Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Amelia Smith
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Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies
It’s Christmas Eve in London and Heba Hayek’s narrator is looking to bake something that reminds her of home. She settles for basbousa, a coconut yoghurt semolina cake, which translates as ‘little kiss.’ “No one should be this far,” she thinks to herself at the end of a video call…
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‘There is no environmental justice without a free civic space’: Yasmin Omar on the destruction of green space in Egypt and COP27
At last year’s Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, campaigners stormed the streets in their thousands, some smearing blood over themselves, others taking off their clothes. They were chanting, yelling, all in support of meaningful action for climate change. “This is the way people express themselves peacefully. However, people in Egypt…
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Third femicide in Egypt in 3 months after young woman says ‘no’ to marriage proposal
A young woman has been murdered in Egypt after turning down a marriage proposal from a 29-year-old man from the village of Toukh Tanbesha in Menoufia Governorate in the Nile Delta, underscoring an ongoing tragedy in the country: violence against women and the authorities’ failure to prevent it happening. Ahmed…
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Ibrahim Al-Koni: ‘Homeland does not take on the meaning of ‘homeland’ until we have been exiled from it’
It is the seventh century CE and the Ummayad forces are advancing across North Africa. Their rapid expansion is fuelled by treasures and riches, their dynasty defined by opulence and debauchery. Amidst the fighting, the Berber warrior queen, Al-Kahina, is resisting. It is from her perspective that Libyan writer, Ibrahim…
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Egypt: Uncertainty shrouds the future of environmental activist Ahmed Al-Kholy, trapped in pretrial detention for 3 years and counting
At midnight on 24 September 2019 plainclothes police officers broke into Ahmed Al-Kholy’s apartment in the Haram district of Cairo and took him to the National Security building in Abbasya, without showing a warrant for his arrest. Across the streets of Egypt, a widespread crackdown was underway as calls to…
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‘Racists’ force Turkiye brand to withdraw t-shirt with Arabic writing
The Turkish clothing brand LC Waikiki is under fire after it withdrew children’s t-shirts from shops in Turkiye after protests that they were decorated with the Arabic language. The offending t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it read “it’s time to play” and has now been withdrawn following pressure from some…
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460 rights groups call on Macron to stop French energy giant paying Myanmar $250m
In an open letter to the French government 459 civil society organisations have urged President Emmanuel Macron to stop the French oil giant Total Energies paying millions of dollars to Myanmar’s military-backed government. Total Energies has operated the Yadana gas project in Myanmar since the 1990s, which pays revenues to…
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Fears rise for exiled dissidents as deportations to Egypt from allies across the region increase
Over the weekend Sudanese authorities handed over 21 government dissidents to the Egyptian authorities, accusing them of taking part in a terror act in the Jabra neighbourhood of Khartoum. Their deportation has received widespread concern from rights activists, particularly as one of the men, Muhammad Ibrahim, was deported along with…
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Outcry as appeal court refuses to stop Home Office flight carrying asylum seekers from UK to Rwanda
An appeal court judge has refused to stop a Home Office flight carrying asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda from leaving this evening. Yesterday, the Court of Appeal in London threw out last minute legal challenges to the British government’s decision to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. It follows…
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Egypt asks Interpol to issue Red Notices to 4 Egyptian journalists in Turkiye
A court in Egypt has asked Interpol to issue Red Notices to four Egyptian journalists working in Turkiye and hand them over to Egyptian authorities. Interpol’s Red Notice system allows member states to request that worldwide law enforcement locate and arrest a person, but whilst criminals have been caught using…
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Hasna Ait Boulahcen: from a young girl on the streets to being holed up with two terrorists
In 2015, Hasna Ait Boulahcen was labelled Europe’s first female suicide bomber by the media, after she died in a blast in the Parisian suburbs three days after the attacks at the Bataclan concert hall. Only later, this was retracted, and reports said that she did not blow herself up.…
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The Story of the Banned Book: Naguib Mahfouz’s Children of the Alley
Since it was first published in 1959, Naguib Mahfouz’s ‘Children of the Alley’ has drawn objections from scholars at Al-Azhar and instigated an attack on his life. Then in 1988 it won the Egyptian writer the Nobel Prize for Literature. What is it about this novel that sparked such debate across…
