BUE president resigns after student protests

Students of the BUE on Tuesday, 5 March, during the protests on campus. (Photo by: Mahmoud Ibrahim)

By: Reem Gehad 

(This article was originally published on Ahram Online's website on 9 March 2013)

President of the British University in Egypt (BUE) Ahmad Hamza has resigned from his post after a week of student protests calling on him and senior administration members to leave office.

Students started a sit-in last Saturday in front of the university's administration building to protest the executive administration's policies and demanded that the president and general secretary Sami El-Masry leave their posts.

On Thursday, students reiterated their demands to university Vice President Mostafa Gouda, adding the demand that the administration cancel any investigations against students.

Hamza had warned in a statement on Sunday that the university "has started an investigation into students [accused of causing violent action] and will take appropriate disciplinary action with those proven to be guilty."

Gouda accepted all students' demands and also accepted the resignations of both Hamza and El-Masry.

The university's board of trustees, headed by Mohamed Khamis, Egyptian businessman and owner of Oriental Weavers Company (a leading carpet company in Egypt), had delegated Hamza to deal with the students' protests.

"The university's board of trustees next meeting will be held in June to appoint a new president," said Sherif Mamdouh, campus manager in BUE's student union (SU). "Until then, Gouda will act as the university's president."

Classes are expected to resume at BUE Monday. Ex-president Hamza had stopped classes in his initial statement.

Omar El-Alfy, president of BUE's SU, told Ahram Online on Monday that students were protesting the lack of facilities received by students despite the relatively high tuition they pay.

He also claimed that the university administration manipulated students' exam results to disqualify more students from the scholarship programme - forcing more to pay the fees.

Protesting BUE students welcomed the decision and regarded it as a great accomplishment.  

"This is the biggest victory for students in Egyptian universities, we are very happy," Mamdouh says.

"I believe this is an achievement for all Egyptian students and not just for us in BUE," he adds.

Twitter is abuzz with the many BUE students expressing their satisfaction over the decision.

Reem El Sherif wrote, "[The] real victory is not Hamza's resignation - it is that the grades are corrected for the students that deserve it and a better level of education." 

BUE halts classes as students protest to sack university president

BUE students protesting in front of administration building on Saturday 2 March (photo by: Omar El-Alfy)

By: Reem Gehad

(This article was originally published on Ahram Online's website on 4 March 2013) 

Classes have been suspended for a week at British University in Egypt (BUE) after students staged protests calling on the university’s president and its general secretary to leave their posts. 

While BUE students received emails informing them of the decision, a copy of a document signed by university president Ahmed Hamza circulated on Twitter late Sunday. 

"After consulting with members of the university council about the violent incidents caused by several students and the damages they have led to, the university’s president has decided to halt all educational activity for a week," the statement reads. 

Students started a sit-in at the university’s administration building Saturday and surrounded the president’s office, preventing him from entering. They protested the "commercialisation of education" of their privately-owned university. 

"We believe that the university’s main aim is profit," Omar El-Alfy, BUE’s student union president, said flatly. 

"The university has been manipulating students’ exam results to disqualify more students from the scholarship programme, thus forcing more to pay the fees," he claims. 

"We also believe that the facilities offered by the university, whether it be class space or bus service, to students on campus are not proportionate to the amount of fees they pay," El-Alfy added. 

Annual BUE tuition and fees range from LE38,000 - 45,000,depending on the department of study, not including books. Bus fees, educational support and administrative service fees are optional but often necessary expenses. 

Although the university’s president agreed to cancel a new 500 sterling pound fee for certain engineering departments and promised that midterm exam papers will be re-marked, students were not content and demanded the administrators leave their posts. 

"We were often promised that such issues would be resolved, but this was never fulfilled," El-Alfy charges. 

According to El-Alfy, the university’s general secretary left his position Sunday. 

"Sami El-Masry gave the student union a signed handwritten document of his resignation," El-Alfy said. 

The issue is yet to be resolved on campus, however. 

In his statement, Hamza said that the university "has started an investigation into students [accused of causing violent action] and will take appropriate disciplinary action with those proven to be guilty." 

"BUE has also notified Egyptian police and the general prosecution of the events and damages so they can take appropriate legal action," it added. "This stems from the university’s keenness on continuing studies in an atmosphere of stability." 

BUE was founded in 2005 as a private university in partnership withLoughborough University in the United Kingdom. 

