Sudanese students awaiting visas to study in Egypt protest weeks-long delay at Port Sudan consulate

Dozens of Sudanese students gathered outside the Egyptian Consulate in Port Sudan on Tuesday to call for the issuance of study visas that would allow them entry into Egypt, and for which the students have applied and paid. 

The consul had failed to respond to letters in which the students sought clarification regarding application status, according to students who participated in the protest and who shared their stories with Mada Masr.

Since the outbreak of the war in Sudan in April last year, many Sudanese students have been forced to travel to Egypt to continue their studies. 

But the consul has not returned passports and visas to applicants since September 18, student protester Motassem Fath al-Rahman told Mada Masr on Tuesday. 

Raneem Marghani, another student protester who is in her fourth year at Sudan University of Science and Technology’s medical school, told Mada Masr that she applied to study medicine at Benha University in Cairo in early June and was accepted but is yet to start. “I will have to repeat the year because, unfortunately, the first semester has already ended.”

The website for visa applications has also been suspended since September. Despite paying the tuition fees for the Faculty of Commerce at Cairo University, Rahman was unable to submit his application for a study visa after the online registration link was closed in September. “I asked the consulate, and they told me to wait until the portal reopens.”

There are two Egyptian consulates in Sudan, one in Port Sudan and one in Halfa — yet the consulate in Halfa closed its doors to students last week, Rahman said.

Marghani said that students had tried different methods of communicating with the consulate to move their applications forward. “We’ve already sent the consulate three letters since the end of September, one of which was delivered to the Sudanese Foreign Ministry, which handed it over to the consulate on Saturday,” she explained.

Tuesday’s protest was peaceful and organized, she said, adding that the protesters “didn’t even raise our voices while chanting.” 

Yet, the consulate staff warned protesters that future demonstrations would be met with firm action. 

Representatives of the group who demonstrated did speak to the consul directly, Rahman said, explaining that they submitted a letter to the consulate outlining their demands: an expedited visa process, given the consulate has failed to return passports handed to it since September 18; the reactivation of the online registration system, which is suspended; and an enquiry about the status of students who had already registered their applications but had not been called in to submit the required documents and passports.

After a five-hour wait, the student representatives returned to the group of protestors which comprised around 230 people, according to Rahman, and said only that “the consulate did not provide a clear response.” 

The lack of clarity around the situation has left many students in a state of confusion, with their plans for the future interrupted. 

A Sudanese student cannot apply for a visa without providing receipts for both the initial and final acceptance to the university, which cost nearly US$3,000, in addition to a security clearance fee of $19, according to Marghani.

She said she spent over $5,000 to obtain the necessary approvals to resume her studies at Benha University, including $170 for the initial application, $200 to submit her documents to the university, $1,500 in registration fees and $170 for coordination services. 

Egyptian universities require that Sudanese students start their studies from the course’s first year, regardless of the academic stage they have reached at a university in Sudan. The requirement brings with it a demand to pay $300 in taxes for each year elapsing between high school graduation and application. As a result, Marghani — in year four at her place of study in Sudan — had to pay a total of $1,200 in tax fees to apply to move to Banha, as well as $1,800 in tuition fees for the academic year, and $200 for the Egyptian university coordination office.

Along with the fees, students must also get security clearance. Rahman said that he applied for security clearance in September as it is one of the documents required for the student visa application. "The consulates in Jeddah and Riyadh issue security clearances for Sudanese students, but when we asked the Egyptian consulate, they told us they had no hand in the matter," he said.

Others have been stranded in Halfa, where they traveled to the other Egyptian branch in hopes of securing visas, only to have their hopes dashed, Rahman said. 

The Halfa consulate announced at the beginning of last week that it was accepting student passports and issuing visas, as long as the applications included proof of a student exam before February 11 and a "plea letter," he explained. 

Just four days later, however, the consulate abruptly stopped accepting applications and returned only seven passports to students who had applied for visas, he said.

Some students had traveled the two-day journey from Port Sudan to Halfa and were unable to submit their passports, he continued, while others submitted their passports and did not receive them from the consulate, leaving them stranded without travel documents in Halfa. 

Sudanese news outlets reported that, in his meeting with Sudan's Transitional Sovereignty Council Chair Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Monday in Cairo, which took place during the World Urban Forum, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reiterated his commitment to removing all obstacles facing Sudanese people, especially students in Egypt, and directed the relevant authorities to facilitate all procedures.

But without recourse to the official routes, some students have been pushed to consider other options. A third student, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Mada Masr that due to the difficulty of obtaining a study visa, she considered traveling to Egypt through unofficial routes at the border. "But my family refused,” she said, adding that she knows of at least one student who resorted to smuggling.

She said she also inquired about the cost of a tourist visa. "They told me it would cost $3,000, and I would receive it in three days," she said, explaining that the amount is excessive, especially on top of the study fees she has already paid. 

"Parents sacrifice at the cost of their other children, so that one child can get a better education," she said. “I'm unable to focus because of the stress and fear. Our simplest request is a visa to continue our studies normally."