Fleeing Sudan, Rape Victims Find Hard Life in Egypt

Fleeing Sudan, rape victims find a hard life in Egypt

By Liam Stack
Special to The Daily Star Egypt
First Published: October 26, 2006

CAIRO- Saa’deya, not her real name, is a thirty five year old widow and mother of six, who fled Sudan more than ten years ago. Once, she was a union leader at the communications company that employed her, until the day in 1993 when she had to explain a new privatization deal to union members. Her co-workers protested the plan, and she and other union leaders were blamed.

“We were arrested, accused of encouraging the workers to rebel,” she says. “They took my from my house, they were being violent with me and swearing at me in front of my children.”

So began a saga of multiple arrests, torture and rape that drove her to seek refuge in Egypt.

“They put out cigarettes in my back, on my body and limbs.” She claimed to counselors at the Cairo-based Nadim Centre for the Rehabiliation of Torture Victims. “They plunged my hand in hot oil and removed the nails of the other hand with a wrench. I was forced to witness the torturing of others and do violent things. The scars on my body are still here to testify that all this happened.”

Eventually she was released, only to be arrested again a year later. This time, she claims, it was worse. “This time I was raped so violently that I was bleeding severely. It caused me to lose consciousness. I almost died.”

The government of Sudan denies responsibility for violence such as this, and has always claimed that it has no relationship with the militias which terrorize Darfur’s civilians. The Sudanese embassy in Cairo was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

Saa’deya says that after her brutal rape her captors released her into medical care. Eventually she was sent to Cairo for more extensive treatment. Once in Egypt, she never left.

For Saa’deya and other refugee victims of torture and rape who flee to Egypt, life in Cairo can be bleak, experts say. Not issued residency papers, they are not legally allowed to work. Most live in poverty, scraping by on charity, rare gifts from relatives abroad, and jobs as household servants or office tea boys. There are few services to treat those who have been sexually tortured, and their poverty leaves them vulnerable to further assault here in Cairo.

“Without the legal right to work, a lot of refugees fall into jobs in the informal sector where there is little protection available.” Says Mireia Cano, a legal advisor at Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA), a Cairo NGO that provides legal aid and psychological counseling to refugees in Egypt. “A lot of the abuse takes place inside the houses where refugees work as maids or household servants.”

For people living both illegally and in poverty, the medical and psychological trauma of rape can easily spill over into financial disaster, says Cano. According to her research, the threat of homelessness is “the number one protection gap.”

“Housing is difficult for Cairenes, but is even more difficult for refugees.” She says. “There are no shelters that accept refugees so when there is a victim of sexual or gender based violence who is assaulted at home or at work, they could be evicted, or fired, or choose to leave their jobs because of the trauma. Then they may not be able to pay their rent. So in different ways it comes down to losing their houses.”

Some means of financial assistance do exist, most notably provided by the UNHCR and the charity Caritas. When a person is recognized as a refugee by the UNHCR, they become eligible for LE 200 a month of aid paid for by the two organizations. But critics say it is often too little, too late.

“Everything for these people is very poor - housing, healthcare, education.” Says Magda Adly, the Director of the Nadim Center. “Civil society organizations try to help, but sometimes there are delays providing the money, and it is not very much anyway.”

And if a refugee does not receive legal recognition, says Cano, they are left out in the cold.

“When refugees are closed file or ‘not of UNHCR’ concern, then the protection gaps are even bigger.” She says, especially for victims of sexual violence. “They fear going to the police because they haven’t got residence permits. They might end up in detention even though they went to the police to report crimes committed against them.”

No one knows how common sexual assault is in Cairo, either among refugee or Egyptian women. Statistics are very difficult to collect, says Cano, but she is sure that “we do not know most of the cases that happen on a daily basis.”

Dr Dina Al-Shafie is well aware of the unique problems that sexual violence poses for refugees. She has served as the Director of AMERA’s counseling program since its foundation in 2003, and says that most victims of sexual assault do not come forward due to fears of ostracism and legal repercussions.