Similar protests took place at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the German University in Cairo (GUC) in September. 

AUC students closed down the campus for over a week, forcing the administration to suspend all activity. After negotiations, the administration agreed to reduce future tuition increases from 7 percent to about 2 percent until 2016. 

Egypt's private universities form union against new charter

Student unions' leaders at the conference (Photo: Reem Gehad) 

By: Reem Gehad

(This article was originally published on Ahram Online's website on 22 Jan 2013.)

Eight Egyptian private universities have announced forming an Egyptian Private Universities Union (EPUU) in protest of the recently-approved universities charter and the performance of the Egyptian Student Union (ESU). 

The EPUU's formation was announced at a press conference held at the American University in Cairo (AUC) on Tuesday.

This eight-member body, consists of the AUC, the German University in Cairo, the British University in Egypt, Misr International University, El Asher University, the Egyptian Russian University, Nile University and the French University in Egypt.

AUC student union president Taher El Moataz Bellah said that private universities were never part of the Egyptian Student Union for public universities in the first place to call their separation an official one.

Several Egyptian private universities, like many student groups in public universities, are very critical of how the ESU drafted the charter.

They claim they were not involved in the writing process and that the charter does not represent them fairly.

The university charter, which was approved by Prime Minister Hisham Qandil last week, sets the regulations of public universities in Egypt.

The charter also includes a section on the workings of the ESU, which originally acted as an umbrella for public and private universities. This section, made up of four articles, lays the general charter of the ESU for public universities.

"According to this section, all private universities have two seats out of 25 in the ESU’s general assembly and do not have the right to sit on the ESU’s executive office," Mohamed Alaa, a member of AUC's student union said.

The EPUU is currently working on its own charter to regulate proceedings between the private universities and form an entity that represents them collectively, while keeping each university’s individual internal set of regulation in place.

"This charter will stay until the ESU decides it wants to reconsider and take a different approach and makes changes to include us properly in its union," Alaa said.

If the ESU does not take steps to tackle the issue, the EPUU will present its charter to the Supreme Council of Universities to request an official approval.

Shady Ibrahim, member of the ESU executive office, told Ahram Online, that the charter was written this way because the Egyptian university regulations law does not include private universities.

Private universities instead have their own separate regulations law.

"This would have created a legal issue for us, but we are calling for issuing a university regulations law that would include both public and private universities," Ibrahim said.

The EPUU considers this to be an "illogical justification" for the unfair representation of private universities in the charter.

"This charter is like the universities’ constitution," Alaa said.

"No one writes down the constitution according to the laws already in place, but the opposite should happen. We write in this charter the most desired and fair situation we want and then work on changing the laws to conform."

The EPUU also criticised the fact that the charter was not put on referendum for students to approve or reject it.

Several student leaders expressed their dissatisfaction at the situation.

Mohamed El Gazar, SU president at the Egyptian Russian University said, "Many students in private universities face problems every day. We too need someone to represent us and carry our voice to the ministry [of higher education].

El-Gazar also added that excluding private university students or any certain group of students, from the decision-making offices of the ESU weakens it.

“Many students could have ideas and suggestions to develop the higher education system in Egypt and take part in solving the problems,” he said, “They should not be cast away.”

El Moataz Bellah said that forming the EPUU was the last option they wanted.

"If we did not take our rights this year, we never will. We needed to find an entity to protect us," he said.

The ESU was also criticized for being influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

"We don't necessarily mind that the leaders were part of the Brotherhood as long as they gave everyone else fair representation, but this did not happen," El-Moataz Bellah said.

On Thursday, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression filed a lawsuit in Egypt's administrative court against Qandil's recent approval of the charter calling it "unconstitutional."

According to article 162 in the constitution, President Mohamed Morsi should have been the one to approve the charter.

Egypt rights group challenges new university students' charter

Fatma Serag, lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, speaking about articles in the charter. (Photo: Reem Gehad)

By: Reem Gehad

(This article was originally published on Ahram Online's website on 20 Jan 2013.) 

The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE), a Cairo-based rights group, has filed a lawsuit in Egypt's administrative court against Prime Minister Hisham Qandil's recent approval of a charter for Egyptian university students, the group announced at a Sunday press conference.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, says the students' charter should have been approved by President Mohamed Morsi and not Qandil, according to Article 162 of the national constitution.

This article does not allow the prime minister to issue "regulations for the enforcement of laws." Article 196 of the university's regulation law, the AFTE notes, states that the president represents the approving authority.

