Nubians decry discrimination on eve of elections (dpa)

Middle East Features

By Pakinam Amer
Jun 10, 2007, 18:09 GMT

Aswan, Egypt - Taking shelter from the blistering Aswan heat, community leaders of the so-called New Nubia huddle under the shade of a tree and recount how they were forced to leave their villages on the banks of the Nile.

'The day we left resembled doomsday,' says Nour el-Din Hassan as he sits garbed in a white gown - a definitive mark of Nubian culture - sipping a cold Hibiscus drink.

Hassan is a businessman in his late fifties, who has witnessed the 43-year-old relocation. Aswan is the site of the 3.6-kilometre High Dam, the construction of which caused the inundation of 44 Nubian villages where Hassan, his family members and members of his tribe grew up.

'I remember the date very well when we were made to leave,' says Hassan. 'It was a stormy day; dust filled the air, winds blew.'

Hassan remains nostalgic until this very day. He says they were never sufficiently compensated for their 'paradise lost,' and this makes him and his people feel 'abandoned by central authorities.'

Preparations for the Shura Council elections seem to have opened some old wounds.

As the midterm elections approach, Nubians based in and around Aswan hope representatives of the central authority in Aswam will be more receptive to their demands: new homes, new land and a more equal share in the political power game.

The Shura Council is the upper house of Egypt's parliament and its duties are limited to ratifying constitutional amendments, treaties and bill proposals. It is strictly consultative on other matters and has arguably little influence on politics.

Nevertheless, membership in the Shura council is sought for prestige, parliamentary immunity and the powers that such a post gives its holder on the local level.

It is not surprising that the people of Aswan choose to huddle around their candidates - usually tribal and community leaders - who are supposed to act as their ambassadors and provide services.

The Nubians of Nasr al-Nuba, a town 85 kilometres away from the Old Nuba from which they were uprooted, said that they were denied the privilege of serving their people through the Shura Council.

According to their elders, the 'real Nubians,' as they choose to call themselves, are usually ignored and given false promises by Aswan's local administration.

Despite being given new homes in Nasr al-Nuba after their displacement, Nubians complain that the small one-storey houses are nothing like their old mansions surrounded by acres of cultivated land.

'It was a paradise where we lived,' says Hassan, supported by the nods of his tribesman, who are leaders in their own right.

Ismail Ahmed Gamal, the mayor of Nasr al-Nuba, pointed to the bare hills in the distance telling a reporter how they were uprooted from the banks of the Nile and 'thrown into this blazing desert land.'

Around Lake Nasser, which now covers old Nubia, are sites of construction projects, which include the Toshka (the New Valley Project) with irrigation canals to carry water from Lake Nasser into Egypt's western desert. Some of the Nubian families who were not compensated more than 40 years ago were promised lodgings around the banks of the lake.

According to them, 5,000 families have not been given homes yet. In addition, the Nubians see the new haven, the environment of which resembles their old 'paradise lost.'

'It's only fair that inhabitants who originally belong to this land be returned back,' adds Gamal referring to the area around Lake Nasser.

'We have been promised this by the president of Egypt,' the mayor of Nasr al-Nuba said. But the governor, they claimed, refuses to relocate them to the place they call 'home' despite the president's promise.

They say they have no representatives in Monday's Shura Council elections. 'We need one of us, someone who has seen it all and suffered as we did to defend our rights,' adds the mayor who is also a member of the left-leaning Tagammu opposition party.

The lack of representation of Nubians is what reportedly lead Abdel-Karim Karar, a leading member of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in the Komb Ombo district of Aswan, to quit the party.

Nasr al-Nuba has 60,000 registered voters and according to Karar, the NDP should have fielded a candidate representing this community, but it refused to.
He adds that the Nubians called on the governor to identify Nasr al-Nuba as a separate constituency, but this demand has also been refused.

'Logic says that grand tribes and ethnicities are what should be represented. The Nubians are only 10 per cent (of the population),' said Aswan's governor Samir Youssef.

The governor shrugged off the Nubian troubles as 'the work of minor elements' entrenched among the Nubian communities - people that are financed by Western countries which aim at destabilizing Egypt's societies, he said.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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