About 200 Warraq Island residents staged a silent march Tuesday morning to the New Warraq City Development Authority, where they handed its deputy head a list of demands, two founders of the “Staying on Warraq Island” movement who took part in the march told Al Manassa.
Tuesday’s action was the first organized by the movement since it was launched last Friday to oppose a government plan to evict residents from their homes and redevelop the island with residential and investment towers and commercial and service areas backed by private investors.
Videos shared online showed residents leaving their homes and heading to the authority’s headquarters to submit their demands for improved conditions on the island.
The list of demands submitted to the authority called for land to be allocated on Warraq Island to build replacement homes for island residents under a defined timetable, clear implementation mechanisms, and fair terms.
Residents also demanded that all cases against young Warraq residents related to events on the island be closed. One of the two sources, both of whom asked not to be named, said at least five island residents had been named as defendants in political cases since 2019. They were arrested and later released, but the cases were not closed, leaving them at risk of rearrest.
The source said the cases were “brought against them as a backdoor way of punishing the island’s residents as a whole,” after dozens of residents were acquitted in three cases “directly linked to attempts to displace them and residents’ protests against the plan to clear the island.”
Demands also included urgent measures affecting daily life that residents said were needed “until the first and second demands are met,” including services for issuing death certificates and registering births, access to doctors in various specialties and essential medicines, and the removal of construction debris.
Residents also called for the restoration of post office services for pensioners, enough sewage pumping trucks at nominal cost, and the reopening and renovation of the youth center.
Island residents link the decline in government services to the demolition of the health clinic several years ago. Residents rebuilt it at their own expense last year.
The demands also included allowing construction materials onto the island and removing police checkpoints near the ferries. Both demands relate to a major cause of repeated clashes between residents and security forces: intensive searches for construction materials near ferries linking the island to the Warraq urban district on one side and Shubra El-Kheima on the other.
The second source told Al Manassa that movement members read the list to participants during the march to ensure there was consensus before submitting it to the authority. Movement representatives are due to return to the authority next Tuesday to receive a response.
The dispute between the government and Warraq residents stems from plans to redevelop the island and relocate its residents. In 2018, the Cabinet issued a decree establishing a new urban community on the island, followed by decisions expropriating land for the New Urban Communities Authority to implement the “New Warraq City” project.
The project calls for residential and investment towers as well as commercial and service areas. In July 2022, the State Information Service announced that the island would be renamed “Horus City” under a plan then estimated to cost about 17.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($350 million).
The government’s insistence on carrying out the redevelopment plan and clearing parts of the island has fueled persistent tensions with residents who refuse to leave their homes. The dispute has led to deadly confrontations, including the fatal police shooting of an island resident in July 2017.
Tensions have flared again in recent years over restrictions on construction materials, curbs on ferry movement, and the detention of residents.
Islanders say allowing regulated construction is one of the basic conditions for remaining on the island, while the government insists on carrying out its redevelopment plan.
