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El Bagour farmers are on a hunger strike tomorrow They are demanding the President's program and the decisions of the Prime Minister because of their suffering from the policies of the Bank for Development and Agrarian Trust
On Thursday 12/10/2006 at 10:00 am, a number of farmers from El Bagour village – Monofeya governorate who weren't able to payback their debts to the Bank for development and Agrarian Trust will declare a hunger strike in El Qasr El Einy Hospital until their problems with the bank are solved.
The farmers say that they are making this hunger strike because of the arbitrariness of the chairman of the Bank for development and Agrarian Trust Mr. Oweida Fouad who refused to implement the decision of the Prime Minister to re-tabulate the debts of the farmers who weren't able to pay them back without any interests. The Ministerial decision was published in the first page of El Akhbar newspaper in its issue distributed on Monday on 7/11/2005 in the context of implementing the presidential program declared during the presidential elections held in September 2005.
The strikers are also complaining about the negligence of the Minister of Agriculture who didn't take any step to help them and implement the decision of the Prime Minister, which made the farmers and their families face imprisonment and eviction because of the Bank's policies.
We would like to add that the number of farmers who are not able to payback their debts to the Bank is 114327 farmer all over Egypt, most of them deserve that their debts be re-tabulated without any interests because of the deterioration of their livelihood conditions, a big number of them also deserve that their debts be canceled, especially that most of them are small farmers who were evicted out of their lands because of the governmental policies, and they don't have any alternative source of income to payback their debts.
The farmers stated in their complaint to the LCHR that the hunger strike will start with 20 farmers, and then they will be joined by others later.
As an example, one of the cases states that he applied for an 80 thousand pounds of loan from the Bank in 2001, he paid back 30 thousand of them and wasn't able to payback the rest, until the decision of the Prime Minister concerning the re-tabulation of the debts, but after the re-tabulation he was surprised that the Bank in demanding him to pay more than 100 thousand pounds, and the Bank filed a lawsuit against him and his wife using the blank checks that they have signed, as the bank wrote more than half a million pounds worth of money in these checks, in order to force them to payback their debts with the specified interests without resorting to the authorities.
The LCHR demands the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture to issue their decisions to the Bank for development and Agrarian Trust and its branches in the different governorates to implement the decision issued on 7/11/2005 to stop the imprisonment of the farmers who are not able to payback their debts to the Bank.
The LCHR also demands the Prosecutor General to stop the imprisonment decisions issued against these farmers and release the ones who were already imprisoned to guarantee their rights to freedom and safety.
The LCHR also demands all CSOs to unite in solidarity with the demands of El Bagour farmers to implement and respect the rule of the law and guarantee their right to decent living.
For more information, please contact the Center.