Those who believe in freedom: Yara Sallam

Open Democracy NELLY BASSILY 23 July 2015 Yara Sallam is starting the second year of her sentence in Qanater Women’s prison outside Cairo. She says, “I do not feel any regret or self-defeat, the prison is not inside me.”   Yara Sallam is starting her second year of detention in an Egyptian prison. No mother ever wants to see her child in

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Revolution and Despair

Asef Bayat    Sunday, January 25, 2015 Things in the Middle East usually appear far worse than they really are when looked at from the outside. But  on my recent visit to Egypt — as I talked and listened to people, watched local television, read daily papers and made observations  — it became clear that revolutionaries were going through painful

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Egypt's Transitional Injustice

    Posted: 09/02/2014 Dalia Abd El-Hameed  Gender and women’s rights officer for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).   Yara Sallam, the transitional justice officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, was arrested on June 21 a block away from a Cairo protest march against a draconian law that effectively bans demonstrations. Under the law, in effect since

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Advocates Petition UN for Action on Jailed Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah

  22 August 2014 Written by Nani Jansen and Adrian Plevin. After imprisoned Egyptian blogger and human rights defender Alaa Abd El Fattah went on hunger strike this past Monday, the Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) petitioned the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) to take all necessary steps to secure Abd El Fattah’s immediate release. The 32-year-old award-winning blogger

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The Exceptional Egyptian Human Rights Defender Yara Sallam

Brian Dooley Become a fan Director, Human Rights First’s Human Rights Defenders Program Posted: 08/14/2014 5:59 pm EDT Human rights defenders aren’t always easy company. It’s their job to be stubborn and sure of themselves, so they’re often intense, sometimes abrasive. Yara Sallam is an exception. She’s funny, engaging, and easygoing. And she’s in jail in Cairo. She’s been there

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Who would we be if we did not speak? A letter for Yara

31 July 2014 A dream will make us fight to see it come true. An expectation will lead to passivity and probably to disappointment.”
~ Mu Sochua On June 21, 2014, in Cairo, Egypt, a 28-year old Egyptian activist Yara Sallam was arrested by the authorities for participating in a peaceful demonstration calling for the repeal of the Protest and Public

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Egypt solidarity activists link up with Palestine protests

An incredible 30,000 anti-war protesters took to the streets on Sunday in Vienna in the face of Israel’s latest barbarous aggression against the people of Gaza. It has been the biggest peace demonstration since the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan ten years ago. People from Austria, Turkey, Palestine, Syria, Egypt and many more demanded justice for the Palestinians and an

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