Amelia Smith – Middle East Monitor

Amelia Smith seen at Middle East Monitor's 'Jerusalem: Legalising the Occupation' conference in London, UK on 3 March, 2018 [Jehan Alfarra/Middle East Monitor]

Amelia Smith

Amelia Smith is a writer and journalist based in London who has reported from across the Middle East and North Africa. In 2016 Amelia was a finalist at the Write Stuff writing competition at the London Book Fair. Her first book, “The Arab Spring Five Years On”, was published in 2016 and brings together a collection of authors who analyse the protests and their aftermath half a decade after they flared in the region.

April 21, 2018 Amelia Smith

‘Syrians are not cockroaches to be exterminated’

Amelia Smith interviews Hammam Yousef, a Syrian activist who co-founded the Syrian Non-Violence Movement during the 2011 uprising.

Published in: Asia & Americas, Europe & Russia, Interviews, Middle East, Russia, Syria, US
April 11, 2018 Amelia Smith

World leaders shed a tear for Syrian children, but for Gaza it’s business as usual

In the aftermath of the chemical weapons assault that suffocated to death over 80 men, women and children in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta, this weekend British Prime...

Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Europe & Russia, International Organisations, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, UK, UN, US, Yemen
March 23, 2018 Amelia Smith

In Egypt the British trade millions of dollars for human rights

In 2016 UK investments in Egypt topped $30 billion. Instead of using their influence to force Egypt to behave, the UK has awarded Sisi with $500,000 of investment for every Egyptian locked up for pro-democracy protests.

Published in: Africa, Egypt, Publications, Reports
March 8, 2018 Amelia Smith

Here come the next generation of female, Middle East activists

On the 15 December 2017 Israeli soldiers raided Ahed Tamimi’s home and shot her cousin in the head at close range shattering his skull. Ahed and her cousin ran...

Published in: Article, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine
February 23, 2018 Amelia Smith

‘The regime is killing people and the whole world is watching’

Mohamed Adel has been inside his office, a basement below a building in Douma in Eastern Ghouta, for four days now. Yesterday at midnight he decided to risk the...

Published in: Europe & Russia, International Organisations, Interviews, Middle East, Russia, Syria, UN
February 6, 2018 Amelia Smith

Doria Shafiq won the vote for Egyptian women, and kicked the Brits out

“To know, to be able, to want and to dare,” Doria Shafiq Britain today is celebrating the centenary of the Representation of the People Act, passed on 6 February...

Published in: Africa, Algeria, Article, Egypt, Europe & Russia, Opinion, UK
January 15, 2018 Amelia Smith

‘As a Palestinian on the stage I feel I’m fighting, I’m resisting’

Palestinian actor and director Momin Swaitat looks at life under occupation and the contemporary refugee experience in his latest work 'Alien Land'

Published in: Europe & Russia, Interviews, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, UK, Videos & Photo Stories
December 20, 2017 Amelia Smith

1,000 days of Saudi war on Yemen, backed by the UK

This week marks 1,000 days since the Saudi-led coalition launched a bombing campaign in Yemen. What followed was the world’s worst cholera epidemic and horrific human rights abuses on...

Published in: Middle East, Opinion, Saudi Arabia, Yemen
December 7, 2017 Amelia Smith

The UK supported Saleh and every other Middle East tragedy

Shortly after photos of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, wrapped in a red blanket bearing a fatal head wound, were circulated on Twitter, a shot of him flanked...

Published in: Africa, Article, Asia & Americas, Europe & Russia, Libya, Middle East, Opinion, UK, US, Yemen
November 25, 2017 Amelia Smith

‘The Syrian conflict is a very big money machine’

Manaf Halbouni tells me that the price of tomatoes in Syria has increased 80 fold since the start of the conflict: “When I left Syria you used to pay...

Published in: Europe & Russia, Germany, Interviews, Middle East, Syria
November 15, 2017 Amelia Smith

Code Name: Butterfly

Butterfly is not your average schoolgirl; at least not if you went to school in the UK. One of her best friends calls herself Dalal Mughrabi after the female...

Published in: Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Review - Books, Reviews
November 13, 2017 Amelia Smith

The million-dollar boat ride across the Mediterranean

By the end of August 2017, 112,450 Eritreans were registered as refugees and asylum seekers in Sudan

Published in: Africa, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Publications, Reports, South Sudan, Sudan
November 10, 2017 Amelia Smith

Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine

Ibtisam Barakat’s house in Ramallah is made of memories, not stone, she tells us. It is made of birds migrating in the sky, of her mother and father, of...

Published in: Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Review - Books, Reviews
October 19, 2017 Amelia Smith

‘I am steadfast,’ says Egyptian preacher on death row

Sheikh Fadl Al-Mawla Hassan was at work at the Engineer’s Syndicate in Alexandria when Egyptian forces raided the building. Everyone, including the security guards and officials working for the...

Published in: Africa, Amnesty International, Egypt, International Organisations, Interviews
September 29, 2017 Amelia Smith

‘The military plan to wipe out all Muslims in Myanmar’

“This village is a Muslim-free zone,” reads a sign hanging at the entrance to a village in an area of Myanmar outside Rakhine state. The orders are directed at...

