{"id":3863,"date":"2017-08-03T14:36:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T14:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2017\/08\/03\/uighur-students-limbo-after-crackdown-egypt\/"},"modified":"2017-08-03T14:36:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T14:36:32","slug":"uighur-students-limbo-after-crackdown-egypt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/uighur-students-limbo-after-crackdown-egypt\/","title":{"rendered":"Uighur students in limbo after crackdown in Egypt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Al-Monitor<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI am waiting to see what will happen to the detained students,\u201d Nur, a Uighur student at Al-Azhar University, told Al-Monitor after requesting a pseudonym for security reasons. \u201cWill they be released and allowed to move on with their studies, or will they be deported? I have to wait to see if I can enroll in university next semester.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Egyptian police rounded up at least 62 Uighurs<\/a> in Cairo on July 3 at the apparent request of the Chinese government. The New York Times<\/a> reported on July 6 that Egyptian aviation sources had revealed that authorities had deported 12 members of the community and detained another 22 \u201cfor immediate deportation.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On the night of the raids, Nur was lucky to have been praying at a mosque far from Nasr City\u2019s Hay al-Sabea neighborhood, where most foreign Al-Azhar students reside. \u201cWe have a WhatsApp group, and a friend warned us not to go home or to a Uighur restaurant in that area,\u201d Nur said. \u201cPolice raided the restaurant and then arrested some students at their homes nearby. I stayed out that night and ended up waiting under a building.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nur later traveled with 12 other students to Hurghada, where he spent four days at a hotel before going back to Cairo. Nur took some of his female colleagues to the Hurghada airport for flights to Turkey and was detained for an hour and a half.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to let the girls go to the airport alone, especially because they don\u2019t speak Arabic,\u201d Nur explained. \u201cI got detained and they asked for my passport. Luckily, I have my residency paperwork. They interrogated me and eventually let me go. I was scared they wouldn\u2019t.\u201d There is an arbitrariness to the process.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nur said that authorities had arrested more than 20 students attempting to travel to Turkey from Alexandria\u2019s Borg El Arab airport and that one friend was picked up at the Cairo airport. HRW reported similar claims.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why they are arresting us,\u201d Nur said. \u201cI asked the police officer at the airport why they were doing this, and even he told me that he did not know why they had [received] these orders.\u201d Nur is now afraid to travel in case his name is on a travel ban list.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mohab Saeed, a lawyer specializing in students\u2019 rights at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression<\/a> (AFTE), told Al-Monitor that, according to their analysis, the fact that some Uighur members were allowed to flee to Turkey while others were not points to the probability of a list, but, he said, \u201cIt is more likely that it was sent from China rather than written by Egypt.\u201d It is unclear on what the list is based, Saeed said.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nur, who has been able to stay in touch with a detained friend who smuggled a phone into prison, said that Chinese officials had interrogated the Uighur detainees<\/a> in Tora.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For years, China has cracked down on Uighurs<\/a>, an ethnic minority from China\u2019s Xinjiang region, on the premise of \u201cfighting terrorism<\/a>.\u201d There have been multiple cases of countries deporting Uighurs back to China, where they face persecution.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Saeed and a group of lawyers have visited two Nasr City police stations and the Tora prison, but officers denied that there were any Uighurs there. \u201cSo, officially, the state hasn\u2019t even recognized the arrest of these people,\u201d Saeed said. \u201cThe state\u2019s narrative has been one of denial.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mohamed Abdelsallam, the head of AFTE’s research unit, told Al-Monitor, \u201cKnowing what possible future implication this situation holds depends on the Egyptian government\u2019s disclosure of information.\u201d Government officials and institutions have only issued scattered statements to journalists, he said.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On July 9, an unnamed security source<\/a> told Al-Masry Al-Youm that authorities had not deported the Uighur students and that the arrests concerned residency and paperwork checks.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Abdelsallam said, \u201cIf these students had real charges and accusations handed to them, then they should have been referred for prosecution and then put to trial in a court setting. This is not what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Al-Azhar spokesperson Hossam Shaker told Al-Monitor, \u201cThis is a private governmental matter, and the university has no relation to it. There were no students arrested at the university.\u201d On July 7, HRW and AFTE wrote a letter to the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, asking him to \u201ccease the mass arrests of ethnic Uyghurs.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Shaker said that he does not know how many of the detainees were enrolled at the university, but that Tayeb had intervened to release 17 Al-Azhar students<\/a>. There are currently 263 Uighurs finishing degrees at Al-Azhar, according to Shaker, who also noted, \u201cSome [of the detainees] might be students at other institutions.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Saeed pointed to a discrepancy in the narratives, with the Interior Ministry denying the detentions and Al-Azhar \u201csometimes saying this is a security matter they have no link to and then saying they have already released their students.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nur said that many of his friends have been sleeping in mosques in Old Cairo, while Abdelsallam said that some Uighurs have left Cairo for other cities in an attempt to avoid arrest. \u201cThe police are still in Hay al-Sabea to arrest people,\u201d Nur remarked. \u201cSome of them have even asked the doormen of some of the buildings about the students.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nur explained that the Chinese crackdown fluctuates, stating, \u201cI came here in 2013, but I went back home in 2015 without a problem and stayed there for 22 days. Since 2016 \u2014 over the past six months especially \u2014 this has changed because of Chinese policy.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nur has not spoken to his family in four months. While he still has savings, they will not last for long. For now, he has chosen to stay in Cairo rather than Hurghada for financial reasons.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe do know that a lot of [Uighurs] are having budget problems now,\u201d Saeed said. \u201cTheir money is running out. There are also families that now do not have access to medical services because of the lack of money and their fear of moving around [lest police see them]\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Saeed added, \u201cSome of them who were applying for refugee status at the UNHCR cannot go there now either, because there is a police presence around the headquarters.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Shaker said, \u201cThere is nothing against Uighur students following up with their studies and enrolling next semester as long as they have gone through their enrollment procedures and their paperwork is in order.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In May and June, students began hearing rumors that police would start arresting them. Back home, Chinese authorities threatened some of their families to pressure the students to return, Nur said. In June, Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar met with Chinese Deputy Public Security Minister Chen Zhimin and discussed future cooperation<\/a> and exchange of information about countering extremism<\/a> and \u201cextremist organizations.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe really didn\u2019t expect [the arrests], though. I never thought Egypt would do this,\u201d Nur said. \u201cBut it happened.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n



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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al-Monitor \u201cI am waiting to see what will happen to the detained students,\u201d Nur, a Uighur student at Al-Azhar University, told Al-Monitor after requesting a pseudonym for security reasons. \u201cWill…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3863"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}