tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58182718304177114662024-02-08T05:33:46.730+02:00Words & SwordsBecause touché is not a chocolate brandjonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.comBlogger87125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-17596854535118911862017-05-26T02:35:00.000+02:002017-05-26T02:35:38.988+02:00 24 hours later: What we know about the blocking of Mada Masr’s website<div class="row">
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Mirrored from www.madamasr.com now blocked in Egypt:</div>
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<a class="link" href="http://www.madamasr.com/en/contributor/mohamed-hamama/">Mohamed Hamama</a></div>
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May 26, 2017</div>
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Access to Mada Masr’s website via most of Egypt’s internet service providers (ISPs) has been blocked since Wednesday evening.<br />
<br />
The country’s official state news agency, MENA, <a href="http://gate.ahram.org.eg/News/1518565.aspx">quoted</a>
a high-level security source on Wednesday night as saying that access
to 21 websites, which had disseminated “content that supports terrorism
and extremism and deliberately spreads lies,” had been blocked in Egypt
in accord with “relevant legal proceedings.”<br />
<br />
Mada Masr has not been officially informed that any party has taken official or legal measures against it.<br />
<br />
Several
other websites have also been blocked, including two Egyptian
publications: Masr al-Arabiya and the website of the print weekly
Al-Mesryoon. The list also includes some Qatari or Qatar-funded news
outlets that support or are managed by the Muslim Brotherhood, principal
among them Al Jazeera and Huffington Post Arabic, in addition to the
official website for Palestinian political movement Hamas.<br />
<br />
The
statement from the high-level security source was circulated to
newspapers and wire services from the office of the presidency, Mada
Masr has learned. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, Interior
Ministry officials have told reporters that they had nothing to do with
drafting or executing the decision to block the websites.<br />
<br />
The move
to block access to a range of websites affiliated with Qatar and the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt happened in conjunction with Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirate’s decision to block many of the same sites.
Egyptian authorities added Mada Masr to its list, however.<br />
<br />
Mada Masr’s website is still accessible in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.<br />
<br />
In
response to Mada Masr’s inquiry into the restriction of access to its
website, Supreme Media Regulatory Council Secretary General Ahmed Selim
said that the council, formed in April, has yet to take over control of
digital media outlets. He directed inquiries to the Communication and
Information Technology Ministry.<br />
<br />
Mada Masr attempted to contact
National Telecom Regulatory Authority head and Communication and
Information Technology Minister Yasser al-Qady. His secretary
acknowledged receipt of the questions and said a further response would
be pending. As of publication, Mada has yet to receive a reply.<br />
<br />
Mada
also contacted newly elected Journalists Syndicate head Abdel Mohsen
Salama, who said he was monitoring the situation closely but was not
aware that access to Egyptian websites had been blocked. He asked Mada
to draft a memo detailing the circumstances of the incident, which he
would then submit to the Supreme Media Regulatory Council.<br />
<br />
Faced
with an absence of information from official sources, Mada Masr turned
to technical experts, who diagnosed an RST injection attack as the
reason for the inability to access the website.<br />
<br />
<b>What is a RST injection attack?</b><br />
<br />
The
internet is a network made up of computers and the electronic messages
and packets of IP (internet protocol) data that pass between them. The
transmission of the information that constitutes this system is
formalized in various systems called “protocols.”<br />
<br />
IP is the most
basic protocol used on the internet, and it is usually coupled with TCP
(transmission control protocol), which is used for web browsing and
email. Data on computers is broken down into a series of ones and zeros.
Each zero or one represents the smallest data unit in the language of
computer communication. Data packets sent via TCP contain a block of
information called a TCP header, which includes details concerning the
sending and receiving parties in the exchange. In normal communications,
the TCP header’s bit is set to zero and has no effect on communication.
