6/14 LEE SIU HIN: Our Successful Historical Chinese Activists Delegation to Egypt: Panda Aid to Organize Gaza Medical Humanitarian Mission, Support Palestinians in Egypt, and to Build International Activist Solidarity Movement!
Lee Siu Hin 李小轩
China-US Solidarity Network
中美民间交流协会
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
全(美)国移民团结协会
Image: Yosef and Fadi, Gazans in Egypt
Report from Gaza—Part Three Humanitarian Planning from Egypt
6/14 Cairo, Egypt: Our week-long Chinese activists organized international medical humanitarian mission to meet broad-based humanitarian organizations in Egypt for building medical tent in Gaza, and a donation campaign from Chinese community to support Gazans escape to Egypt, was a great and powerful success！
Panda Aid project was initiated by the China-US Solidarity Network, National Immigrant Solidarity Network and the Beijing e-Medical Alliance, an international community-based antiwar and social justice network, to build grassroots international activist solidarity to fight against US-West imperialism, and to build international activist solidarity from China to U.S.
Why We Do This?
We believe at the latest U.S.-backed Israeli Zionist brutal war against people of Gaza, the solutions are not what U.S. tell other nations; instead, people from Global South and Palestinians should united to fight against U.S. and Western hegemony, tell them straight to their face: Stop Blocking Gaza, Cease Fire Now! Arrest War Criminals and Stop Arming Israel! .
Unlike in the U.S., overwhelm majority of the Chinese public supports Palestinian struggle, many also want to support Gaza humanitarian aids, however, due to the western media censorship and the U.S. Chinaphobia propaganda, many western people couldn’t see China’s positive and active role on supporting Palestine. Furthermore, most western-run activist groups and humanitarian organizations are predominantly white people run, very few people from global south and China had hired to do the work, it created a false “white-savior” misconception.
We decided to organize our Chinese and Chinese-American organized activist medical solidarity mission, in order want to break the western domination on the humanitarian work, as well as building a road map how Chinese and people-of-color community activists can come to support Palestinians, and to build grassroots activists solidarity。
Since we arrived from Shanghai to Cairo on June 9, every day facing over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) hot summer; we had intense day-to-day meetings and humanitarian works in Cairo, including: meetings with humanitarian organizations for building upcoming Gaza aid project this summer, interview with Palestinians in Cairo, and to organize humanitarian donations for the groups in Cairo.
Humanitarian Organizations
One of the organizations we’d met and support was Network for Palestine in Cairo, they support Gazans escape to Cairo who need help. With the request from the Network, we went to market several times to purchase household items, such as: blenders, diapers, kitchenware and mattress. Ans today, at our last day in Cairo (June 14) we went to the store to buy 17 mattresses to donate.
Image: donations
Total cost is about 4400RMB (630USD), or about 260 yuan (37USD) per piece. The mattress is made in Egypt and the raw materials are come from China.
Image: Donations
Because of very short preparation this time, compare with other organizations our donations were only symbolic. Still, they're very grateful for our support and the solidarity voices from China.
Image: Network for Palestine
Another organization is MEDICS World Wide, a Turkish-based international organization offering logistics support for medical operations and transporting aid items into Gaza. They’re currently working with different organizations to build field hospital in Gaza.
Images: MEDICS World Wide
Since the IOF invade and shut down Rafah crossing at the Gaza-Egyptian border last April, all humanitarian transportation from Egypt to Gaza had been completely shut down. While Israel slowly arrowing humanitarian goods entering Gaza from Israeli crossings, or further away from Jordan by land crossing Israel to Gaza—the so-called “Jordan corridor”, or by sea using useless U.S.-military build multi-million dollars floating pier. All these routes are highly inefficient with limited capacity due to the Israel intentionally make everything extreme difficult, in order to maximize Gaza starvations and bankrupt every aid organizations “they just want us pack and leave Egypt” an aid work says.
Image: Current Aid Items Delivery into Gaza
Palestinians in Cairo
Since the Israeli Occupied Forces (IOF) invasion and massacring Palestinian people in Gaza last October, desperate Gazans had spent lots of money to get visa in order escape to Egypt
Because they left with nothing, in Cairo they need someone to support them with various food and living supplies, include helping them to rent a house.
Yosef was young businessman and online celebrity before the IOF invasion, few family members were killed, his house and the business was destroyed. With the help from his Chinese friend and TikTok fans, he and his older brother Fadi were able to raise enough funds to pay the “fees” in order to escape to Cairo recently.
Image: Yosef
He is planning move to China and start a new life, with cry for end the war now so they can back to the normal life.
While “officially” U.S. U.K. and the E.U. are the biggest donors for the Palestine, yet there’re many grassroots people of the color, global south people-to-people diplomacy aid works for the Gaza are not reported by the western big-media. When we’re donating our items to the Network for Palestine, we met an aid organization from Germany, but their members are mostly from global south, donated two trucks of food for Gazans in Egypt.
What ‘s Next?
We honored to meet with different organizations in Egypt, they’re inspiring, we talked about future joint activist-run humanitarian projects in Gaza and Egypt.
We want to raising enough funds this summer, to build our medical tents and hire local doctors/nurse to run in Gaza; we want to send Chinese and people of color volunteers to Egypt to coordinate donations to Gaza and Gazans living in Egypt, we want to raise enough funds to send medical equipment and medicine into Gaza, we want to invite activists from around the world to join our project.
We want to raise our voices of grassroots Chinese community activists, together with peace and social justice activists around the World fight against western imperialism, and building international humanitarian solidarity, PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!
Past Articles and Reports:
Part One: 3/26 Palestinian-American, Chinese-American and Egyptian activists are together in Cairo for an international humanitarian mission and to fight against the Zionist war machine paid for by the U$A
About Lee Siu Hin 李小轩
Lee Siu Hin, a Chinese-American immigrant activist from Los Angeles, CA, is the founder and national coordinator of the China-U.S. Solidarity Network (CUSN) and the National Immigrant Solidarity Network (NISN). He is a long-time community, labor, antiwar and immigrant rights activist for grassroots struggle. He's also a long-time Pacifica Radio KPFK Los Angeles unpaid reporter and producer and war correspondent who has worked in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.
NISN is a grassroots-based national immigrant activist network, and CUSN is a network of academic and community activists in both countries committed to building a China-U.S. grassroots activist dialogue.
Lee holds a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) and a Masters of Engineering (Aerospace) from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, located in Pomona, CA.
He is currently working on medical IT technology for the inner-city community, and for the global south. He travels frequently between China and U.S. for the activism work.
His latest book “Capitalism on a Ventilator” was co-published with Sara Flounders in September 2020; the Chinese edition was released in January 2022. He contributed to “Sanctions: a wrecking ball in a global economy” published in December 2022 and produced the documentary “Vaccine and Sanctions” released on February, 2023.
His second documentary “Voice of Xinjiang” still under production, a short version was released on December, 2023.
Please subscribe our CHINA email list
e-mail: ActivistWeb@gmail.com
Tel: (626)394-0710
Please consider making a donation to the important work of National Immigrant Solidarity Network，Action LA and Peace NO War
Send check pay to:
NISN/AFGJ
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
P.O. Box 751
South Pasadena, CA 91031-0751