A new chapter has been added to the crises of Egyptian Nubians that have persisted since the 1960s when they were displaced from their lands along the Nile from the first cataract south of Aswan northward to the south of the confluence of the Blue and White Nile, to build the High Dam. They still await the fulfillment of their rights from the 2014 constitution, which promised them their rights within ten years. They dream of returning to their ancestral lands behind the dam, but a presidential decision on August 10, 2016, to annex 922 feddans of Nubian lands to the “One and a Half Million Feddan” project and auction them to investors, shattered their hopes.
Since 2016, Nubians have been waiting for the Egyptian parliament to pass the draft law of the Nubia Development and Resettlement Authority, prepared by the government in 2015 and known as the second draft, in accordance with Article 236 of the 2014 constitution. This article states that the state must develop and implement a comprehensive economic and urban development plan for border and deprived areas, including Upper Egypt, Sinai, Matrouh, and Nubia, with the participation of their inhabitants in development projects.
The dream of return is not the only crisis for Nubians after more than half a century since their large-scale displacement from their villages (the great Nubian migration of the 1960s, with earlier migrations since 1902 for the construction of the Aswan Reservoir). They now fear the loss of their cultural heritage, Nubian culture, and mother tongue. Nubia was home to one of the oldest civilizations in ancient Africa, the Kerma culture, which lasted from around 2500 BC until its conquest by the New Kingdom of Egypt under Thutmose I around 1500 BC, followed by the Kingdom of Kush, which conquered Egypt in 727 BC, forming the 25th dynasty. Their ties eventually merged, becoming an integral part of the diverse Egyptian makeup.
Amr Mohamed was a small child when he moved with his Nubian family from western Aswan in the far south of Egypt to the capital, Cairo. They have lived in the Bulaq El-Dakrour neighborhood—one of the neighborhoods of Giza Governorate within Greater Cairo—for about a quarter of a century. However, over the past two years, the family has faced incidents of bullying and some harassment, which have intensified in recent months. They were surprised by the poor treatment from their Egyptian peers, who assumed they were Sudanese and demanded they return to their country. Children even started hitting their Nubian and dark-skinned peers in general.
Amr is no longer surprised when someone calls him “ya zoul” (a term for Sudanese people) on the street, mistakenly thinking he is Sudanese. But what he cannot understand is how he has become treated as a stranger in the neighborhood where he grew up, to the extent that someone would demand that he take his family and return to their country.
He tells Zawia3 that a police officer in the Nahya area of Giza once asked him to show his passport and was surprised to find that he was Egyptian with a national ID card.
Sumaya Ali is another Egyptian Nubian who moved with her family from Aswan to live in Giza Governorate many years ago. During this time, she has faced incidents of bullying due to her dark skin, sometimes being called “black.” However, after the influx of Sudanese migrants to Egypt, she began to experience persecution, discrimination, insults, and financial exploitation, even in transportation fares, as she describes.
Sumaya was returning from her workplace in the Hadeq Al-Ahram area of Giza, heading to her home in the Khatm Al-Mursaleen area of Al-Omrania in Giza. When she boarded a shared taxi and sent the fare (seven pounds) to the driver, he forced her, unlike the other passengers, to pay ten pounds, believing she was Sudanese.
“I told him that I was Egyptian from Aswan, but he didn’t believe me and insisted I was Sudanese. He justified exploiting me by saying that Sudanese people living in Egypt have a better economic standard than Egyptians and accused them of causing the high cost of living and the suffering of the people,” Sumaya recounts.
The matter did not stop at financial exploitation. Her younger brother (12 years old) was also subjected to bullying, with children around him mocking him and saying he was Sudanese, not Egyptian, causing him severe psychological distress.
Beaten in the Street
Lamyaa Sami, who used to travel from Luxor to Cairo and stay there for periods due to her studies and work, has faced people treating her as Sudanese due to her dark skin. They call her “zoula,” sometimes raising the prices of goods and services and transportation fares, thinking she is not Egyptian and unaware of the actual fares. However, the harassment has intensified recently with the increasing hate speech campaigns against Sudanese and African migrants and refugees in general.
