Racism: added item to list of misery

I live in Ain Shames in Eastern Cairo, it is not a fancy rich place. The governmental clerks or artisans are the inhibitors of it. In Ain Shames I was used to see crowds gathered to buy the subsidized bread, or gathered to ride the public transportation in the early morning to go to work, and many other form of situations that show the daily struggle of the people in Ain Shames.

Back in the eighties and nineties, many sectarian clashes took place in Ain Shames, the most famous and most dangerous was the Adam street Church, it was fight over a piece of land as the reason of the majority of sectarian clashes. Recently the racial dynamics is taking a new trend, the clashes are not between Muslims and Christians anymore, the new comers are the subjects of the racial sentiments here.

Generally we can say that lower middle class is the large sector of the inhabitants of Ain Shames, but others sought peace and decided to live here too, those are the Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers, where they can afford living next to the Egyptians.

Sudanese are the largest refugee community in Egypt, they all fled Sudan to save their lives from the wars in the South and in Darfur, they thought they will find peace in Cairo, but sadly the situation in Cairo is not as they dreamed. They are suffering too much here, not only the scarcity of resources and the lack of services, but also racism is a major problem.

I saw many fights and nasty speeches directed to them, it is very common to find young Egyptian boys following the refugees and calling them racist names related to their black color, and the reaction of the people around them will be negative as well, they will say "you invaded the country" or " we are already having many problems and you are adding to our problems" and many other racist speeches.

I see this and I can not change anything, I saw the massacre of Muastafa Mahmoud mosque in 2005, where many were killed and I was sad but what made me sadder, were the comments of the Egyptian public and racist speeches against the poor victims .

Ironically that is taking place in Egypt, a dark color but not black nation, I will not refer to the black Egyptian from the South who face similar situations, I really do not understand the ridiculous white supremacist attitude of Egyptians, I just want us to see the misery the refugees are going through daily, they are suffering enough so please do not add a new item to the list .

This post is written in the campaign of Twenty Four Seven campaign to discuss the migrants rights .

check the campaign website : www.twenty-four-7.org