The lawsuit, lodged in the name of Helwan University student and AFTE member Mohamed Nagi, was raised against President Mohamed Morsi, PM Qandil and Minister for Higher Education Mostafa Mosaad.

At Sunday's press conference, the AFTE also expressed its dissatisfaction with how the charter was written.

"The Egyptian Student Union (ESU) [a national student body established in 2011] was dominated by Muslim Brotherhood representatives at universities who took control of the charter-drafting process," Nagi said.

"The ESU sat for five meetings to discuss the draft and no other student political groups took part," he added.

Several political groups, especially Egypt's Revolutionary Socialists, expressed their displeasure with the situation and demanded that a student referendum be held to approve or reject the charter.

However, the ESU refused the proposal and instead tabled other suggestions, including conducting workshops that would include other student groups in the drafting process and presenting the document to rights organisations.

"These demands were never fulfilled and several student forces boycotted the process completely," Nagi said. "The charter was written mainly by students from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist Nour Party, the Reform and Development Party [the political wing of Egypt's Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya] and the 6 April youth movement (Ahmed Maher Front)."

Last October, a final draft of the bylaws was issued and sent to Egypt's Supreme Council of Universities and the higher education ministry.

"The ministry, too, is not objective in this regard," said AFTE Assistant Manager Kholoud Saber. "It has ignored the political dispute that this charter has created at universities."

"Even when the ministry called for a meeting with student leaders, many students from the opposition were not invited and results of the meeting were not announced," Saber added.

Not only is the AFTE critical of the issue's legal aspects, but it also takes issue with several of the charter's articles.

"Article 318 puts restrictions on students' right to organise into groups other than official student unions," Fatma Serag, a lawyer for the AFTE, said.

This article, she explained, describes student unions at Egyptian universities as "legitimate organisations" through which students might make their voices heard.

Serag was also critical of Article 331, which states that the Student Union Council must be notified of any student activity three days beforehand. The council, with the agreement of at least two-thirds of its members, also has the right to prohibit the activity in question if it does not comply with the union's objectives as stated in the charter.

"This list of [approximately ten] objectives is phrased in a vague manner that could be manipulated if the council disapproves of a certain activity," Serag said. "Also, if a certain political force is dominant in the council, it could easily use the two-thirds majority rule to its own benefit."

AFTE members consider the charter "unconstitutional" and "unrepresentative" of all Egyptian university students, saying that, even if it is legally approved by President Morsi, they would continue to press for the desired changes.

ESU members were not available for comment on the issue. 

Nubians still dream of return to historical lands in Upper Egypt

Nubians carrying banners listing their demands at the protest (Photo: Reem Gehad)

By: Reem Gehad

(This article was originally published in Ahram Online's website on 29 Jan 2013.)

In front of a long line of Central Security Forces eyeing them from behind thick barbed wire, they stand in a circle, their arms wrapped around each other's backs, and they dance to the rhythm of a song only they can understand. 

More than a hundred Nubians gathered on Saturday in front of Egypt's Shura Council building to protest what they call "the deliberate and continued marginalisation" of their nation, which, they say, "represents the origin of Egypt."

"If Egypt is the mother of the world, then Nubia is Egypt's mother," Abd El-Moneim Abd El-Wahab of Al-Madiq Nubian Association said, modifying the familiar saying.

Abd El-Wahab, an old man sitting in the shade in a galabiya (traditional dress), is demanding, like many men and women at the protest, a resettlement law that would relocate the 44 Nubian villages on the banks of Lake Nasser, which they insist on calling by its original name: 'Lake Nubia.'

Starting in 1902, Nubians had to leave their lands south of Aswan in Upper Egypt so the government might build its Aswan Reservoir. The largest wave of migration came in 1960-1963, when Egypt started building the Aswan High Dam under Gamal Abdel Nasser's presidency.

"We want our lands and homes back," women from the Nubian village of Al-Seyalla, who did not want to disclose their names, said.

Several Nubian groups drafted a 40-article resettlement plan that they had presented to Egypt's first post-revolution parliament (since dissolved by military order).

"We discussed the law in September 2011 with former prime minister Essam Sharaf, who promised to draft a law to resettle Nubians," said Mohamed Adlan, head of the Public Nubian Club.

"However, nothing happened and we were surprised to hear that Prime Minister Hisham Qandil is forming a special committee to look into the demands of the Nubian people," he added.