A week ago, Lamyaa was returning from work with her Cairo friend around midnight. They wanted to take a “tuk-tuk” from the Faisal area to Al-Haram in Giza to find transportation from there to take them home. A tuk-tuk driver called her “ya zoul” and insisted they ride with him. She ignored him, but he persisted. She felt angry and told him she didn’t want to ride with him and moved on with her friend to another tuk-tuk. However, the first driver stopped their tuk-tuk and forced his colleague to eject them. When she protested and told him she was an Egyptian from Upper Egypt, he responded, “You are dark-skinned, so I thought you were Sudanese.”
After a verbal altercation with the drivers who sided with their racist colleague and refused to drive the two girls alone in the street at midnight, they decided to walk a little until they found another tuk-tuk. After getting in, they were verbally harassed by the first driver and his colleagues, who then beat Lamyaa and her friend.
Lamyaa and her friend did not know what to do, so they went to the police station to file a report against the drivers. The procedures took hours without resulting in any arrests, and they had to stay in the station until dawn.
A few days later, while crossing the street with her cousin, a senior man gave her a look of disgust and insulted them, thinking she was an African migrant.
The Political System Is to Blame
Munir Bashir, a lawyer in the Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative and Constitutional Courts, and founder and chairman of the Nubian Lawyers Association, believes that discrimination against Nubians comes from the government and the political system in Egypt, not just from street harassment and social media slurs such as “black” or “zoul,” which he attributes to the public’s ignorance of Nubia and its civilization, a responsibility he places on the authorities.
He argues that there is a general sense of injustice among Nubians due to the disregard for the sacrifices of their ancestors who were displaced and left their homes and lands to build the High Dam. He claims that the compensation they received later was very little compared to the real value of their lands and homes overlooking the Nile. They were also deprived of benefiting from the wealth and treasures of Nubian lands stretching from the cataract to beyond the High Dam and into Sudan.
Bashir says, “We are a cultural ethnic group that the state insists on ignoring. Nubian history and civilization are not taught in schools, and there are restrictions on Nubian celebrations and their annual festival on July 7th every year. There are also restrictions on learning the Nubian language, even though it is taught in several countries worldwide, including Tel Aviv. Additionally, there are restrictions on Nubians entering their ancestral lands beyond the High Dam, due to accusations of seeking to separate from Egypt, which are unfounded. There are no factors for the alleged Nubian secession. Moreover, the Nubian Lawyers Association has previously submitted a draft investment law to the House of Representatives to utilize the resources and treasures of Nubian lands beyond the dam, but it was ignored.”
The Nubian lawyer blames the Egyptian authorities for not exerting enough effort to bring back the ten Egyptian Nubians who were sentenced by the Saudi High Criminal Court to up to 18 years in prison after celebrating the victory of October.
In October 2022, a Saudi court sentenced ten Egyptian Nubians to prison terms ranging from 10 to 18 years for allegedly spreading false news and organizing an unauthorized gathering. They were arrested in 2019 after holding a cultural salon at the Nubian Association headquarters in Riyadh to celebrate the anniversary of the October 6th War.
Regarding the spread of hate speech against Sudanese refugees in Egypt, Bashir believes that many Sudanese people lived peacefully in Egypt before the war. However, after the war broke out, some Egyptians with real estate and commercial businesses took advantage of the mass influx of Sudanese into Egypt, raising rental prices and benefiting from increased consumption. At the same time, large sectors were harmed by the situation amid the economic crisis, and many Egyptian families lost their rented homes, leading to resentment over the crowding, high prices, and housing crisis, and fueling hate speech and incitement against them on social media, resulting in street clashes and harassment that also affected some Egyptian Nubians.
Adel Amer, a public law expert and head of the Egyptians Center for Political and Economic Studies, believes that Nubia’s problems began with the displacement of its people to build the High Dam and the failure of the authorities to fulfill their promises to return them to their homeland after the war broke out in 1967. Although the authorities committed to their return under the 2014 constitution, this has
not yet been realized due to economic conditions and the incomplete establishment of new urban communities in the Nasr Nubia area. He denies that Nubians have faced discrimination in citizenship rights or that there have been restrictions on their social and cultural activities and clubs.
