Finding Passports

In my time here I've met many Africans trying to get to what is called the "1st world." Finding the means to do so is impossibly difficult. Here are a couple of stories from people trying...

I arrived back to Cairo from Jerusalem late on the night of December 30th, about four hours before Egyptian security forces were ordered to disperse the ongoing four-month Sudanese demonstration. The news broke early on the 31st, as BBC and other local correspondents had recently begun following the story and were on hand when the events transpired (perhaps in anticipation of the looming crisis that had become all but inevitable). Now two months after the tragedy, the following has been established (courtesy of research by Sakkakini Catholic Church):

On September 29th, a group of 20 Sudanese began a sit-in demonstration outside the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) office premises in Mohandiseen that lasted until December 30th, when Egyptian police violently brought the demonstration to an end. On peak days during the four months, as many as 2500 crowded in a small fenced in public garden about 50 by 30m, with around 1000 permanently living under makeshift tents. The main demand of the protesters was resettlement on grounds that Sudanese in Egypt are "faced daily with discrimination, violence, and violations of their human rights." Offered voluntary repatriation was rejected by the demonstration leadership. UNHCR officials met with the leaders of the demonstration several times, but as the demands were outside of the UNHCR's mandate, negotiations came to an end in the middle of December.

Early in the morning of December 31st, with around 2,000 demonstrators present in the garden, Egyptian police intervened to disperse the protest. With fire hoses the demonstrators were sprayed alternately with hot and cold water, and when the demonstrators persevered in remaining, the police moved into the garden with force despite the presence of many young children. The combination of police brutality and a panic-caused stampede resulted in the death of at least 27 people, many of them children below the age of 10. Hundreds were injured and many belongings and important documents were lost.

After taken to police centers for identification, many demonstrators were released the following day, but over 600 were imprisoned on threat of deportation. The UNHCR intervened on behalf of the demonstrators providing new documentation, and all but 180 Sudanese have yet to be released.


Who were these protesters?
These couple thousand of disgruntled Sudanese were a mix of the impossibly difficult distinction of 'refugees' and 'economic migrants'--regardless, all were jobless, school-less, mostly homeless (many forewent their Cairo housing in an all effort to leave), moneyless, passport-less, and hopeful that the demonstration was to be the end of time in Egypt. The Sudanese are people trapped in Cairo, unable to leave and either unable (due to safety concerns) or un-willing (due to the perceived abhorrent quality of life) to return to Sudan. As migrants from Sudan, all of them had registered with the office of the United Nations Headquarters for Refugees (UNHCR) here in Cairo, thus commencing the individual process of potential resettlement--an incredibly anxious, tiresome, and long process (years) for which only a very limited percentage have been successful.

Much of the permanent sector of the demonstration was composed of family units camping in the garden. Thousands of others visited daily bringing supplies. As the demonstration gained momentum, protest leaders circulated word to remove Sudanese children from the refugee schools by posting signs inside. Fathers quit jobs and mothers moved out of apartments on the rumored promise of sure resettlement for all living in the garden. Reports exist of volunteer doctors from local NGOs being denied access to the garden by the leaders in a bid to pressure the UNHCR by squalid conditions in the camp.


Why were they protesting and what were there demands?
Since the last quarter of the 1900's when the Sudanese civil war swept the country, Cairo has continually received a steady flow of refugees thanks to Egypt's open-border policy with Sudan. Yet, as undebatably financially and logistically impossible for the UNHCR to send every potential refugee to another country, and further impounded by the effect of 'successful' word reaching and enticing networks of family and friends yet in Sudan to come to Cairo, the rate of entrance has been much greater than that of the exit. The UNHCR's process became highly selective, accepting a chosen few (often with some degree of uncommon education) for settlement based on a series of intensive interviews. Therefore, a great number of Sudanese have assembled here in Cairo over the years in a country which, for as open as the border policy is, has internal refugee regulations which are incredibly restricting. Work, school, social security, and health care are all not permitted, thus the only protection a refugee has is the registration with the UNHCR, and the only hope is with the resettlement process.

It was approximately one year ago that this process was shut down, throwing a thick shadow on what was an already dark future for Sudanese in Egypt. A small group of Sudanese decided to take matters into their own hands, forcing confrontation on the issue through a sit-in protest in front of the UNHCR premises in Mohandiseen. As the demonstration gained momentum through growing Sudanese involvement and press coverage, the leaders' demands grew bolder, eventually arriving at 'resettlement or bust.'


Why was no agreement reached?
The protest leaders were offered comprehensive aid for voluntary repatriation, but the offer was rejected on grounds of absolute resettlement--sadly and obviously unrealistic demand for the following reasons: The UNHCR has operated under both tight regulations and a limited budget for years. Resettlement was granted to those few for whom it was judged that returning home was impossible due to personal safety concerns resulting from political unrest during the civil war. As of 2005, a peace agreement has been signed between the north and the south, which surely doesn't guarantee safety in Sudan, but is a step on the road to safety. Thus, in the eyes of the UNHCR, finding living and working accommodations in the West for 2500 Sudanese is not only nearly impossible due to the closed doors of the first world and the ever-slimming budget of the UNHCR, but is actually a step in the wrong direction from creating a stable Sudan. Can you imagine what kind of statement would the UNHCR be making if it resettled 2500 demonstrating Sudanese? The next week would surely see a protest twice that size, for which the UNHCR would accordingly be responsible to resettle.


Why were the Egyptian police sent to disperse the protest?
It was in early December that I first saw an article on BBC about the Sudanese sit-in. This article and several following began to explore the issues behind the demonstration, illumining the largely unknown marginalized world of the Sudanese in Cairo along with the Egyptian government's dehumanizing regulations. It wasn't long after the appearance of these stories that the demonstration was dispersed by Egyptian police.