“When people come to us to talk about violence they want protection, and for the truth to come out.” She says. “They don’t want to be quiet about it, but they are scared because they are here illegally and they don’t want to cause problems for themselves. Also, people are afraid to talk about sexual assault because they are afraid of being stigmatized.”

Violence between government militias and rebel groups erupted in Sudan’s Darfur region in 2003. The fighting has claimed over 400,000 lives and driven more than 2 million people from their homes. The violence has continued unabated since the government signed a peace deal with one of several Darfurian militias last May, and infighting among rebel groups has only further complicated the prospects for peace.

In fact, the United Nations says that violence has grown more severe since the summer, and recently condemned “the massive upsurge in rape in Darfur.” It warns that “violence against women and children by warring groups in Darfur is reaching alarming levels. In the past months, attacks on women and girls, both within and outside camps for the displaced, have soared.”

In June 2005, the International Criminal Court in the Hague began an enquiry into the wide spread use of rape in Darfur, which is considered a war crime under international law. The tribunal has said this investigation is its largest to date, and is still under way.

Al-Shafie says she is not surprised to hear that the incidence of rape has increased in Darfur.

“I have been working with refugees since 2003, and since then every Darfurian I have met has been sexually abused.” She says, the shock in her voice tempered by weariness. “It is unbelievable. All Darfurian women that I have met have a history of rape in Darfur. Some of them do not like to talk about it, but at some point they all tell us they have been raped.”

Adly, of the Nadim Center, agrees. “ By the time they arrive in Egypt, 90% of Sudanese in general, both men and women, have been exposed to sexual violence or torture to varying degrees. In Sudan, physical harassment like this is more routine than in Egypt, for both sexes.”

Greater bloodshed in Sudan, and more widespread sexual violence there, could bring even greater challenges to Cairo’s already overwhelmed refugee service providers. For refugees already eking out a life in the city, times could get even tougher.

Al-Shafie says that AMERA’s counseling unit has had “a lot of success stories over the last three years,” but she says there is much more to be done and many challenges remain. Not least among them is the specter of greater bloodshed in Sudan, and a spike in sexual violence there.

“We try to help our clients as much as we can,” she says, “but our services are just not that big. We are always understaffed, and we always want to expand but it is difficult to find funds quickly. The lack of services is a major problem in Cairo.”

Daily Star: Democratic reforms missing from Egypt's political debate

Democratic reforms missing from Egypt’s political debate

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 13, 2006

Middle East expert says region lost golden chance for democratic reforms

CAIRO: Democratic reforms, recently the center of political debate in Egypt, have been rolled back, said Middle East analyst Amr Hamzawy, of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, on Wednesday.

“We might have missed a chance in our region,” Hamzawy told a standing room only audience at the American University in Cairo.

Between 2003 and 2006, a vibrant new political dynamism emerged in the Arab world that focused on the potential for democratic reform, but met little success. “Egyptian public space is vibrant, dynamic and pressing for transition, but outcomes so far have been minimal.”

During the lecture, entitled “Social Activism in Transforming Polities: Egypt 2004–2006,” Hamzawy outlined the key steps that Egyptian activists took to center the country’s political debate on reform and told the audience how he thinks the movement has faltered.

In the 2005 election season, for example, “democracy was the only game in town.” In that game, creativity was a key to focusing the debate on democratic reform.

To reach out to the public at large, Egypt’s most prominent political players, such as Kefaya, used technologies like text messaging and the Internet to draw crowds to their energetic rallies, as well as the “extremely creative, repackaged electoral platform” that drew Muslim Brotherhood voters to the polls.

The presidential elections in September 2005 resulted in an overwhelming victory for the incumbent, President Hosni Mubarak, who has held power since the 1981 assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat. The parliamentary elections, held in three rounds over the next several weeks, produced an historic victory for the Brotherhood. The banned organization fielded candidates as independents and won 20 percent of the seats in the lower house of parliament.