Amer links the campaigns of incitement against migrants and expatriates in Egypt to media statements blaming them for price increases and deteriorating services, claiming their number is 11 million while ignoring the presence of 25 million Egyptian expatriates abroad. He suggests that the official discourse aimed to send a message to major donor countries to increase their grants for migrants and refugees in Egypt.
He points out that bullying is not limited to Nubians and dark-skinned individuals but has become a phenomenon in Egyptian society, prompting the authorities to stiffen penalties for bullying in the Egyptian Penal Code, urging victims to file complaints with the police.
The new article in the amendments to the Penal Code, Article 309 bis, stipulates that a bully shall be punished by imprisonment for no less than six months and a fine of no less than 10,000 pounds and not more than 30,000 pounds, or one of these penalties. The penalty for the crime of bullying shall be imprisonment for no less than one year and a fine of no less than 20,000 pounds and not more than 100,000 pounds, or one of these penalties if the crime is committed by two or more persons or if the perpetrator is a relative of the victim or is responsible for their upbringing, supervision, or has authority over them.
Individual Cases
Mohamed Atta Allah, a member of the Senate in Luxor, believes that Nubians and citizens from southern Egypt generally do not face oppression and discrimination in Cairo and the northern governorates. However, there may be individual cases caused by confusion between them and Sudanese refugees, some of whom, according to him, have behaved badly and annoyed some Egyptians.
Atta Allah believes that other Arab communities, like Syrian refugees, have not caused the problems in Egyptian society that have been caused by the large, unregulated influx of Sudanese migrants to Egypt, and the exploitation of this by some Egyptians who rented out their apartments at inflated prices without following legal procedures. However, this backfired when large numbers of tenants caused damages and problems, leading to Egyptian landlords’ anger towards the Sudanese presence in Egypt. Additionally, large sectors of Egyptians were harmed by rising rental prices and the housing crisis accompanying the migration waves.
Commenting, Gamal Eid, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, says that the harassment and discrimination faced by Nubians and dark-skinned individuals result from attempts to divert attention from the economic failures of the political system, directing media and organized social media campaigns to channel anger towards foreign expatriates in Egypt and making them a scapegoat for mistakes.
He explains that this has turned from xenophobia to hatred of Egyptians with dark skin simply because they are suspected of being African migrants. He emphasizes that this will extend to classifying society into segments and categories, predicting that these incitement campaigns will lead to crimes or acts of violence unless a new enemy or scapegoat is created to justify failed policies and manipulate the hungry and fearful public consciousness.
Eid points out that Egyptian Nubians suffer from discrimination due to their skin color and social injustice for which the authorities bear the most responsibility, as they have not adhered to the constitution. He cites the case of the “Dafouf Detainees” in Aswan in 2019, which resulted in fines for 24 and the acquittal of eight, who were demanding the implementation of the constitution and their return to their lands.
Egyptian security forces had arrested 24 Nubians on September 4, 2017, during a peaceful march in Aswan, using drums and singing to demand the implementation of Article 236 of the Egyptian Constitution, which stipulates the resettlement of Nubians on the banks of Lake Nasser. Nubian leader Gamal Sorour, who held French citizenship, died on the fourth day of his detention after falling into a coma due to a hunger strike with his comrades, who were protesting being prevented from attending their detention renewal session.
After being beaten in the street, Lamyaa now feels fear and alienation when walking in the streets of Cairo and Giza. Sumaya and Amr feel a mix of sadness and anger at the bullying and harassment they and their families face, feeling a newfound sense of estrangement in the streets of Cairo and Giza, where they have spent most of their lives.
The name of Nubians has been associated with migration, especially since they have undergone five migrations, the first in 1902 with the construction of the Aswan Reservoir, the second during the first heightening of the reservoir in 1912, the third during the second heightening in 1933, when many Nubian families moved to the canal cities, the fourth after the construction of the High Dam in 1963, and the fifth migration from the canal cities after the 1967 war.
While analysts and observers warn of the dangers of spreading hate speech and incitement against refugees and migrants, a new suffering has been added to the lives of many Egyptian Nubians, causing them to feel anxious about what the coming days might bring if the incitement and hate speech in Egypt continue to escalate without authorities stepping in to stop it. Especially given the neglect of their demands and increasing concerns and the lack of appreciation from the authorities who do not see the necessity to celebrate Nubia Day today.
