18
The Land Center Demands the Council of Borg El Arab City to stop transgressions on propels’ agricultures
People in the area of Borg El Arab suffer from the arbitrary actions taken by the city council in an attempt to through them out of the lands they have reformed throughout the last twenty years. The council claims that the lands are a part of the green belt around the city and that it was dedicated for building parks, clubs and other activities for the benefit of the inhabitants, and in this light the council is committing massacres of trees, cattle and plantations, claiming to execute the decisions of removal, discarding all the efforts that were undertaken by the people to reform this land and construct battery farming facilities.
.
The LCHR has recently received a complaint from M. Wael Ali Mohamed Ibraheim, concerning his suffering from the arbitrary actions taken by the City council to evacuate him from his agricultural land (12 feddans) which he had formed and farmed for 15 years, and on which he had constructed a battery faring. The council has refused to enable him to own this land which he had appropriated, and at the same time issued a decision of removal for the poultry battery, which was removed leading to a waste of more than 5000 chicken, which was a huge loss for the citizen as well as for the livestock. The decision was taken and executed in spite of the actions taken by the citizen to legally register the land to his name and for which he had obtained authorizations from competent authorities to reform this land, which he had started over 15 years ago.
We find it worth mentioning that the Borg El Arab city council has been systemically violating the rights of the farmers who had appropriated desert lands and reformed it, where the LCHR has received lately tens of complaints from farmers stating that the council has refused to legalize their situation after having reformed hundreds of feddans, the council has refused to sell it to them. In the green belt zone claimed by the council there are more than 50 families of small farmers who have reformed more than 1000 feddans and are currently under threat from the council for the same above mentioned reasons, despite the fact that they had followed the ownership procedures defined by the law since the started the reforming process in the late seventies.
The LCHR has filed complaints to the City Council, the Governor of Alexandria, the Minister of Agriculture, the Prime Minister and the Chairman of the Urban Communities Organization to reconsider the removal decisions for agricultural lands neighboring Borg El Arab city, especially the green belt zone, like the ones occupying the green belt in the 6th of October Governorate, where the government lets the people who have appropriated lands build on the land and trade in it, regardless of the violations of agricultural laws and the city council laws and in bias with big investors and businessmen.
The LCHR is asking the civil society organizations to stand in solidarity with the farmers of Borg El Arab to stop aggressions on their lands and plantations, and to enable them to farms their lands safely, in order to protect their rights to safe procession, food production and to decent life and safe life to all Egyptian citizens.
For more information, please contact the LCHR