After a sit-in lasting for more than four days, hundreds of Egyptian Nubians ended their protests against a government decision that aims to allocate some Aswan governorate land to investors. The protests ended after the government and parliament pledged to establish a dialogue with local leaders about how to meet the demands. The sit-in started on Saturday night on the road between Aswan and the Abu Simbel archaeological site after police forces prevented a group of Egyptian Nubians from going to the Toshka area to protest against allocating agricultural land in the area to investors. The organisers of the sit-in demanded that the government give the land to Egyptian Nubians only as “it belongs to ancestors displaced during the building of the Aswan High Dam”. The road closure forced tourism operators in the area to scramble to get tourists to Abu Simbel, one of the country's major heritage sites. A group of 50 visitors was transported aboard a special flight to the temple, where four giant pharaonic figures look out over Lake Nasser. “We wanted to make our voices heard as Egyptians. We believe in the good will of the government, but we need action,” said Fawzi Gaber, one of the protesters. He added that the protesters were calling on the government to abide by Article 235 of the constitution that says the government must help Egyptian Nubians to return to villages their ancestors were evicted from in the 1960s. Selling land in the Toshka and Khorkund areas to investors is part of the government's 1.5 Million Feddans Project that is due to be completed in just two years and aims to expand Egypt's total agricultural land by approximately 20 per cent. The project will be implemented in 14 areas across Egypt to serve the needs of all the governorates. In August, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi issued a decree allocating 922 feddans including land in the Toshka area to the New Toshka Development Project which is now part of the 1.5 Million Feddans Project. In October, the Sherif Ismail government announced that it would sell parts of the New Toshka Development Project by auction to investors as part of the 1.5 Million Feddans Project. However, the Nubians oppose Toskha and Khorkund's inclusion in the project, saying that the government should build villages instead for families displaced during the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. Small buses transported the protesters from Nubian villages, and they played Nubian music and displayed signs carrying slogans presenting their demands. One official told Al-Ahram Weekly that the Nubian issue was a high priority for the president and that the government had started to take measures to end the crisis. “We believe that our brothers in Nubia have legitimate demands, and the issue is already a priority for the government. However, a comprehensive plan to develop all the underprivileged areas in this part of Egypt will need proper laws and regulations to make our efforts sustainable,” the official said. The demands included the establishment of a new body called the Higher Authority for Nubian Development. The body was proposed by Al-Sisi in 2014, and the parliament is working on a law to set up the new authority. Mohamed Azmi, a Nubian activist, said the government had repeatedly promised to take care of Nubian demands but had not done so. “We want our voices to be heard. We love Egypt, and all we want is to get our land back that was taken from us decades ago,” Azmi said. The Nubians were displaced several times during the 20th century due to changes in the dams that control the Nile River. The first time was during the building of the Aswan Dam in 1902, and the Nubians were again displaced during maintenance in 1933. Further disruption occurred with the building of the Aswan High Dam by former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser in the1960s. Many of the displaced families were compensated with land and financial support. Azmi said that “re-activating” Article 236 of the Constitution would end the problem. The constitution instructs the government to create the necessary framework to develop the Nubian villages and to help other underprivileged areas through a comprehensive strategy and set of laws. It does not stipulate handing over the land to Nubian families. “The state shall develop and implement a plan for the comprehensive economic and urban development of border and underprivileged areas, including in Upper Egypt, Sinai, Matrouh and Nubia. This is to be achieved by the participation of the residents of these areas in the development projects and their priority in benefitting from them, taking into account the cultural and environmental patterns of the local communities within ten years of the date that this constitution comes into effect,” the article says. In 2014, Presidential Decree 444 was issued, and later passed by parliament, designating certain border areas as military zones that cannot be inhabited including 16 Nubian villages. In August this year, Al-Sisi issued Decree 355, designating 922 feddans of state-owned land to the New Toshka Development Project. The cancelling of this decree is among the protesters' demands, though this has been rejected by some Nubian leaders and the majority of MPs. “This decree is not only about Nubia and Aswan. It is necessary for all the border areas. Including the decree in the demands is unacceptable, even if not including Toshka and Khorkund in the 1.5 Million Feddans Project is completely legitimate,” MP Mohamed Al-Ghoul, part of the mediation committee between the government and the Nubian protesters, told the Weekly. “I think it is important to protect our national security at this critical stage. This is why the decree puts some land under the supervision of the army,” Al-Ghoul said. President Al-Sisi has repeatedly pledged to make the development of Nubia a priority and pushed the government to set up the new authority to handle Nubian development. Earlier this year he ordered the government to allocate more than LE200 million to improving services in Aswan and Nubian villages. However, official sources and MPs told the Weekly that the lack of confidence among Nubians in the government was behind the current protests. To deal with the protests, a crisis unit has been formed to communicate with the protesters through Aswan governor Magdi Hegazi, MP Yassin Abdel-Sabour and other local leaders. A team of MPs and other senior officials travelled to Aswan to start talks that aim to deal with the grievances of young people in Nubia. The team includes MPs Mostafa Bakri, Amr Abul-Yazid, Yassin Abdel-Sabour, Mohamed Al-Goul, Mohamed Selim and Saad Al-Gamal. “We understand the frustration of families in the Nubian areas. They have tolerated decades of government negligence, and now we are here to make sure they are heard,” MP Amr Abul-Yazid, who represents Aswan in the House of Representatives, said. Abul-Yazid told the Weekly that the prime minister had decided during a meeting with MPs not to include Toskha and Khorkund in the 1.5 Million Feddens Project and to allocate the land to Egyptian Nubians. “This decision is enough in the short term, and in the longer term there are other decisions to be made by either the government or the parliament,” he added. “The government is ready to invest in Nubia because it wants to make people's lives better, but it will not do anything under the pressure of protests,” Abul-Yazid said. However, MP Mostafa Bakri told the Weekly that there was a problem of trust between the Nubian areas and the government. “The lack of confidence in the government is a result of decades of ignoring Nubian voices, and now the government has the burden of building bridges by fulfilling its promises. It is a tough job, but there is the political will to do it,” he added. Bakri said that the delegation was tasked with creating a permanent dialogue mechanism with local leaders to make them more involved in government efforts to develop underprivileged areas in Nubia. MP Mohamed Al-Ghoul said that the protests were organised with good intentions, but that there were some who wanted to use the crisis to undermine the positive measures taken by the government in Nubian areas. “In 2015, the government invited the farmers unions in the Nubian villages to be part of the committee planning the use of agriculture land in the Aswan governorate. But this invitation was rejected by some local actors with no clear reason,” he said. The delegation's report will be submitted to the speaker of the parliament in the coming days. The delegation will also meet the prime minister to follow up on the government's LE200 million plan to provide the Nubian villages with better services and develop their infrastructure. The Nubians are from an ethnic group that traces its roots back to the ancient Egyptian civilisation on the Nile. There has never been any record of discrimination against this group in Egypt. Many senior political leaders have been Nubians, including the current Parliamentary Speaker Ali Abdel-Aal and former defence minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. Mohamed Mounir, a popular singer, is also Nubian.