If the value is changed to one, the computers party to the exchange are
notified that they should stop using the TCP connection and should no
longer send any more packets using the connection’s identifying numbers.<br />
<br />
A
third party can monitor TCP packets being sent from various points of a
connection and then interject a forged packet containing a TCP reset
command that will change the bit of the header from zero to one. The
connection is interrupted with each attempt to complete the
communication.<br />
One of the most famous examples of a RST injection
attack involves the firewall that China uses to censor and suspend
access to a number of websites.<br />
<br />
This is the type of interruption which has blocked access to Mada Masr’s website in Egypt.<br />
<br />
<b>Continuing attempts to control the internet</b><br />
<br />
Attempts
to open the sites that have been blocked in Egypt have yielded a range
of behaviors across ISPs. For example, most sites can be accessed via
Noor ADSL.<br />
<br />
Mada Masr has received various reports from users,
pointing to the fact that the block is not uniformly in force, varying
across the same ISPs at different geographical locations and times. This
suggests that the RST attack has been decentralized and enforced by
individual ISPs.<br />
<br />
The recent interference intersects with the government’s decision to block The New Arab website last year. An October 2016<a href="https://ooni.torproject.org/post/egypt-network-interference/"> report</a>
on anomalies in Egypt’s online ecology conducted by the Open
Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) — an international network
operating under the <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor Project</a>
that monitors internet censorship, traffic manipulation and signs of
surveillance — found that the injected RST packet observed to obstruct
user-server communication with The New Arab website had the same “static
IP identification (IP ID) value of 0x3412 as the injected RST packets”
used in an attempt to interfere with Tor in Egypt. This similarity is
significant, as The New Arab, which is Qatari funded and sympathetic to
the Muslim Brotherhood, is known to be blocked by the Egyptian
government, suggesting that a state agency using the same server
location conducted the RST injection attacks on Tor.<br />
<br />
The same technique was used in December to<a href="http://www.madamasr.com/en/2016/12/19/feature/society/signal-unstable-alternatives-to-the-encrypted-messaging-application/"> disrupt</a> Signal, the messaging and voice calling application supported by Open Whisper Systems’ encryption protocol.<br />
<br />
Much of this evidence suggests an image of the Egyptian government as directly involved in a practice of mass surveillance, as<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kas3l9MJVaHMgfSHl-jE7jWIjTef1PifSS-abF4jSmI/pub"> documented</a> in a January report published by Mada Masr.<br />
These
events are part of a wider history of the state’s attempt to control
the internet, a principal concern since the January 2011 revolution and
one that has risen to the surface in numerous arrests made recently in
connection with the administration of Facebook pages. The government is
also currently preparing <a href="http://www.madamasr.com/en/2016/10/12/feature/u/egypts-new-cybercrime-bill-could-send-you-to-prison/">legislation to combat cybercrime</a>.<br />
<br />
In
a joint policy report published in June 2016 under the title
“Anti-Technology,” the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR),
Support for Information Technology Center, and the Association for
Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) wrote that the law “violates
the principle of equality before the law and contains penalties
regarding the use of information technology.”<br />
<br />
In April 2016,
sources with direct knowledge of discussions between Facebook and the
Egyptian government told Reuters that Egypt had blocked Facebook’s Free
Basics internet service at the end of 2015 after <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-egypt-idUSKCN0WY3JZ">the US company refused to give the state the ability to monitor users</a>.<br />
<br />
A month earlier, in March, Google published a <a href="https://security.googleblog.com/2015/03/maintaining-digital-certificate-security.html">statement</a>
asserting that it had became “aware of unauthorized digital
certificates for several Google domains” issued by an intermediate
certificate authority held by Egyptian company <a href="http://www.mcsholding.com/">MCS Holdings</a>, which had been contracted by the China Internet Network Information Center (<a href="http://www1.cnnic.cn/">CNNIC</a>) to issue certificates for domains they had registered.<br />
<br />
“Rather than keep the private key in a suitable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_security_module">HSM</a>,