Similarly, Ashraf Osman, head of the Nubian Sayyalla Association, criticised government planning.

"Whenever a new prime minister takes office, we start the whole process over again. We can't continue from where we left off previously," he explains. "This shows a chaotic decision-making system."

Adlan argued that the desired land in Nubia is rich and can open up many opportunities, especially in agriculture, for Egypt.

Many Nubians at the protest feared these lands would be used by the government for foreign investment, stressing that it was their right to go back to the land and utilise it themselves.

"It should not go to foreign investors... We are the ones who deserve this land and they know it," said Shaimaa Hassan, who works as a journalist in Cairo.

Many of the Nubians in front of the Shura Council, which, coincidentally, does not have a Nubian representative, were unsatisfied by what members of the ruling Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) had to say about Nubians.

Most notably, last summer, leading FJP member Essam El-Erian described Nubians as "Egypt's invaders."

Many protestors asserted their Egyptian identity by carrying signs saying that they had built the Aswan High Dam, noting that they had been there when the Egyptian Army crossed the Bar Lev line in the 1973 Egypt-Israel War and that Pharaonic civilisation had flourished on their lands.

Actions taken by the Qandil government regarding Nubian issues were also the subject of complaint.

In December, Qandil's cabinet allocated about 5,000 feddans (slightly more than 5,000 acres) as compensation to the Nubian people in the area of Karkar and to build new residential units in Abu Simbel city. 

The protestors viewed these decisions as a "diversion" from their main demand of resettlement. They also criticised how the government issued such decisions.

"This means that each of about 1,930 families [in Karkar] will get a feddan each," Adlan said.

"Did they even look up Nubia's population numbers? They do not have a strategy," Osman added.

Around 60 Nubian associations – from Nubia itself to cities where Nubians migrated en masse, such as Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Ismailia – participated in the protest.

They demanded the establishment of a high commission to develop Nubia and the separation of the Nasr El-Nuba electoral district from Kom Ombo, Aswan, allowing Nubians to achieve fair representation in parliament.

In addition, protestors want to dismiss Mostafa El-Sayed, Aswan’s governor, who remained in office even after president Hosni Mubarak was ousted during the January 25 Revolution.

Many men and women at the protest expressed their frustration with the government's focus on the Sinai Peninsula on the border with Israel while setting aside the Nubian issue.

"We have always been peaceful people; we never carried arms or caused trouble; we sacrificed our homes for our beloved Egypt, and when we demand our rights, we should be given the first priority," said Mohamed Abd El-Aziz of Al-Madiq Nubian Association.

Many Nubians at the protest expressed their disagreement with the 'Katala' armed movement in Nubia.

Katala (meaning 'brave warrior' in the Nubian language) recently announced that it would use violence to "separate Nubia" from Egypt completely.

"Katala is a reaction by some Nubian youth who saw that the diplomatic method has not yielded results," Osman said. "They saw that the unrest happening in Sinai was getting the government's attention and they decided to take the same route."

"Although we understand where it is coming from, we do not agree at all with its methods," Osman said of the movement.

Several political parties were present at the demonstration, including the Strong Egypt Party and the liberal Free Egyptians Party.

Mohamed Salah, member of the Nubian team in the Strong Egypt Party, said his group was working on a plan detailing demands and solutions for the Nubian issue, which it plans to present to the incoming parliament.  

"We are currently establishing two offices for our party in Nubia and are very much concerned with their problems," Mona Rizk, the party's women's committee secretary-general, said.  

"Since we do not recognise the Shura Council as a legislative body, we are awaiting the incoming parliament to start pressing for progress on the Nubian issue," she added.

However, some Nubian youth at the protest were not optimistic about political parties' involvement in the issue.

"Political parties use the Nubian issue for their election campaigns and nothing more," Islam Omar, a student at Egypt's Al-Sherouk Academy, said.

"What we need is to get real Nubian representation in parliament and solve our own problems," he added.

Originally, Nubia stretched for about 350 kilometres from Dabud village to the south of Aswan to Adendan village in the Halfa Valley in modern-day Sudan.

Currently, the Nubian villages lie on less than a half of what originally used to be their lands.

"They told us we would go to a green heaven, but it turned out to be a scorching desert," Shaimaa Hassan said.

The Nubians still hope that they will once again be able to live by the banks of their lake as their ancient ancestors did.