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Egyptian women’s rights defender Rasha Azab found not guilty, but the persecution of women continues
On Saturday, a Cairo court found journalist and writer Rasha Azab not guilty of charges of insult, defamation, and deliberately disturbing film director Islam Azazi. The case dates to December 2020 when the online blog Daftar Hekayat published anonymous testimonies from six survivors who said that Islam had sexually assaulted…
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Time to extend the UK’s warm welcome of Ukrainians to all refugees
Between January and March 2013, 147 bodies were found in the River Queiq in Aleppo after they were executed in government-controlled parts of the city and dumped there as a warning for dissidents. According to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report at the time, the people appeared to have been…
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Rising bread prices, water scarcity and a climate crisis, Egypt is on the brink
Last week Egypt turned to the IMF for the third time in six years to apply for a loan as the cash strapped nation reels from an 11-year autocratic regime, a climate crisis and now the Russian war. Impact on food insecurity across the MENA region has been one of…
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‘Every time they arrest Salah, he gets stronger’: Elsa Lefort on her husband, Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri
Elsa Lefort met her husband, Salah Hamouri, on 18 December 2011, the day he came out of prison under the Gilad Shalit detainee exchange. As part of his supporting committee back in France, Elsa was there four months later when Salah came to Paris to attend a conference. The couple…
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Senegal says no to racial profiling and neo-colonialism
Last week Senegal abstained on a UN Security Council vote to end immediately Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. The decision came despite intense pressure from its former colonial power, France, who wanted the West African nation to back it up and vote in favour of a resolution demanding Russia halt its use of force and withdraw…
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The war on Syria emboldened Russia and its relentless targeting of civilians in Ukraine
In 2012, six months into the protests in Syria, activists asked for UN observers to be embedded with demonstrators to stop the Assad regime shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. They called for a no-fly zone, the same international protection from NATO that led to the overthrow of Libyan dictator, Muammar…
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Pressure grows on Europe to leverage relationship with Egypt and force change
Over the weekend, former political prisoner Ramy Shaath told the BBC that the West has considerable leverage over Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, a regional ally who has committed serious human rights abuses. Shaath’s comments came ahead of a European Union-African Union summit set to be held at the end…
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Renewed scrutiny on Europe’s border push backs following death of 19 refugees in Turkey
As hundreds took to the streets in Athens and Istanbul over the weekend to protest the Greek’s government’s role in the death of 19 refugees, the controversial pushback policy used across Europe is under renewed scrutiny. Last week the migrants’ bodies were found at the Turkish border town of Ispala…
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‘Egypt is the republic of fear:’ New videos show torture of prisoners inside Katameya Prison
Two new videos showing the torture of detainees inside Katameya Prison in Egypt have been leaked to MEMO by outspoken Egyptian asylee living in Chicago Aly Hussin Mahdy. In one of the videos an inmate is blindfolded and lies face down on the floor with his hands tied to his…
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On the anniversary of the January 25 uprising Egyptians continue to ask Sisi to leave
On the eleventh anniversary of the Egyptian uprising Twitter users continue to call on President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to stand down. For years the president has tried to whitewash human rights criticism and called on Egyptians to be patient with him, with the promise that they will see a different…
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Verdict in landmark trial against state-sanctioned torture in Syria expected tomorrow
The verdict in a landmark trial for crimes against humanity will be heard tomorrow against a Syrian secret intelligence agent in the town of Koblenz in Germany. Anwar Raslan, who defected from Syria’s feared intelligence service and moved to Germany where he applied for asylum in 2018, is the highest…
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Egypt releases 3 prominent political prisoners. What about the 65,000 others?
The new year brought with it the welcome news that three of Egypt’s most prominent political prisoners have now been, or are set to be, released from prison. Former EIPR researcher Patrick Zaki, who was studying for his master’s in Italy, was freed on 8 December after 22 months in…