The parliamentary elections, however, were marred by widespread accusations of vote tampering and fraud, as well as state violence at the polls in rural areas.

But the push for political reforms continued to thrive - crossing red lines and talking openly about taboo political subjects was another key to opening up debate.

In Egypt, “Debate focused on the presidency, the corruption of the ruling family and elite, the president’s relationship to other branches of government and the role of the president’s sons,” says Hamzawy. “People also began talking more about the role of the security apparatus that has regulated, in an authoritarian sense, political space here since 1952.”

The third important development in the public arena between 2003 and 2006 was that “Egyptians became aware of the existence of tensions and cracks within the ruling camp, especially between reformers like Gamal Mubarak and hard-liners like Safwat Sherif. As active citizens, these cracks are vital for demanding democratic concessions in moments of instability, which Egypt is approaching.”

Another important sign of the political dynamism of the last few years, he says, is that public debates that now take place on the pages of newspapers would have happened behind closed doors only a few years ago. In particular, the very public debate over presidential succession “promises that we are in a transition period. There has been a clear radicalization of the debate.”

“We have all become more critical of Gamal Mubarak’s role,” he said, looking around the packed room. “What has changed is how cautious everyone once was, and how daring they all became.”

But in the year since the election, Hamzawy says, the debate shifted from a focus on democracy, to repetitive slogans condemning Israel — largely because of this summer’s war in Lebanon.

“The democratic narrative is no longer dominant in Arab public debates. It has lost credibility, and is being replaced by a return to the old resistance narrative that we saw in the 1980s and 1990s.”

“This is an undemocratic narrative, based on dehumanizing images of the ‘Other’, whether that means Jews, or Israel, or the West, or whoever. It is racist and immoral to see Israeli society as a military machine that must be terrorized in the name of Arab or Islamic resistance. For Arabs and Arab intellectuals it is a waste of time, it is populist and it is dangerous.”

“We are going to have a hard time repositioning the democratic narrative to where it was before, he says, because one year after the elections Egypt’s political landscape is badly polarized between three main groups. The first is “an alliance between Gamal Mubarak and the private sector,” the second is state security and the military, and the third is the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I am afraid that as long as we have this bipolar setting of the NDP and the Muslim Brotherhood, we are going nowhere,” says Hamzawy. “I have doubts about each one’s commitment to democracy.”

Daily Star: Despite a few smudges, Pasqua Cafe shines

Despite a few smudges, Pasqua Café shines

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 13, 2006

Pasqua features regular live music, either from the in-house piano or from a number of local musicians
Live music and charming patio make the difference

CAIRO: Pasqua Café sits a stone’s throw from Mohandiseen’s chaotic Lebanon Square, where bright billboards look down over honking cars as they twirl around the circle’s dusty highway fly-over. The scene in the square is typical Cairo, but the café down the street, on Lebanon Street, is a rarer find. Pasqua is a fun choice that stands out from the ranks of wannabe chic cafés that have sprung up across town in recent years. Although not all of its dishes are great, as a whole the café is a fun way to spend an evening dining out with friends.

The café’s atmosphere is lively in a way that is different from its competitors. An outdoor patio surrounds the glass-walled interior dining room, creating an illusion of openness and space in what is actually not a very large restaurant.

Many Cairo cafés think that entertaining their guests means playing overly loud disco remixes of Britney Spears classics on a 10 minute loop, or showing Melody Hits channel from a corner TV. But Pasqua features regular live music, either from the in-house piano or from a number of local musicians. It is a fun and completely sensible approach, which makes it stand out from the crowd.

As one of my friends commented, an ‘oud player singing in the corner behind her, “When you come here, you feel like you’ve really done something with your evening, even if you were just drinking coffee.”
Overall, the food at Pasqua is quite good, although the quality is uneven and some dishes are just not enjoyable.