And the other side of the story: As the protest (which was largely by Southern Christian Sudanese) in front of the UNHCR grew in size, it began to block entrance to the adjacent local mosque. For several months the mosque operated under restricted access, even during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In reflecting now, its remarkable that for four months Egypt and its citizens had patience considering the already tense relations between Egyptians and visiting Sudanese. Within their own country many Egyptians cannot find work, their hospitals cannot handle the patient-load, and the schools are over-crowded. In the opinions of some educated Egyptians, the swamped Egyptian economy simply cannot handle an influx of 35,000 laborers looking for work, inadequate health care will always seek to aid Egyptians first, and over-crowded Egyptian schools cannot increase its class sizes over the 50-60 that exist now. In a developing country unable to yet accommodate its own citizens, 70,000 refugees is a large burden (It is for this reason then that government of Egypt should agree to abide by the laws of the United Nations that Egypt signed regarding the treatment of refugees, which allows the UN access to build permanent camps containing schools and clinics for refugees--but that’s another topic for another time...).

Thus, the issue with dispersal of the protest does not question the essence of the action, but the way in which it was carried out. On the January 1st I went out to the sight of the abandoned protest and found a second protest--this time by Egyptians against the government's methodology in handling the dispersal. It was solely due to the lack of organized strategy that the dispersal rapidly descended into chaos, at which point police began to use extreme brutality to regain control.


Fast forward six weeks: My Cameroonian friend Simplice had his passport and wallet stolen at one of the African Cup matches. Simplice arrived here by land from Cameroon about the same time I did last August on his way to Europe, Canada, America, Australia--anywhere he can get a quality education with the goal of returning to Cameroon to establish a health NGO in Cameroon. Since august we've been trying for visas: the guy's got a fully valid passport and Egyptian residence visa, has two years of collegiate credit, and speaks both French and English fluently, but the discovered frustrating (can I say infuriating??) reality is that the doors are shut. I've discovered through this process that my hands are tied as well--evidently I'm free to help myself and my countrymen, but unless I've got lots of money, there's nothing i can do to help someone get into my country. So he's stuck here like so many others, recently having decided to study for the TOEFL to enter a university back in South Africa.

Anyhow--Simplice had his passport stolen which was bad news for a guy jobless, moneyless, and now document-less in Cairo. Despite filing a report with the Egyptian police, a month passed without any word. Sometimes mysterious things happen (seem to happen a lot here): on the night before we were going to inquire as to the cost of all new documentations from the Cameroon embassy, I received a strange call from an American in Maadi asking for Simplice Tse. I told him that the number he called was mine, but that Simplice was a good friend. The American then relayed that the previous night he had received a call from someone speaking Arabic, and all that he could gather was that this individual possessed something of Simplice's. As Simplice lives in a group flat with 6-10 other Africans and has no money to buy a cell phone, he has no phone #. The man with Simplice's passport also had a list of Simplice's contact numbers, of which the man was calling randomly to try and make contact with Simplice. He randomly reached the American who in turn called the contact number Simplice had given him, and my phone rang on Saturday night. Simplice routinely calls me 2 or 3 times a week, and on Sunday morning, he called: we met, we called the American who gave us the number of the man with Simplice's passport, and we then arranged with this man a place to meet to get Simplice's "belongings." 10 hours and fifty Egyptian pounds later, Simplice's passport and wallet were in hand.

Besides being a crazy passport story with a happy ending, we had a chance to talk to what turned out to be a Sudanese man as we walked the hour-long journey across Cairo to his home where the passport was. He said he was leaving the stadium when an Egyptian man asked him if he knew the man whom the passport and wallet belonged to. Thinking on his feet from a heart of good will, he replied that the man was his brother and that he would return the passport to him (it seems that upon finding the passport and wallet without any money or credit cards, the thief was uninterested in his spoils).

Now, there are two amazing points about this story: 1--As the black market for passports is thriving in Cairo, we asked this him why he didn't sell the passport. He said that he'd honestly checked into it, and could have for as much as 5,000 Egyptian pounds. Yet, when it came down to it, he decided that whoever the passport belonged to was his African brother, and that to return it was the right thing to do. Simplice and I were in shock--in a place where Egyptians make on average 250-500 L.E. per month, the man and his family could have lived off the money from the passport for years! 2--We came to find out that this guy had been at the demonstration in Mohandiseen on the night in which the police came six weeks earlier--and he had the scar to prove it. We observed a recent six inch long, thick scar on the lower abdomen of the man, who had evidently been stabbed in the stomach during the chaos. He was taken to a hospital where he underwent immediate surgery by an Italian doctor from the UN. He had lost everything amidst the chaos that fateful night, and thus it was with incredible surprise and relief that, upon discharge after having recuperated for a month, the man discovered that his bill had been comped by the mysterious doctor.

The fifty pounds we gave this man was nothing more than a token of inexpressible appreciation. I'm meeting and speaking with many people this year who live under the oppressive powers of a variety of so many different systems, from political to economical to even cultural or religious. Whether they are escaping to safety like the Sudanese man or ambitious to help their country like Simplice, these people are just trying to live the "normal (and consequentially happy) life" that our globalization presents to them, a way of life that's so often cutthroat to get the edge on someone else. But what a movement by this Sudanese man in the face of what could have been viewed as divine opportunity, and what a movement by Simplice to get on that lorry heading to Chad, to Sudan, to Egypt: these are movements amidst the pressures of this world to abide in humanity. These are the actions that move others to stop, to unwrap from the world, to listen, to be moved to share, and to live henceforth in love. Can't 'one person at a time' infectiously grow to bring conflicted countries to peace, that all may reside in the place they call home? And can't 'one person at a time' infectiously grow to bring developed nations to share with those in need??