Farmers of Ezbet el-Islah in Samadoun carry out their

  protestin a demonstration against the Land Reform Authority’s delay in delivering title-deeds for their land.

  .On the 3rd June 2008, farmers of Ezbet el-Islah in Samadoun , Manoufia, carried out  their protest which they announced the beginning of last week, before the headquarters of the Agricultural Land Reform Cooperative  located in the village itself, protesting against the repeated delay of the Central Agricultural Land Reform Authority in delivering the title deeds to land distributed to them in the 1950s , land for  which, it should be noted, they  have completed payment.  They have previously demanded through a fax sent in June 2007 that the Authority  take immediate and necessary  procedures to register the land in their names. At 8.30 a.m, more than three hundred farmers gathered before the Agricultural Cooperative headquarters demanding, through telephone calls, that they be  given the necessary title  deeds. They also strongly criticised the position of the Authority for their persistant delay..Security forces- after news that the protest was definitely going ahead- were summoned the day before yesterday, to found out the details of the situation. The   farmers made clear to them that their protest was going ahead, and that it was to condemn the position of the Authority because it had repeatedly delayed , without any justification , to deliver title deeds. They had effectively, as farmers informed security, made it possible for all those hoping to snatch the land and evict the farmers, to do so without any legal binding  preventing them.  Such people had used a certain lawyer as a point of confrontation in the  ‘imaginary selling process’, for anyone claiming he is a rightful hier to the land. They also take extra measured aimed specifically at farmers, such as raising cases in court demanding returns from the land. In such cases the farmers are degraded to the status of tenants on the land, and not owners who had attained the land through the legal processes of land reform.  (In being classes as tenants , and  not land owners, the farmers are thus given the choice of paying masses to the new owners, often backdated many years, or being thrown off the land.). The City Mayor and Asmoun Centre, as well as the directors of the general land authority  in Monoufia, and the director of the Land Authority in Ashmoun attended the protest, in addition to a number  of security heads and investigative officers in both the governorate and Ashmoun center. Individual secret police officers were also spread out amongst the centre of the farmers, following every conversation that went on between farmers and representatives from the Press, both local and international; el-Karama, el-Fagr, el-Misry el-Yom, el-Bedeel, and The Daily News Egypt). There was also a convoy of central security cars carrying troops, stationed approximately one kilometre away from a nearby railway station awaiting orders.   Farmers noted that the governor of Manoufia had made calls to the General Director of the Land Reform Authority in Manoufia as well as the Mayor of Ashmoun, both at the site of the protest, and demanded them to made an immediate report on the situation. The proverbial ball is now in the court of the state to start procedures based on the truth.  From another angle, the el-Fagr reporter Rasha ‘Azab noted that after the end of the protest at 2 p.m, she confronted the opposing lawyer who is claiming ownership. She asked about the veracity of his claims, whereby he informed her that the Land Reform Authority did not have any legal basis to confiscate land from the late feudalist ‘Abd el-Hafez ‘Amru. On this basis, the purchasing procedures currently running between him and one of the heirs of the former land owners Mansour Youssef, who died in 1925, are all above board.  He added that he wasn’t acting alone, as he does not personally have the money which the land was bought with. He also said the security forces had completed studies that rendered his planned taking hold of the land, planned for next  Tuesday 10th June, all legally  acceptably.   The discussion with the opposing lawyer points to one of two possibilities: Either he spoke with the aim of intimidating farmers and destroying their morale, or  someone who is using him as a front will not be notified of this trick (that of buying the land from an heir of former owner  Mansour Youssef in a forged preliminary contract) until after he makes sure that the confiscation papers from the files of the landplot and ownership administration in the Central Authority for Agricultural Land Reform ‘disappear’. However, the latter possibility is weak, because it was well known that this land was part of the Land Reform Programme, as stated in the Land Registry no. 497. This is what proves that the lawyers claims are false.T
he matter is expected to come to light in the coming days, and of course before the imminent occasion of next Tuesday. 

Tuesday 3 June 2008 

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