Masalmah's blog

By Masalmah, history, 5 years ago, In English

The ACPC (Africa and Arab Collegiate Programming Championship) is the competition that gathers the Arab world and some counties in Africa, and it’s the one that qualifies those regions’ teams into the ICPC. The ACPC is held every year at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

Palestine is one of the countries that should compete in the ACPC, and its qualification contest to the ACPC is the PCPC (Palestinian Collegiate Programming Contest), however, for almost the last decade, Egypt refuses to give the qualified Palestinian teams the Visas to compete at the ACPC. The ACPC this year will be held tomorrow, and from the moment we had qualified (a month ago) until now, we have been collecting funds to register at the contest and just hours ago our Visas got refused again!.

This is sad and miserable. The community here has been evolving and growing in the last two years, but this situation will do nothing but pulling it back.

This situation won’t be settled until Egypt raise its control from the ACPC and hands it to another country that can accept all the Arab teams regardless of their nationality.

It’s really sad to see your team name competing tomorrow but with zero tries, and what hurts more is the ignorance of our complaints from the ACPC organizers and this is why we are writing this here.

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5 years ago, # |
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EVERY year the same thing happen, this is so RACIST !!!!

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    No race being involved here. It's just stupid to host a competition where clearly a whole country can't get there.

    Ban Egypt from hosting ACPC till they fix their system.

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5 years ago, # |
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why does egypt refuse to give you a visa ?

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    Political reasons.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    Israel rekt them so hard in the Six Day War and Yom Kippur war that they don't consider Palestine real.

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      5 years ago, # ^ |
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      Well, this a very disrespectful comment coming from a kid making fun of people died defending their country.

      We'll never forget that Palestine is a real Arab country that was taken by force in a cruel way by non-humans and we'll never forget what happened and what's already happening there till now.

      The main reason of this problem is totally related to the government which we are already complaining from as Egyptians. A guy from the crowds only raised Palestine flag in a football match few days ago and he got arrested for this. One thing I kind of believe that the government also is controlled in these decisions by stronger countries which you can't mess with, otherwise they'll throw atomic bombs on you killing over 200K people, or just start a war against you claiming that you have hidden nuclear power.

      And regarding Yom Kippur, yeah we lost in this war that Israel decided to give us back all Sinai for free as compliment after keeping it for 6 years. Try to read real history, not the one on wikipedia.

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        5 years ago, # ^ |
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        Ok boomer.

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
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          An ongoing conflict which caused tens of thousands of deaths isn't a good thing to joke about :)

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            5 years ago, # ^ |
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            That is called Dark Humor. :|

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              5 years ago, # ^ |
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              Yeah, totally fits on someone's funeral :)

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            5 years ago, # ^ |
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            You'd be surprised how common jokes about such things are.

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              5 years ago, # ^ |
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              You would be surprised that you are the Best joke!!!! learning is not enough have some manners and be loyal this is coding not a war and if you don't have manners keep your opinion to your self how mean!!

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        5 years ago, # ^ |
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        The problem with government and security not Egyptian people, Our problem is not with you and we hope all the best for you in the competition. On the contrary, we proud of your wonderful performance in the competition <3 We know that the harm to you is greater than us But the idea that we want to convey is that as long as there are problems, and some countries can't reach the contest as Palestine and some times Syria, Algeria and more .. The competition must be organized elsewhere to ensure the participation of all the winners

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
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          Yeah, I totally agree with anything that makes it fair for everyone, and I really feel sad every year when I see this problem is still ongoing :(

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
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          I thought people choose the government not the other way around. :P

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            5 years ago, # ^ |
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            Yeah, that's only true when the government is not your dictator country army :D

            Object and you are a traitor whom will be arrested or executed soon.

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            5 years ago, # ^ |
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            you can find that out of Egypt

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              5 years ago, # ^ |
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              And should this make me feel better?

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
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          The competition must be organized elsewhere to ensure the participation of all the winners

          Jordan?????

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            5 years ago, # ^ |
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            Yes ,Jordan / Syria / Morocco ( since ACPC Was Organised tha first time in Morocco 1998)

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5 years ago, # |
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This is very sad !! I just can't believe they didn't solve such a problem after having it for couple of times !! This can kill the community, but don't stop growing up please ! Keep it up and next time we want to see you at the icpc inshallah !

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5 years ago, # |
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We are rooting for you!

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5 years ago, # |
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That's a shame. Sorry for that guys! I know how much work it takes to qualify. Hope you can make it next year.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    Even if they make it next year, their VISAs will be refused again!

