Yara Sallam
They told us that al-Makhsous was full, and that nobody had been hanged since the beginning of the revolution. But they had taken a woman to be executed one or two days before I entered the prison, on June 23, 2014. I think by the time I was released 15 months later, all the women in al-Makhsous had been hanged, and the ward had filled up again. The current president does not love life.
Amira Mahmoud
25 years ago (minus a few days), Lotfy Khalil was born in the Shenou district outside of the city of Kafr el Sheikh. I haven’t met him, and the chances of meeting him in the future are almost nil since, as of June 19, the Supreme Court for Military Appeals has upheld a death sentence against him. The same verdict also befell six other people — three of which are detained with Lotfy — charged in relation to the April 2015 Kafr el Sheikh stadium bombing that killed three military college students.
EIPR team
March 31, 2015 at 4:26pm
Members of the Initiatives of Atheists and the Non-Religious at the “Forum on Religion and Freedom”: our announcement of our ideas causes a shock that society needs in order to stop denying our existence and our rights
Osama Diab
Throughout June, the Egyptian cabinet and parliament debated a budget for the 2017–18 fiscal year, which began on July 1. The budget has been referred to in Egypt as the “IMF budget” due to the number of restrictions in an austerity program imposed by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF—which approved a $12 billion package of loans in November 2016, in exchange for a number of reforms—aims to reduce Egypt’s public spending from around 30 percent of its gross domestic product to below 23 percent by 2021, with one-sixth of those cuts coming from the public payroll
Salma Hussien
He is a “tuk tuk” driver in his mid-30s working from 10am to 9pm, seven days a week, on a small cart he bought eight years ago. He paid for this cart using a loan and after receiving his share of the remuneration that was earned during his work with his father. When the vehicle use to crash, which has happened very often during the last three years, he had to spend days at home in order to repair it. This means that his family had, for these days, nothing to eat except for what was offered by some family members and neighbors.
Osama Diab
Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC), an event hyped by the Egyptian government and business community in an effort to restore trust in Egypt’s economy and bring in much-needed foreign cash. Since the conference, foreign direct investment (FDI) has indeed increased, but that does not necessarily bring good news to the unemployed and wage earners.
Ishak Ibrahim
Sectarian tension and violence continued in the years that followed, although the direct targeting of churches declined up until the massacre at All Saints Church at the beginning of 2011, in which 25 people died. In November 2013, assailants opened fire on a group of Copts in front of St. Mary Church in Waraq.The nature of these attacks has become more frightening as the perpetrators have become more confident and daring. In most previous incidents, churches were targeted from the outside, but the perpetrator of the St. Peter and St. Paul Church attack breached security and blew himself up inside the church.
Amr Ezzat
It was an unlikely scene for some: speaking heavily accented Egyptian Arabic, the European author avidly attacked and dismantled Islamophobic discourse in Europe, while most comments from his Egyptian audience stressed the danger posed by the “Islamic ascendancy,” in its manifold meanings, for the future of Europe and the world, even “Islamic” countries themselves.
Dalia Abd El-Hameed
May 17 coincides with the International Day Against Homophobia. Despite the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of world days to celebrate certain groups, but sometimes they do help to spark a discussion or spotlight the deplorable status of these groups in particular countries, like the status of gay and transgender people in Egypt.
Adel Ramadan
On May 1, Egyptian Ministry of Interior (MOI) personnel stormed the headquarters of the country’s Syndicate of Journalists and arrested two reporters in an unprecedented move. A sense of anger prevailed among journalists as the union’s general assembly called for the resignation of Minister of Interior Magdy Abdel Ghaffar.