MCS installed it in a man-in-the-middle proxy,” the Google statement
read. “These devices intercept secure connections by masquerading as the
intended destination and are sometimes used by companies to intercept
their employees’ secure traffic for monitoring or legal reasons.”<br />
<br />
In a previous <a href="https://www.madamasr.com/en/2015/06/21/feature/politics/monitoring-communication-where-will-the-states-attempts-to-control-space-lead/">report</a>,
Mada Masr highlighted leaked documents that emerged after Cairo’s State
Security headquarters was stormed by protesters in March 2011, which
showed that MCS had been corresponding with Egypt’s State Security
Investigation Service (SSIS) to obtain the FinFisher system,
surveillance software offered by the British-German company Gamma
International.<br />
<br />
The move to block and shut down websites is a new
step from these recent forms of interference. The government is turning
from mass surveillance, to directly intervening to block access to the
websites of Egyptian companies operating in Egypt, including Mada Masr
and Masr al-Arabiya.<br />
<br />
<b>The legality of blocking access to websites</b><br />
<br />
Access
to websites in Egypt can be legally curtailed in two ways, says Amr
Gharbeia, a technology and human rights researcher at the EIPR. The
first is tied to the issuance of an order either by a prosecutor or
investigating judge, or, during a state of emergency, when the president
can move to block access in his capacity as military governor.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared a three-month state of emergency
on April 9.<br />
<br />
The second mechanism concerns the anti-terrorism law,
Article 29 of which stipulates a five-year prison term for anyone who
“establishes a telecommunications or internet site to promote ideas or
beliefs that encourage committing terrorist acts or to broadcast
[information] to mislead security agencies or influence the course of
justice with regard to a crime of terrorism.”<br />
<br />
“If there is a
website being investigated for one of the aforementioned crimes, Article
49 of the anti-terrorism law allows the public prosecutor or
investigating judge to suspect or block the entire website or the
content relevant to Article 29,” says Hassan al-Azhary, a lawyer with
AFTE. Azhary says it is likely that the decision to block access to Mada
Masr’s website comes in accord with an order emanating from Egypt’s
judiciary.<br />
<br />
Gharbeia points out that there may be a third option in
play, which he says is more dangerous, namely that the government asked
ISPs to block the websites in question, and that they complied in a
manner outside of legal bounds.<br />
<br />
If that is the case, there are two
violations, according Gharbeia: one against freedom of expression and
one against the sovereignty of law.<br />
<br />
<b>How to work around the block</b><br />
<br />
The Electronic Federation Foundation has published is a simple<a href="https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/how-circumvent-online-censorship"> guide</a> detailing how to regain access to blocked websites and circumvent censorship.<br />
<br />
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jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-29890900538945550012017-03-08T16:06:00.001+02:002017-03-08T16:32:01.181+02:00"I‘m in the most abusive relationship of my life"<h3>
<i><span style="color: #990000;"> </span></i></h3>
<b><i><span style="color: #990000;">A conversation overheard:</span></i></b><br />
<br />
„I love a woman who hates me, who screams at me and calls me names, who demeans me, a woman who curses me and calls me her enemy, and who shows no kindness to no one.“<br />
<br />
„Wow, this sounds bad. What does she do?“<br />
<br />
„She beats her kids, tortures them even out of vileness and kills some. She says she has to do this for the security of her other children, but it is in truth because those kids talked back to her and she won‘t take that and has no mercy, no humanity in her. Just cursing and beating and killing. And neglecting them, letting them go dirty and hungry to bed without caring or doing something to make their life bearable. While she eats the best food and is interested only in her own good. A terrible mother.“<br />
<br />
„That‘s awful.“<br />
<br />
„It is. But she tells me, I am out to destroy her. – But I do nothing. Merely criticising her – and rightly so, I should say – for the horrific way she treats her children. I don‘t know what to do.“<br />
<br />
„You love the woman? Why?“<br />
<br />
„I don*t know. There is beauty in her, real beauty. If only she would allow for it to be seen.“<br />
<br />
„But a woman who acts like that one cannot love. Impossible.“<br />
<br />
„I know. But I cannot help it. I don‘t understand it myself. But I can‘t get myself to withdraw and leave her.“<br />