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5 years ago, # |
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That's so unfair!!

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5 years ago, # |
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I fully support you guys, that's a shame!

This year we included a member in our team from Algeria and we seriously prepared for the ACPC, then in the end they refused his visa, simply because he's Algerian!

I sent 2 emails to the organisation asking to delay the competition or at least create another secondary host, and they are just ignoring us.

Believe me, its all politics, we gave the same documents when we applied, they accepted the Tunisians and refused the Algerian.

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5 years ago, # |
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Because of being Palestinians, we can't participate and take our chance to be part of ACPC ?!! ACPC means (Africa and Arab Collegiate Programming Championship) and palestine is an arabic country

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5 years ago, # |
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This is totally unfair!

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Year after another The Palestinian's complaints are ignored, but we should not stand still, we should do something. there is two things I think we can do that will make Palestinians participate in a regional competition and have chance to participate in ICPC.

The first possible solution, we as a Arabic and African participants should have effective view in this, we need the Arabic and the African CP community to help us by refusing participating in ACPC if any country prevented from participating because of Political reasons.

The second solution, and I'm sad to say this, but Palestine may be forced to participate in another regional competition (I'm not sure if that possible by the rules of ICPC, but we should give a try for any solution may solve the problem).

Hope that this problem will be solved soon, and Palestine participate next year.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    I don't like the second option because it feels like we are excluding Palestine from the competition, aside from the political movement against ACPC that will arise.

    The first is possible, but should be done by someone else, ICPC.

    Imagine if the ACPC was held in country X, where X isn't Egypt, and let's say that X refused all Egyptian visas. Would ACPC let this slide like it did with Palestine? I don't think so, and it is not just about Egyptians being better generally. If what happened to Palestine happened to any other country, ACPC would ignore that as it didn't happen.

    There must be a rule that, if a country wants to host a regional competition, it should guarantee that all team of that region should be able (in general) to attend the competition. Here, Egypt clearly defies that by the general norm of rejecting Palestinians visas.

    Btw, the same thing will most probably happen in IOI 2021, but at least IOI sometimes allows countries to participate in other place if it's not possible to attend the main IOI competition. I hope so.

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      5 years ago, # ^ |
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      I agree with you, I think participating in another region must be the last option, but on the other hand you can't interferes in the affairs of a country. So the boycott must be from the participants and then the host country will be forced to let all teams get to competition (all of that without interferes in the host country sovereignty.)

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    It is very much possible for a country to change the region, if you find the right people to talk to about this. Literally not being able to participate should be a good enough reason ;) But there may regardless be a lot of politics when you actually try to join another region.

    Only thing is, I can't figure out what other region Palestine could reasonably be. In SEERC, like Turkey? I mean, Israel apparently is in SWERC, so you would not be the first country in the area to participate in a strange regional :P.

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5 years ago, # |
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Someone said that you got the Visas at the Sharm El Sheikh site, Can you confirm this?

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    On Friday night, after the Visas refusal, they told us “hey come to Sharm El Sheikh no need for Visas”, although this is an illegal way and could put us in a bad situation, we requested an official document confirming that, but with no hope.

    
PS: There were no flights going from AMM (the only way we can get into Sharm el-Sheikh) at that time. They knew that, and they only made this to discharge their obligations regarding our participation.

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      5 years ago, # ^ |
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      What a coward move!!!

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      This is really sad, I hope that you have better luck next time.

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        It's the fourth year the Palestinian teams are banned from joining the other ARAB teams in Egypt, Obviously luck can't help if ACPC will be held in Egypt again.

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      5 years ago, # ^ |
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      Lying and telling us that visas are ready in a vary late time is not the only frustrating thing. What's more frustrating is that VISAs was not issued for three of the Palestinians(Me and another two). In 2017, me and my team were the champions of PCPC, It was like a big dream for us to participate in ACPC and meet the most talented problems solvers from all of the ARAB countries in Egypt.But the Visas was not issues. We didn't even have the chance to wear the ACPC T-shirt :(

      https://www.facebook.com/abozanona/posts/560548324304335

      I graduated that year, and after two years my old team invited me to join them(as a guest) in ACPC 2019. I was willing to pay the Airline and Hotel costs from my own pocket. But I was the first person to be rejected, as the VISA was not issued for me

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5 years ago, # |
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This is not fair at all Where is the problem if they Went there I can't believe it Coding makes you learn how to respect People minds not where they are from I hope Someone try to- fix this as soon as possible