Residents clash with security forces planning further expropriations on Nile island of Warraq

Twenty-three residents of Warraq were arrested on Tuesday, and later released, as for a second day people from the Nile island continued to resist security officials surveying housing and properties ahead of planned expropriations and demolitions, a resident told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.

Fourteen people had been arrested on Monday, to be released over the course of that evening, following clashes in which authorities used force and tear gas against the civilian residents of the area.

The clashes between authorities and residents, who have resisted the government’s plans to expel them in order to demolish and redevelop the island since 2017, were renewed this week, after what residents described as a period of mounting tension over recent days.

Residents described a security presence on the three ferries that provide access to the island, and growing pressure from authorities on homeowners to surrender their properties to the New Urban Communities Authority.

On Friday, hundreds of Warraq residents marched to demonstrate against the imprisonment of 35 residents who were arrested at the outset of expropriations in 2017, during protests at which one resident was killed by security forces. The 35 residents are in the process of appealing lengthy prison sentences they received for resisting security forces at the time.

The intention to “develop” Warraq was first declared in 2017, when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi pointed to the island as his next target in an ongoing large-scale national campaign to reclaim “illegally occupied state land.”

“There’s an island in the Nile with an area of over 1,250 feddans, which I won’t name. Informal housing has spread all over it, and people have been building on land that they seized,” Sisi said at the time, placing special focus on what he said was the island’s sanitary drainage spilling into the Nile and reiterating his view that the residents’ claim to the land was illegitimate. 

Last week, a Cabinet statement said the government now owns 71 percent of the island and aims to construct 94 residential buildings, with a total 1,744 housing units. The statement also claimed that displaced residents and owners are being compensated with housing units in the suburbs of Obour and 6th of October.

However, the legality of residents’ presence on the island is a contested issue. Most of the island’s landowners acquired their property through squatter’s rights, or wad al-yad as per national law, whereby they gained legal ownership of land after 15 years of undisputed residence on it. Many have had their land ownership officially registered this way.

Warraq was home to three public schools, a police unit, water station and post office, and is equipped with official electricity meters — a common array of basic services provided to self-built areas that serve as tacit acknowledgment from the state of their presence. 

The government has nevertheless carried out hundreds of demolition orders and forced displacements, using violence against residents of the island and arresting or intimidating those who resist handing over their homes for demolition.

After Friday’s protests, officials arrived at Warraq’s Houd al-Qalamiya neighborhood on Monday in dozens of riot police vans, microbuses and other vehicles, according to a number of other residents, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

Houd al-Qalamiya includes two of the island’s three schools, serving 6,500 students, another resident said. “With these demolished, there would be only one school left on the entire island.” A government tower block project lies adjacent to Houd al-Qalamiya, while the neighborhood’s evacuation would also clear a 100-square-meter area on either side of the Rod al-Farag Highway which passes through the island, a development aim that the New Urban Communities Authority has stated previously.

People gathered in solidarity with property owners and residents of Houd al-Qalamiya, where homes are set to be expropriated next. As the situation grew tense, a police commander attempted to persuade residents to let the government officials survey the properties, according to one resident. The police official said that this process would safeguard their right to compensation after their homes are demolished and that the demolitions are inevitable in any event.

“We are here to fix the July 16 mistake,” said the police commander, referring to the 2017 clashes that took place on that date. 

One resident said people used stones against security forces in self-defense, while others described security forces storming houses, beating residents and using tear gas to disperse those who had gathered in solidarity. The 14 residents who were arrested on Monday were ultimately released.

The following day, security forces arrived on the island with surveying equipment for a project to build new towers, and met resistance from the residents with tear gas once again, making 23 arrests. Two sources said that the security forces ran out of tear gas on Tuesday and began to retreat from the island, but were ultimately blocked from doing so by residents who surrounded them within a closed area of the neighborhood.

Representatives of the neighborhood entered into prolonged negotiations with the security forces, two sources from the area told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, securing the release of all 23 people who were arrested on Tuesday.