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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Cairo: September 2014

WIAM EL-TAMAMI 28 JANUARY 2015 I left Cairo on 19 April 2014. I was so glad to have left, so relieved and slightly disbelieving that I had finally loosened myself from the grip of Al-Qaahira – in Arabic the name, quite fittingly, means ‘The Oppressor’, ‘The Crusher’, ‘The Vanquisheress’. I knew that I could not be there then, but that I was

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Is Cairene Graffiti Losing Momentum?

By Mona Abaza, 25 January 2015 Clearly Cairene graffiti has lost momentum during this year. Having been the faithful barometer of the revolution over the past three years, graffiti has recently faced transmutations and drawbacks that run parallel with the political process of restoring “order” in the street. The heartbreaking story of the recent death of a cheerful and bright

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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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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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