We began our meal with some juice, which was quite expensive at LE 10.90 for mango and LE 14.90 for a “special cocktail” that was about 70 percent guava juice. We also began with the café’s trademark “Pasqua Salad,” (LE 19) a medley of greens, corn, asparagus, mushrooms, tomatoes and Parmesan in a balsamic dressing. The salad was fresh and flavorful and was hands-down one of the best I have had in Egypt.

For dinner, my party shared pasta alfredo (LE 24.90,) pizza rocca (LE 23.95,) and fillet in mustard sauce (LE 42.) There was a stark difference in the quality of these three dishes, and it was the fillet – the most expensive dish we ordered – which was the biggest disappointment.

The meat was bland and tasteless and was aggressively covered up by a comically pungent mustard sauce. The fillet was completely doused in the bright yellow sauce, and in case you forgot that it was mustard-based, they decorate the top of this gooey concoction with a squiggle of mustard, squeezed right out of the bottle. The sauce tastes like cheap hotdog mustard, the neon yellow paste you can get smeared on a hotdog on any American street corner for $2. It is annoying to pay LE 42 for a bland steak over-powered by such a boring and bad-tasting sauce, especially given the availability of more flavorful types of mustard in Cairo.

Accompanying the meat was a pile of freeze-dried vegetables fresh from the plastic bag, which our waiter insisted were not called vegetables but rather “sauté,” and a generic pile of white rice. Given the freshness of all the other dishes, the freeze-dried side dishes were surprising, and reminded me of the in-flight meal on an airplane.

That said, the other dishes were very good. The pasta alfredo was served with chicken and olives, and was wholly satisfying. The pasta was al dente and the chicken tender and well cooked. Unlike many cafés, which serve alfredo swimming in a pool of cheesy milk, Pasqua’s sauce is more substantive and does not make you go fishing for your noodles.

The café’s motto is “Our Promise: To Serve the Best Pizza,” and it is certainly in the running for that title. Our pizza rocca was an excellent choice, and brightly outshines the pies served at many of Cairo’s other well-known pizza joints. Rocca combines onions, olives, mushrooms and peppers all on a cheesy thin crust and topped with loads of fresh arugula. It is delicious and filling, yet refreshing in a way that pizza usually is not.

Pasqua has a long dessert menu, and although they may have sold out of your first choice there is enough variety to keep anyone satisfied. Unfortunately, the quality of the desserts is also very uneven. We chose a cookie-flavored frappe freeze (LE 12.50), chocolate cake (LE 11.90), cherry cheesecake (LE 13.90) and a date tart (LE 13.90). The frappe freeze was a delicious milkshake filled with bits of chocolate cookie, and the cherry cheesecake was also very nice, studded with pieces of cherry.

The other two were not bad, but did not impress. The chocolate cake tasted like the kind you can buy in a box at the grocery store, while the date tart contained a cream cheese-based filling that tasted far too strongly of cream cheese to actually be enjoyable. Where each dish should have been fresh or subtle, they were neither. While they were not bad, they were also not worth the money.

Despite the uneven quality of many of its dishes, Pasqua Café is a good choice for an evening out. When the food is good, it is very good, and the atmosphere is lively and fun without being too noisy or brash. It is a welcome escape from both the chaos and noise of the city and the lame posing of many of its competitors in the Cairo café game.

Daily Star: For Refugee Students, a New School Year but an Uncertain Future

For refugee students, a new school year but an uncertain future

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 5, 2006

CAIRO: Summer is over and classes have begun at schools and universities across the country this month. Egyptian schools have received much attention recently due to problems like overcrowding and expensive private lessons, but Cairo is also home to a lesser known parallel system of schools which face challenges all their own. Run by charities and volunteer groups, these schools educate the city’s large and growing population of refugee children.

Refugee schools in Cairo come in many shapes and sizes. By far the largest is the network of Sakakini schools, which use a mostly Egyptian curriculum and teach in Arabic. English language schools, which use an American or British curriculum, are also very popular. All teach math, science and job skills as well as languages. Tuition is low, about LE 20 a year, and is reimbursed by the UNHCR for people with recognized refugee status.

