Problems on hold
A malicious ploy that has become all-too-familiar in case of usurping land in Egypt is for the usurper to claim that the land would be used to establish a mosque or an Islamic school. This despite the fact that al-Azhar issued several fatwas stipulating that buildings for religious purposes are not to be erected on usurped land, and that prayers on the same are unacceptable. On the ground, the ploy is unfailing; it intimidates the authorities and practically ties their hands if they dare consider returning the land to their rightful owners.
The memory of the dispute over a piece of land owned by a church and seized by a neighbouring mosque is still fresh in mind. The land in question lay in the area between the church and the mosque. With the courteous consent of the Church, the mosque officials would spread a marquee across the land to shelter Friday worshippers who could not be accommodated inside the mosque. A few years later, the Church officials were horrified to find the land being suddenly prepared to house a direct extension of the mosque building. Disputes erupted and, despite the Church’s unequivocal right to the land, the local and security authorities—mind you, not the judicial—intervened and pressured the Church into selling its land to the mosque. Appallingly, this was considered as the optimal solution for the sake of preserving peace; no one appeared to worry that the law was broken or that the aggressor was reaping the sweet fruit of his labour. And no one commented at the wolverine authorities donning sheep’s clothes.
Since it pays so well to violate the law, it comes as no surprise that the incident—or rather the catastrophe—should recur. Last week Watani wrote on the latest details in the case of Ezbet Hanna Ayoub (Hanna Ayoub’s hamlet) in Mallawi, Minya, Upper Egypt. The tiny hamlet is inhabited by 29 Christian families who know of no other home; a family in rural Egypt is an extended family, with no less than some 20 members. Their parents and grandparents had always lived there adjacent to what had once been a swamp in the property of the large landowner family of Hanna Ayoub. Being among the poorest of the peasants, the landowners promised them they could live on, build homes and rear livestock on that spot once they managed to fill the swamp. So the land they today live on was never ‘land’ in the first place; these people had salvaged it from the swamp. The older members in the hamlet vividly remember helping their fathers relentlessly carry bagfuls of soil on their shoulders until the swamp was filled. In 1962 the land reclamation law was passed, and landowners were stripped of vast areas of land. Among these were the 20 qirats of land (3,650 sq.m) belonging to the peasants of Ezbet Hanna Ayoub, who were then informed they were living on State property and had to be evicted. They repeatedly offered to purchase the land in order to legalise their residence but were told it could not be sold yet, but would be auctioned off according to the law.
The Land Reclamation Authority procrastinated on the issue until last year, when it sold the 20 qirats to one Taher Abdel-Hafez Stouhi, a land owner, resident of the nearby village of al-Birka and head of the Islamic Society there, to build an Islamic Azhari institute. No-one could figure out the logic behind building an Islamic school in a predominantly Coptic village, and worse, it was to be built on land usurped from the Copts. The peasants’ houses were bulldozed but, even then, they refused to give up their land, stayed on and tried to rebuild their homes. The case of the disputed land is now in court.
In desperation, the peasants turned to Minya governor Fouad Saad-Eddin. He agreed to meet them but, sadly, it was not in order to help them regain their usurped right, but to announce he was not taking sides in this dispute; as though the two sides were equal, not that one side was the aggressor and the other the crushed victim. He declared the governorate would itself purchase the land—he never said how when the land had already been sold to Stouhi and a court case was ongoing—and would establish a school or youth centre on it. So where would the peasants go? The wise, just governor replied it was none of his concern.
I present this disgraceful disaster—I do not term it a case—to human rights activists, and call upon them to move swiftly before 29 families are rendered homeless by a governor in sheep’s clothing.
* Youssef Sidhom is the editor of the WATANI weeky of Cairo/