Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Laila Ahmet
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Skin diseases and head lice spread as conditions worsen in Gaza
Many of the Palestinians displaced in the Gaza Strip are taking shelter in overcrowded UN schools. A lot of them are mothers and children who left northern Gaza and Gaza City for the south due to Israel’s bombardment of residential areas. The result, said Futna Khalifa, is a “health...
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‘This is a Turkish Republic; go back to your own country’
'The conversation about expelling and taking away people’s citizenship has increased so much against Arabs, foreigners and refugees. There is so much tension in the street'...
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‘I am not ending my hunger strike until they approve my asylum request or I die’
For ten days, Fathi Okil has only drunk a saltwater mix. South Korean authorities have sent an ambulance five times to where he is camped out in front of the Interior Ministry, but he just sends them away. “I am not leaving and I am not stopping my hunger...
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Tim Al-Sioufi: ‘During the earthquake I relived Syria’s Ghouta massacre’
In 2020, Tim Al-Sioufi heard a notification come through on his mobile phone. He checked the screen; there were two Whatsapp messages from an unknown number, so he tapped on the green bar. It opened out into a video, and a message: “This is your deceased father; make prayers...
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‘I am now stateless,’ says Egypt activist Ghada Najibe as she awaits appeal
In December 2020 Ghada Najibe woke up to a phone call – “the Egyptian government has announced they are stripping you of your nationality”, Ghada’s friend told her down the line. That morning Egypt’s Official Gazette had published a government decision, signed by the Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly, which stated that Ghada...
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Egypt uses probation to extend ‘humiliating’ control over opponents
‘The state has become a whale that swallows everything it finds and is never satisfied’...
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They treated me like a criminal for speaking the truth: says Syrian journalist detained in Jordan
It was an ordinary Monday morning in Jordan when they came for me. At around 11:30am on 15 November, the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but to my surprise, three intelligence agents stood on my doorstep. Before I had a moment to process, they had taken me outside,...
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Extortionate bail and official bribery: How Egypt formalised its rashwah culture
On 1 June Abeer Hassan’s brother left the house to deliver some cash to a colleague, a short trip around the block that should have taken a maximum of 15 minutes. Abeer’s brother takes a wide range of medication for a defect in his gland and is weak as...
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‘Everyone was a target,’ says witness to Israeli attacks at Al-Aqsa Mosque
Palestinian photojournalist Mohammed Ateeq was covering the Israeli attacks against worshippers in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque last week when the security forces shot him in the back with rubber-coated steel bullets. He and his colleagues were also injured by shrapnel from stun grenades fired directly at them by...
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Israeli soldiers held BBQ in prison cell to break Palestinian hunger-striking journalist Al-Rimawi
Palestinian journalist Alaa Al-Rimawi began a hunger strike after twelve Israeli armed forces raided his home on 21 April, 2021, in Ramallah after midnight, confiscated his mobile phone and arrested him in front of his children. Al-Rimawi, a 34-year-old father of five, works as a reporter and coordinator for...
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How women in Egypt are defeating the government’s archaic legislation
In February the Egyptian government tried to sell its draft personal status law on a clause that would see men who did not inform their first wife they were marrying a second, fined up to EGP 50,000. On the surface it seemed a fairly reasonable suggestion, a closer look...
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I want to go back to my cell, says released child detainee in Egypt
On 20 February 2021 Manar Abouelnaga and her son appeared in front of Egypt’s state security prosecution two years after their forcible disappearance. Al-Baraa was just three-years-old. The house Manar, her husband Omar and their son shared in the northern city of Alexandria had been raided two years ago....
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Caught between covid and settlers: How a West Bank school is struggling to survive
Across Palestine, schools are closed to try and stem the spread of the virus, but Al-Maleh Elementary has struggled to offer remote learning, because of the lack of internet and electricity in the village....
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Journalist arrested after exposing the plight of Palestinians in Israeli prisons
A Palestinian journalist and activist has been detained for the fifth time by the Israeli authorities after being released earlier this year from an eight-month term of administrative detention, when she was held with neither charge nor trial. Bushra Al-Taweel, 27, was detained on 8 November while going home...
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PTSD. Anxiety. Nightmares: Life after prison for Egypt’s child detainees
On 27 September, Egypt’s public prosecution ordered that 79 children detained since the start of the demonstrations be released. All the children were aged between 10 and 15 and most were from Upper Egypt. It raised a pressing question: What happened to them during the seven days they were...
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Um Ibrahim: ‘My son should be playing with his friends, not in an Egyptian prison’
When Ibrahim was arrested it was a summer’s day in Arish, the capital of North Sinai, and he was wearing a light t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Two winters on his mother is worrying if he has enough warm clothes to wear. On 25 July 2018 security forces...
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Egypt’s sex attacks on women are revenge for the 2011 revolution
The first time Sara Mohani was arrested security forces lined her up against a wall and described her body in intimate detail. “If we find any photo of the demonstration on your phone, we will rape you,” they told her. It was 2017 and Sara had been taken to...
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Massaad Abu Fager: ‘I call on Egyptians to continue to demonstrate’
Shortly after the profile of a well-known Sinai activist appeared in an Egyptian newspaper, the intelligence services called the journalist who interviewed him: “Why have you published a picture of someone from Sinai reading a book?” they asked him. “The state wants to portray us as illiterate barbarians,” says...
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At 14 Haitham was one of Egypt’s youngest political prisoners: ‘They forgot I was a child’
Four years on from his arrest one of Egypt’s child political prisoners Haitham Abdel Rahim recalls 50 days of torture....
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Husband and son in prison. Daughter shot in Rabaa. Asmaa Beltagi’s mum speaks on the massacre
Sanaa Abdelgawad and her daughter Asmaa Beltagi were in front of Rabaa’s main stage when security forces advanced on the square. The area was immersed in smoke and Sanaa and Asmaa were struggling to breathe. “I was wiping her face with a towel and trying to calm her down....
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Forced out by the Crown Prince’s reforms, a wave of Egyptians arrive in Turkey
In 2008 Mariam Ahmed and her family set off east from her homeland Egypt and landed in Saudi Arabia where they became part of the Kingdom’s two million strong Egyptian expat community. Lured by the promise of a salary up to six times its equivalent in Egypt, Mariam recalls...
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Egypt family face ‘severe breakdown’ at son’s impending execution
In March 2015 masked men broke down the door of Khaled Saddouma’s house, entered his son’s bedroom where he was sleeping and dragged him out of the house without telling his family where they were taking him. Authorities sent dozens of armed police officers, security forces and armed vehicles...
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Egypt forcibly disappears baby from his home in Alexandria
On 9 March Manar Abu Naga was forcibly disappeared from her home in Alexandria along with her husband Omar and their one-year-old son Braa. “One of the neighbours told us that their house was raided and that they were kidnapped by men in civilian clothes,” says her brother Mustafa...
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Family of Egypt prisoner plead for imminent execution to be halted
The family of Abdelrahman Attia have appealed for his death sentence to be suspended after the court issued a final verdict ordering his execution alongside five other Egyptian men, allegedly responsible for killing a policeman in 2014. “Our loved ones are waiting their turn to be executed anytime, for...
