We will never know how many people were killed in early September’s rockslide in a slum neighborhood on the outskirts of Cairo. Locals say the death toll probably reached 500. In a city with millions of homeless and poverty in plain view on almost every street corner, it is well nigh impossible to gauge how many people do not have a place to call home.
One woman seeking to change that reality in virtually impossible circumstances is Manal Tibi, the director of the Egyptian Center for Housing Rights. She has been speaking to The Media Line about the rockslide as the inevitable consequence of a far greater tragedy.
TML: What did you see at the site?
Tibi: At first, police forces surrounded the site of the accident and prevented people from getting in and beginning some rescue efforts for the victims. However, no official rescue forces came to the area until two hours later, so the neighbors of the victims broke the police cordon and started rescuing the victims. From then until now all efforts to remove the rocks have failed; the death toll reached 86, but there are hundreds still underneath – some say between 300 and 500. At one point the chief of the rescue forces declared the rescue effort over because there was no hope of finding anyone alive. There are rumors that it will be turned into a collective graveyard.
TML: If a boulder weighing 100 tons fell on any home anywhere in the world it would cause enormous damage, but I’m guessing that the houses there were not well built. Can you describe the structures under the rocks?
Tibi: They were poor houses. All the houses in this area should have been removed. They were built of cement. If any building were subject to this huge number of rocks it would be damaged, but the problem here is that the Cairo governorate had many warnings beforehand from geologists, from the Egyptian Center and other organizations that this place and other areas were dangerous, but they didn’t take any action until the disaster happened.
I’ll tell you something else – the Cairo governorate had 4,000 empty housing units in A-Duweiqa and they didn’t relocate the people before the crisis. The officials are responsible for what happened. Why didn’t they move people from the beginning? They could have avoided having this number of victims.
TML: Are other places waiting for similar tragedies to happen?
Tibi: Yes, it’s true. But the problem is that not only the government but also civil society deals with the problem on a case-by-case basis and they don’t have a strategic vision. The Egyptian government must adopt a national plan for temporary housing to move people living in danger to temporary housing until they build permanent housing. Permanent housing takes a lot of time and money. People are living in danger and they can’t wait until the government builds permanent housing.
TML: In Cairo there are some very nice homes but most don’t measure up to Western standards. There are also many people living in Cairo who are homeless.
Tibi: Official statistics say there are about three million families – between 12 and 15 million people – without a home, in addition to two million people living in cemeteries. Another big problem in Egypt – if we talk about another earthquake like the one in 1992 – we have in Egypt 1.2 million buildings subject to the possibility of collapse.
TML: You’re the only organization dealing with urban centers, fighting on behalf of the people, and your staff is about 16 people. How do you cope with 15 million homeless people when there are so few of you?
Tibi: The problem with homeless people is the most difficult. We are dealing mainly with forced evictions by the government, and people who are forced to leave their houses are subject to homelessness. The situation of homeless people is not like in the U.S. where they live in the streets. Here they live in garages, cemeteries or shops; they don’t appear a lot in the streets, so it’s difficult to reach them.
TML: From the statistics you’ve given us today, it means that approximately one in every five or six Egyptians are homeless, to say nothing of the people living in substandard housing. If that happened anywhere in the advanced world the government would not last five minutes. There’d be civil war, fighting in the streets. How come it doesn’t happen in Egypt and people accept the situation?
Tibi: There’s a false notion that says that the more people are oppressed by their government, the more they will protest for their rights. In my opinion this is untrue. The more the people are oppressed by their government the more they lose their ability to protest. If we talk about who leads the protest movements in any country it will be the middle class, and the middle class in Egypt has been crushed for years. Also, there is a big problem in that we don’t have real opposition parties in Egypt. No one knows whom to follow to protest. The poor people don’t trust the opposition parties and there’s a big gap between the opposition parties and the poor people and the majority of the population in Egypt. Human rights movements in Egypt – and my organization is one of them – are very elite; they work from their offices, they don’t go to the people and don’t teach them how to protest for their rights. They work rather as agents for the people.
TML: The Muslim Brotherhood is banned from running; one main opposition leader was prevented from running in the presidential election and he’s currently in jail; bloggers are randomly imprisoned for their comments. What has moved you to make these comments public? Aren’t you afraid for your safety?
Tibi: I’m scared, but you can be scared without doing anything or you can feel scared but do something. I can’t say I’m not scared. I was protesting last Monday and a security officer kept beating me. My office has been broken into – they stole the hard disc from our computer – and they have prevented us from traveling. But I have a cause and I believe in it. I believe in people and I believe they have rights and I will work on this issue all my life.