Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Amelia Smith
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Egypt journalist detained in public loo, 'beaten' by police at Edinburgh Airport
At 4pm on Thursday 13 December Egyptian journalist AbdulRahman Ezz was prevented from boarding his flight to France from Edinburgh Airport where he intended to cover the yellow vest demonstrations in Paris. Waiting for him at the door of the plane was a policeman wearing civilian uniform who asked...
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Turner Prize entry refutes Israel claim Umm Hiran killing was terror attack
In the early hours of 18 January 2017 Keren Manor was filming a raid on the unrecognised Bedouin village of Umm Al-Hiran in the Naqab desert, just metres away from where one of its residents, Yaqoub Abu Al-Qi’an, was bleeding to death. How he came to be here would soon...
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19-year-old Brit who snapped Egypt from plane window arrested for spying
Last week, as the plane carrying 19-year-old Muhammed AbdelKasem and his friend descended into Borg El Arab Airport in Alexandria, Muhammed took out his phone, leaned towards the window and took a photo of Egypt from above. Muhammed thought he was doing what numerous tourists do when they arrive...
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Former Sinai MP: ‘Mubarak was a treasure to Israel. Sisi is much more than that’
In 2014, fresh from the coup they led against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the government offered Yehya Okail the position of deputy mayor of North Sinai. He wasn’t the most obvious choice. The 2011 revolution had elevated Okail to Member of Parliament for the Brotherhood’s political wing, the...
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In the land of my birth: A Palestinian boyhood
Reja-e Busailah has lost two dear parts of himself over the course of his lifetime: his sight and his homeland. In his autobiography, “In the land of my birth: A Palestinian boyhood”, Busailah documents his childhood in the lead up to the loss of Palestine in the 1948 Nakba...
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As benefactors to the worst dictators in the Middle East we have a unique role to play in Khashoggi’s case
One image that resonates in the aftermath of Jamal Khashoggi’s death is of the man standing outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul wearing a blue suit jacket and clasping his hands together. He bows as Jamal walks past – “welcome to your death”, we can imagine him saying. This...
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P is for Palestine: A Palestine Alphabet Book
Unlike the alphabet books which currently saturate the children’s book market in the UK, where A is for apple and B is for ball, “P is for Palestine” offers young readers something new – a window onto the culture and heritage of Palestine. In Dr. Golbarg Bashi’s book, A...
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When we get rid of the Tories, life might just become better in the Middle East
Since Jeremy Corbyn became the Labour Party leader through a landslide victory in 2015 the Tories, backed by certain elements of the British press, have tried to convince the public that he is a closet racist. This was highlighted perfectly in a late August edition of the Daily Telegraph...
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Persecuted at home, denied asylum in South Korea: the Egyptians with nowhere to go
In December 2012 Abdelrahman Zaid became one of the thousands of civilians to be incarcerated in Mubarak’s sweep to end the Arab Spring. At the time of his arrest he was holding documents to say he was a Palestinian refugee due to his father’s origin and the media used...
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The British government has no British values
Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor is currently pushing for the execution of human rights campaigner Israa Al-Ghomgham. As Israa waits to learn her fate, the rest of the world looks on in horror at the prospect that the first female human rights activist in the Kingdom could be about to...
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Mystery shrouds extradition of Egypt imam from Spain
On 1 June Spanish police injected Dr. Alaa Mohamed Said with anesthetic, beat him and bundled him onto a plane bound for Egypt. For two days his wife Iman, who was then two months pregnant with their sixth child, had no contact with her husband: “I kept calling when...
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Five years on from Rabaa Sisi’s massacre continues in North Sinai
Rabaa represents the failed hope of Egyptian democracy and it set a precedent for the despicable brutality of a regime towards its own citizens....
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Refusing to open borders, separating parents and children. We have truly lost our humanity
For politicians across the world, refugees are not human beings any more, they are rubbish to be disposed. ...
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At the World Cup 2018, regional rivalries play out on the pitch
Last week, not even Egypt’s fourth pyramid Mohammad Salah could save the Pharaoh’s from their 3-1 defeat against Russia. A further loss against Uruguay secured the Egyptian team seats on a one-way flight back to Cairo after a dismal two matches at the 2018 World Cup. Salah was embroiled...
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In London, theatre is helping four young refugees process trauma
The first time Talal Hasan met Omar Almahel they slept side by side on a piece of cardboard at a train station in Brussels. Not long after this the pair climbed a bridge, jumped onto a fence below and manoeuvred themselves between carriages on a London bound Eurostar, hiding...
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Palestine has a wealth of talented filmmakers, but no cinema industry to showcase them
Haifa Independent Film Festival prides itself on being independent from the Israeli government and is not supported by any organisation or institute...
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It took 116 dead Palestinians for Egypt to ease its siege on Gaza for a month
Yesterday Egyptian military strongman Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi announced on Twitter that the Rafah border crossing to Gaza would remain open throughout the entire month of Ramadan. Al-Sisi’s tweet came at the end of a long and bloody week for Palestinians. On Monday, as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner inaugurated...
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Welcome to Sinai, where soldiers shoot children then boast on Facebook
Even by the standards of Egypt’s dirty war the video circulating this week of a young boy pleading for his mother moments before he was shot in central Sinai was heartbreaking. When it comes to Egypt we hear a lot of figures – 60,000 political prisoners, 1,000 protesters massacred...
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The UK government steals billions from the poor to fund illegal wars in the Middle East
You don’t have to look far to find evidence of the abject failures of the current Tory government, they are plastered over every media outlet – the Windrush scandal, Brexit and intervention in Syria are just three misguided policies that have cost the UK dearly, both in terms of integrity...
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‘Syrians are not cockroaches to be exterminated’
Amelia Smith interviews Hammam Yousef, a Syrian activist who co-founded the Syrian Non-Violence Movement during the 2011 uprising. ...
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World leaders shed a tear for Syrian children, but for Gaza it’s business as usual
In the aftermath of the chemical weapons assault that suffocated to death over 80 men, women and children in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta, this weekend British Prime Minister Theresa May issued a stern warning to the highest levels of the Syrian government: “The regime and its backers,...
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In Egypt the British trade millions of dollars for human rights
In 2016 UK investments in Egypt topped $30 billion. Instead of using their influence to force Egypt to behave, the UK has awarded Sisi with $500,000 of investment for every Egyptian locked up for pro-democracy protests....
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Here come the next generation of female, Middle East activists
On the 15 December 2017 Israeli soldiers raided Ahed Tamimi’s home and shot her cousin in the head at close range shattering his skull. Ahed and her cousin ran outside to confront the military, who were loitering in her front yard. A video of Ahed slapping one of them...
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‘The regime is killing people and the whole world is watching’
Mohamed Adel has been inside his office, a basement below a building in Douma in Eastern Ghouta, for four days now. Yesterday at midnight he decided to risk the seven-metre journey and ran to his house to check on his family. “It was terrifying,” he says, pausing as a...