Ismail Gabriel Tissot - Khartoum
For more than three weeks, the suffering of the Sudanese stranded in Egypt continues after their stranded means of returning to their country due to the precautionary measures imposed by the Sudanese authorities to prevent the spread of the Corona pandemic.
The number of Sudanese stranded in Egypt reaches 1080, and the Sudanese embassy in Cairo succeeded in evacuating a large number of them who were stuck for weeks in the Sebaiya area of Aswan Governorate, as they were on their way to the Arqin border crossing, hoping to enter Sudan by land.
The Minister Plenipotentiary and Chargé d'Affaires of the Sudanese Embassy in Egypt, Ambassador Khaled Ibrahim Al-Sheikh told Al-Jazeera Net that the medical advisory in his embassy is following 30 cases of stranded people, one of whom died, while the other two entered intensive care in one of Cairo's hospitals.
The deteriorating humanitarian situation had prompted the Sudanese stranded in Egypt to organize a protest in front of the Sudanese embassy building in Cairo, during which they demanded the competent authorities in Khartoum to allow their return to Sudan.
Denunciation and demands
In a memorandum addressed to the Sudanese government through the Sudanese embassy in Cairo, the stranded demanded the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdouk to exclude them and allow them to return to Sudan, "with any arrangements or procedures required by health conditions such as examination, stone, isolation and other safety and protection requirements for the stranded."
The stranded, denouncing the humanity and "wanting to return," denounced the Sudanese authorities' continued closure of the airspace and border crossings, without regard to their health and humanitarian conditions.
Ambassador Khaled Ibrahim Al-Sheikh expressed his regret for the stranded Sudanese insistence and their adherence to organizing vigils to put pressure on the Sudanese government.
The ambassador said in his interview with Al-Jazeera Net that the stranded Sudanese behavior is entering the embassy in great embarrassment with the Egyptian government, because these protests represent a clear violation of the precautionary measures taken by the competent authorities to prevent gatherings.
Fear of the worst
The stranded Sudanese fear what they described as a worse reality that awaits them in the future of days, and Musab Bashir Suleiman, one of the stranded, criticized the Sudanese government's stance "by not allowing its citizens to enter their lands and impound them in another country where they suffer desires, hunger and disease."
However, the competent Sudanese authorities refuse to exclude the stranded in Egypt, and Dr. Babiker Al-Maqboul, director of the Emergencies and Epidemiology Department of the Sudanese Ministry of Health and a member of the Higher Technical Committee for Emergencies, says that the government’s position is consistent with the exclusion of those stranded in Egypt as a state policy dictated by precautionary measures.
In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Maqboul rejected the accusations directed at the government to abandon these Sudanese, and said that their situation is not anomalous, and that the procedures followed by the Sudanese authorities have been implemented by many countries, indicating the state's commitment to housing and living the stranded people until the exceptional circumstances related to the Corona pandemic are clear.
He denied that the competent authorities had excluded Sudanese coming from any other country after announcing the precautionary measures.
Humanitarian conditions
For his part, Montaser Rizk Allah, one of the stranded, stressed the need for the Sudanese government to exclude its citizens stranded in Egypt, and allow them to enter the country and submit to quarantine, similar to what is happening in many countries.
And Rizk Allah revealed that there are patients who suffer from kidney failure and need periodic washing, and others who suffer from cancer, diabetes and heart diseases, diseases that require continuous health care and their current conditions stand without being met.
Sulaiman Ahmed al-Sibai, who is stranded, deplores the Sudanese embassy in Cairo, who he said had hired the Egyptian police and security forces to break up the protest.
But Dr. Babiker al-Maqboul held the Sudanese stranded in Egypt responsible for the exacerbation of their humanitarian crisis, and attributed the matter to what he described as lack of coordination and the positions of some who reject the Sudanese authorities ’decision to close the airspace and border crossings.
Al-Maqboul also criticized the refusal of some of the stranded to surrender to the Sudanese embassy in Cairo, and "their commitment to the principle of confrontation, which enters them into serious problems and consequences."