In addition to these schools, there are volunteer groups like the American University in Cairo student organization Student Action for Refugees (STAR), which provide free classes in English and job skills.

Most refugee schools are run by foreigners or expat churches, and must walk a tight rope in a country were proselytization and conversion away from Islam are both illegal. St Andrew’s Refugee Ministry runs one such school. It is housed on the grounds of a church of the same name, but maintains a strict separation from it. About 85 percent of its students are Sudanese, and between 50 and 60 percent of them are Muslims.

“Some schools won’t let Muslims in at all,” says its coordinator, Dick Allhusen. “Sometimes State Security will stand outside our gate questioning Muslims who come out, asking them what they were doing inside a church. But we invite them in to look at our classes. We have nothing to hide here.”

According to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which Egypt has signed, refugee children have a right to an education in local public schools. In Cairo, refugees are almost never able to exercise this right, and the charity schools fill an important void.

“I am not aware of one refugee going to a public school,” says Allhusen, whose Downtown schools functions entirely in English. “In theory they can go to public school, but there are too many roadblocks. There are fees they can’t afford, and so much racism and harassment that many students would rather not go anyway.”

He offers the story of a former St. Andrew’s student as an example. According to Allhusen, the 10-year-old Sudanese boy fled his Egyptian private school after he was stabbed in the eye by an Egyptian classmate. The incident was brushed aside as an accident and no action was taken. Today the boy, blind in one eye, lives in the United States.

Demand for seats in these programs is high, and some are wildly popular. According to Jennifer Renquist, president of STAR, around 3,000 people showed up to register for only 250 spots in the group’s fall English classes. Organizers had to communicate with the throng of potential students via megaphone, and the seats were eventually raffled off in a lottery.

Demand for English classes has continued to grow despite the sharp decline in the number of Sudanese refugees resettled abroad after the 2005 peace treaty between North and South Sudan. There are many possible reasons for this. It is the official language of south Sudan, and may lead to better job opportunities either there or in Cairo.

But like all things in the life of a refugee, a desire for resettlement abroad and the uncertainty of the future seem to figure prominently in the decision to enroll in English classes.

“The majority of the refugees taking our classes probably do so because they think they will be resettled, which is not the case,” says Renquist. “Last year we offered Arabic courses, and only filled one class. There was just not that much interest in it. The false hope of resettlement is here and it’s something we have to deal with.”

“We’re not telling people ‘learn English, it’s a stepping stone to the West,’” says Allhusen. “We tell people they should think about repatriation, that they should go home when it’s safe in their area. Already some people have gone back to Juba. But many families haven’t given up hope of finding a private sponsor to go to Canada or Australia. There are some people left who still expect to immigrate to a Western country, but it’s becoming very rare.”

The largest educational hurdle facing refugees in Egypt is the lack of accreditation given to the schools open to them. To be accredited in Egypt, a school must teach an Egyptian curriculum, including Arabic, and a certain percentage of the teaching staff must be Egyptian. None of the refugee schools in Cairo meet these standards.

“Right now it’s virtually impossible for us to become accredited,” says Allhusen. “Most of our teachers are Sudanese, their degrees and experience are all from Sudan, they’ve been educated in Khartoum or Juba – Egypt doesn’t recognize any of this.”

In theory, students from schools which use an Egyptian curriculum but are unaccredited, like Sakakini, are still eligible to take the thanawiyya ‘amma, the highly competitive university entrance exam. But “the government keeps throwing up road blocks,” he says, “and I don’t know anyone who has passed the test.”

Without a degree from an accredited high school, refugees cannot enter Egyptian universities. They have no hope for advanced study or upward mobility in this country, and many have little hope of resettlement in the West and no desire to return to their home countries.

“I don’t know where this is all going in the future,” he says, the honking of car horns and the squeals of playing children mingling outside his office window. “People are personally very hungry to learn. But what’s the future for these students? I wish there was one, but I don’t know.”