Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Amelia Smith
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‘Women of my generation viewed freedom fighters as similar to Guevara, Castro and Mandela’
When Sahar Khalifeh was young, her family didn’t support her dream of becoming a writer. They regarded art as a sin that would ultimately destroy the family’s reputation. “The word ‘art’ means to uneducated people, and to most semi-educated people in the Arab world, singing, acting and belly dancing,” Sahar…
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When I spoke out about my brothers’ arrest the torture stopped, says Egypt opposition member abroad
On 22 August 2020 Mona Alshazly received a devastating phone call from her mother. “They’ve taken everything,” she told Mona, screaming and crying. “Our documentation and all of our electronic devices, including the broken ones.” Mona’s family house, which is in the Muharram Bey neighbourhood in the city of Alexandria,…
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‘Writing saved me from my demons,’ says Palestinian author Huzama Habayeb
Amidst the harsh, rugged environment of Baqa’a refugee camp in Jordan a Palestinian apprentice seamstress runs her hands across rolls of velvet. Hands that speak of a decaying spirit and up until now have only witnessed the collective loss of the past. “You cannot imagine anything beautiful in this camp,”…
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Ghada Oueiss: ‘Saudi has based its rule on the suppression of women’
On a warm evening in April 2020, an image of Al Jazeera anchor Ghada Oueiss nude in a hot tub lit up the internet. It was captured in the private residence of the network’s Chairman, Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad Bin Thamer Al Thani, claimed the caption. The Arabic hashtag ‘Ghada jacuzzi’…
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Egypt’s Arctic Spring
Demonstrators who joined the millions of people in downtown Cairo a decade ago, 25 January 2011, navigated the shifting sands of the regime’s shock, conciliatory tone and anger and steered Mubarak towards his capitulation in what is still today one of the most momentous days in Egypt’s modern history. Revolutionaries…
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Against the Loveless World
The Nahr we meet some way into Susan Abdulhawa’s “Against the Loveless World” is a different one we imagine to the figure who sits in an Israeli jail cuffing her own hands to the wall and staring up at the black camera built into the roof of her cell. The Nahr who…
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‘I was thinking about Khashoggi,’ says ex-Egypt political prisoner as consul lures him inside consulate
On Friday 25 September Amr Abn Hashad went to the Egyptian consulate in Istanbul for his tawkeel, or power of attorney. They gave him a receipt and asked him to come back and get his documents the following Monday at 12pm. Amr remembers thinking that was strange, because many people are…
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In northwest Syria camps brace for covid catastrophe. In Aleppo, locals bribe hospitals for beds
On 10 September 2020 Dr Adnan Al-Jasem became the first doctor in northern Syria to die from coronavirus. Al-Jasem had fled the bombings in Deir Ezzor in the east of the country and tended to the wounded throughout Syria’s nine-year long war. Yet it was the virus he died of…
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They risked their lives to show the horrors of war. Where are Syria’s journalists now?
