Residents of Aswan village hold short-lived roadblock to protest 6-hour blackout

Residents of the Sayala village in Aswan’s Nasr al-Nuba blocked the Aswan-Cairo agricultural road on Tuesday night to protest rolling blackouts amid record-high temperatures, according to two residents of the village who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

Daily nationwide power outages, which were originally scheduled for two hours a day, were extended on Sunday, with the government later pointing to an unexpected drop in fuel supply to power stations and apologizing to the public.

In Aswan, where temperatures are consistently over 40 °C, the heatwave, paired with rolling blackouts, has already proved fatal, with 50 Sudanese nationals reportedly dying in the past weeks due to heatstroke en route to southern Egypt.

One resident told Mada Masr that during the long blackout on Tuesday, young people from the area “attempted to persuade an electricity company employee to restore power, and when the employee refused, they blocked the road.”

Interior Ministry officials arrived at the site and urged protesters to reopen the road. "We refused to move until electricity was restored, which eventually happened," they said. 

The resident said that the National Security Agency later summoned "the mayor and several senior figures from the village." Citing several of those summoned, the resident said that security personnel assured them that no protesters would be arrested. The National Security Agency’s Aswan office released all those who were summoned on the same night.

The second source from the village said that power cuts in the area have caused hardships for residents as basic services like water supply deteriorated. "Water is cut off more [often] than it’s available," they said, adding that people have begun to store water to cope. They also noted unprecedented temperature spikes in recent weeks accompanying power cuts. “That’s the thing that made us struggle the most,” the source said.

"Our hypertension patients can't endure the heat during power cuts, and the village has many kidney failure cases due to poor water quality. The heat makes them struggle," the source added.

Children are also taking thanaweya amma (high school) exams at present, the resident added, while power outages on the first day of Eid al-Adha caused meat to spoil, as "they cut the power off for three hours after people had already slaughtered their sacrificial animals."

The first resident noted that the dispute between Nasr al-Nuba residents and security officials had “caused anxiety” among villagers who recalled arrests and detentions taking place in the area following the 2016 Nubian Right of Return marches.

In 2016, residents of the area, which was established following the forced displacement of Nubians for the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1964, organized marches to return to their ancestral lands. They protested a decree that designated 16 out of 44 ancient villages as military zones in violation of a constitutional article that mandates Nubian repatriation.

Police subsequently arrested around 32 participants, and after the death of one detainee at the Shalal camp due to medical neglect, clashes ensued between residents of one of Nasr al-Nuba’s villages and police. Protesters who were detained remained imprisoned until April 2019.