveying buildings and agricultural areas. When residents resisted, citing official ownership contracts, members of the committee told them that the survey was necessary and beneficial to them.

In their appeal, Jemima residents pointed to Presidential Decree 421/2021, which allocated lands in the North Coast to the Armed Forces. They explained that when the decree was issued, they questioned why their lands were allocated as such. The response they received was that the decision, along with similar allocations, aimed to freeze population expansion in the area, under the pretext of it being a nuclear safety zone. 

Residents also said they were shocked at a later decision to allocate their lands to Hesham Talaat Mostafa’s group for the South Med project on a 5,540-feddan site. They urged the president to intervene to prevent their displacement from the lands they farm and use for grazing livestock.

In response to complaints from residents of Ras al-Hikma and surrounding villages over the military's role in negotiations and compensation for their homes, the New Urban Communities Authority’s decisions regarding touristic and hotel developments in the northwest coast stipulated that investors and businessmen are solely responsible for "any costs or compensation related to unauthorized land use or occupancy on project sites, as well as for settling any private ownership or contracts that may arise on the project land in the future, with no liability on the authority or its entities."