Published in: Asia & Americas, Bangladesh, Europe & Russia, France, Interviews, Myanmar, UK
September 15, 2017 Amelia Smith

‘Abdulrahman confessed when security forces threatened to rape his mother’

In 2015 six young men were sentenced to death in Egypt for killing a policeman in what became known as the Mansoura Six case. Amelia Smith interviews family members and friends of the ‘six oppressed’ about conditions inside the prison and how their sentencing was more about settling political scores than acting on solid evidence.

Published in: Africa, Egypt, Interviews, Videos & Photo Stories
September 8, 2017 Amelia Smith

Momentum builds to end human rights violations in Egypt

Last week the UN put into words what many human rights organisations and activists have been saying for years now: that they are gravely concerned about Egypt’s ongoing assault...

Published in: Africa, Article, Asia & Americas, Egypt, Opinion, US
August 18, 2017 Amelia Smith

Remembering the gassing of Egypt’s protesters

Four years ago today 37 Egyptians were gassed to death in a police van outside the Abu Zaabal prison in Cairo. Temperatures outside topped 31 degrees and many had...

Published in: Africa, Egypt, On this day, Opinion
August 14, 2017 Amelia Smith

Rabaa field doctor: ‘They burned them dead and alive’

Dr. Hanan Al-Amin was in a makeshift operating room in the Rabaa field hospital when security forces burst into the room and ordered her and another doctor to leave....

Published in: Africa, Egypt, Interviews
August 14, 2017 Amelia Smith

Remembering the Rabaa massacre

Four years ago today the Egyptian army stormed a sit-in at Cairo’s Rabaa square and slaughtered 1,000 people who were protesting against the removal of the country’s first democratically...

Published in: Africa, Egypt, On this day, Opinion
August 8, 2017 Amelia Smith

Israel is squeezing press freedoms, like Arab dictators do

The announcement of Israeli communications minister Ayoub Kara this weekend that he would revoke the press credentials of journalists working at Al Jazeera ’s office in Jerusalem and shut...

Published in: Africa, Amnesty International, Article, Egypt, International Organisations, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE
August 4, 2017 Amelia Smith

‘Refugee detention centres cause terrible mental consequences’

In September 2015 three-year-old Alan Kurdi was photographed lying face down on a beach wearing a bright red t-shirt and blue shorts. The young Syrian boy had been washed...

Published in: Asia & Americas, Europe & Russia, Interviews, Middle East, Syria, UK, US
July 28, 2017 Amelia Smith

Egypt’s war on Sinai

An Egyptian army tank ran over a car bomb in the Sinai Peninsula and didn’t hit the international press until a week after the incident

Published in: Africa, Article, Egypt, Opinion, Videos & Photo Stories
July 19, 2017 Amelia Smith

‘The victims of international terrorism are the Uyghurs’

Amelia Smith interviews Abdugheni Sabit, a Uyghur activist who left China in 2007 and settled in the Netherlands. Sabit is currently appealing to the international community to put pressure...

Published in: Africa, Asia & Americas, China, Egypt, Interviews
July 14, 2017 Amelia Smith

Impending executions, mass trials: Egypt’s corrupt judiciary

Lofti Khalil was arrested outside a shop in Kafr El-Sheikh on 19 April 2015. His mother searched for him for over two months but heard nothing until eventually she...

Published in: Africa, Article, Egypt, Opinion
July 7, 2017 Amelia Smith

How Palestinians won the Nakba

A new play tells the story of Palestinian poet Taha Ali and how he rebuilt his life after the Nakba

Published in: Interviews, Israel, Middle East, Palestine
July 3, 2017 Amelia Smith

Remembering Egypt’s bloody military coup

Four years ago today the Egyptian army overthrew the country’s first democratically elected leader, Mohammed Morsi. In the aftermath of the coup Egypt’s armed forces suspended the constitution and...

Published in: Africa, Egypt, On this day
June 29, 2017 Amelia Smith

Sister of Egyptian Grenfell Tower victim: ‘I have hope she is still alive’

Amelia Smith interviews Rasha Ibrahim, the sister of Rania who lived with her two children on the 23rd floor of Grenfell Tower in west London, which suffered a devastating fire two weeks ago.

Published in: Africa, Egypt, Europe & Russia, Interviews, UK, Videos & Photo Stories
June 22, 2017 Amelia Smith

From Grenfell to Palestine: The media has never been more out of touch with ‘real’ people

Days after the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower, Nadia, a resident in the area, asked a reporter at Press TV why the media is refusing to report the real...

Published in: Article, Europe & Russia, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, UK
June 8, 2017 Amelia Smith

Is Sisi really Egypt’s strongman?

The hypocrisy of Egypt’s decision to join Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE in cutting off diplomatic ties with Qatar on the grounds that the Gulf state supports terrorism...

Published in: Africa, Article, Egypt, Middle East, Opinion, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE
June 5, 2017 Amelia Smith

‘Young people in Tunisia feel betrayed by politicians’

In February 2016 Lina Ben Mhenni began an initiative to open libraries inside prisons across Tunisia as a way to counter extremism. When she announced the initiative on her...

Published in: Africa, Interviews, Tunisia
May 24, 2017 Amelia Smith

Egypt’s Coptic Christians face persecution at home and apathy abroad

When Shenouda became Pope of the Coptic Church in 1971 there were only two Coptic churches in the US – one in New York and one in Los Angeles....

Published in: Africa, Article, Egypt, Opinion

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