Just before Marie Colvin died, she was looking for her shoes. Rockets had already hit the top floors of the makeshift press centre where she was holed up, in the Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs in mid-west Syria. Another landed and she was killed before she made it out. Her…
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Twitter ignites as Egypt ‘terror’ court hands 15-year term to human rights defender
A so-called terrorism court in Egypt has sentenced the President of the Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies, Bahey El-Din Hassan, to 15 years in prison in absentia. The charges levelled against Bahey Hassan, who has been described as the spiritual father of the human rights movement, are familiar. They…
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Egypt’s medical aid diplomacy extends to Lebanon
On 4 August 2020, 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in Beirut Port, sending a mushroom cloud above the city, and lighting a touch paper at one end of the region’s web of alliances. As part of efforts to tend to the aftermath of the explosion, on Saturday Egypt sent…
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The regime is determined to rewrite history. Egyptians are giving their lives to prevent it
On 23 June Sanaa Seif, along with her sister Mona, arrived at the Egyptian attorney general’s office to file a complaint. The night before, a group of government thugs, known as Baltagiya, had beaten them up outside Tora Prison where they were waiting to receive a letter from their brother,…
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‘We will be victims of an honour killing,’ say Saudi sisters at risk of deportation from Turkey
On February 8 2017, Areej and Ashwaq Hamoud packed their belongings and left the house where they grew up in Saudi Arabia to board a plane to what they hoped would be a better life. That night they left behind their family home and at the same time overrode the…
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In Egypt a murdered woman means nothing but a policeman means everything
In 2008 Mohsen Al-Sukkari held up a card which identified him as block management and stepped inside the apartment of Lebanese pop sensation Suzanne Tamim. The next morning, she was found sprawled out across the floor of her home with multiple stab wounds to her face and throat. Just a…
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As a month of mercy begins across the world, no respite for Egyptians
Egypt is facing a catastrophe of epic proportions in the form of coronavirus. Hospitals are closing across the country, doctors are being hooked up to mechanical ventilators, and patients are escaping from quarantine in fear of social stigma, with some likening it to prison. WHO has said that 13 per cent…
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COVID-19 is exacerbating neo-colonialism, including in Egypt
On Tuesday the UK’s Ambassador to Egypt, Geoffrey Adams, hailed the news that a shipment of protective medical gowns would be sent from Egypt to the UK. A great example of UK-Egypt cooperation,” he wrote on Twitter. “Two countries working together against the challenge we both face. Thanks to everyone…
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Mubarak dies at 91 but his legacy lives on: Corruption, impunity, brutality
When former President Hosni Mubarak was acquitted of corruption in January 2015, analysts had already predicted it as a foregone conclusion. For many it was evidence that the deep state existed. The deep state is a phrase that would regularly become associated with Egyptian politics after the 2011 revolution. Sadat,…
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Operation Sinai: Egypt’s ethnic cleansing of the Bedouin
READ: The US bought Sisi for $9bn, but the Egyptian people cannot be swayed
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The US bought Sisi for $9bn, but the Egyptian people cannot be swayed
When Trump announced Jerusalem was Israel’s undivided capital under his so-called “deal of the century”, the Egyptian public questioned whether Al-Sisi had a hand in preparing the plan. His support, after all, came just half an hour after the announcement. Officially, Egypt supports the establishment of a Palestinian state on…
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The host of Sisi’s ‘peace award’ has withdrawn. With the right pressure others may follow
On Sunday, Germany’s Semperopernball Opera House in Dresden awarded the Order of St. George to the Egyptian Dictator Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in recognition of his peace-making efforts in North Africa. Al-Sisi “carries hope for the entire continent,” said the opera house, adding that he has stablised his country and promoted…
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Egypt’s military exercise is a warning to protesters ahead of the January 25 Revolution anniversary
Last week Egypt launched “Qader 2020”, a military display of ground, naval and air units choreographed to demonstrate the strength of the country’s armed forces. Translated as “ability to face”, the Ministry of Defence says Qader 2020 is a tough message to Turkey: if you intervene in Libya, Egypt is…
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Céline Lebrun-Shaath: ‘Ramy’s arrest is an attack on solidarity with Palestine’
When former Egyptian MP Ziad Al-Alimi was arrested by security forces, Ramy Shaath told his wife that of the coalition of activists that organised the 2011 protests against Hosni Mubarak, he was one of the last remaining. Ten days later it was his turn. At 12.45am on 5 July 2019,…
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No need to look to the Middle East, we have a dictator in the making here in the UK
In the midst of the 2011 uprising then newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman said that Egyptians were not ready for democracy. Such comments were to be expected from a remnant of the ancien regime who had obvious vested interests in keeping the mechanisms of the deep state in place…
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Mohamed Ali: ‘No shop can compete with the army because they don’t pay tax’
Egyptian whistleblower Mohamed Ali has told MEMO how the army did not have to pay tax or customs on products entering the country which made it impossible for other businesses to compete. “I would just include a document indicating that this belongs to the [army] and once it got to…