<br />
„This is awful. What is the woman called.“<br />
<br />
„Egypt. She‘s called Egypt.“<br />
<br />
„You have a problem.“<br />
<br />
„I have to face facts. I‘m in the most abusive relationship of my life.“<br />
<br />
„How long has this been going on?“<br />
<br />
„Almost 40 years now. And she won‘t change. Just won‘t.“<br />
<br />
„I cannot help you. You are lost to reason.“<br />
<br />
„That is the tragedy, yes. And I am not finding a way out ...“<br />
<br />
<i>– Silence – </i> <br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-47708512242364295682017-02-03T21:45:00.000+02:002017-02-03T21:45:38.803+02:00Nothing has changed in Egypt, my dear little Omar Salah ...... on the contrary. Things have become worse since you were murdered four years ago. Your killer is free again and there is still no respect for the life of Egyptians.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Three years ago, I wrote this </i><br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>Letter to my Avatar – My dear little Omar Salah ...</b></span></h2>
one year ago to this day you were selling sweet potatoes on a street in Cairo near the U.S. embassy. It was not something you did out of choice, but because your family is poor and needs you to help secure an income. There was nothing special about this February 3rd, 2013, Cairo was calm and sunny, and nothing prepared you, when you left your home in the morning, for what was to come.<br /><br />It was about noon, when a soldier came up to your cart and demanded from you to sell him two potatoes. You urgently needed to go to the bathroom at that moment and told him you would attend to him right when you would be back. The soldier did not accept this and threatened you with his gun saying he was going to shoot you if you didn't serve him immediately. <br /><br />You were just a 12 year old boy. What could you know about the defects of human minds or the willingness of adults to be vicious? You did not believe him and in the innocent mind that was your right to have with 12 years of age you replied: "But you can't shoot me!"<br /><br />To this the soldier replied: "I can't?" And then he pulled the trigger and shot you twice in your little heart. You were dead immediately.<br /><br />The shock this had on those who witnessed it around you, was profound. The other children street vendors cried out and emotions ran high while your blood was spilling onto the street of Cairo. Amongst the soldiers, heated discussions started and the whole situation quickly became a mess.<br /><br />The U.S. embassy tweeted that there had been an 'incident' in front of their gates but gave no details. For quite some time no one was aware what horror had just happened under the sunny sky of Egypt. And with the first shock subsiding that you indeed were dead right there on the street and for all to see, the military and police started frantically to do anything they could to cover up this horrific crime against you.<br /><br />While your mother and father sat at home unaware they had lost you forever, the army took your little body to a morgue and covered you hoping that no one would find you and no one would find out. For accepting that one of theirs had killed you in cold blood and take responsibility for this action is not on the mind of the army of Egypt.<br /><br />You must know, little Omar, that you are not the only one they killed, and not the only one they did not care for after he was dead. Over a year before you left us they had shot dead many protesters at Maspero and ran others over with heavy APCs. Again, later, they killed many at the Cabinet clashes. And so it goes on and on until today, for killing someone is the job of an army, they think. And they don't differentiate between borders or cities, it doesn't matter where they use their guns, they always think that they are in the right to kill. For no other but them has any right to a life. Only a right to be disrespected when – in the eyes of the army – the situation calls for it.<br /><br />Of course, on that day one year ago, your killing had nothing to do with defending anybody. The soldier who killed you did not feel threatened or feared for the safety of Egypt. He simply expressed what he had learned as a conscript: that you as an Egyptian human being were not worth anything and that your life was cheap enough to be destroyed.<br /><br />After your father had frantically tried to find you, aided by friends and NGO workers, your little blood stained body was finally found in the morgue. At first again the army tried to deny it had anything to do with this. But as pressure mounted and more and more witnesses spoke up to what they saw that day, the spokesperson felt it would hurt the army more to stay cowardly quiet than to come out with it and he put a statement on their Facebook page declaring your death an "accident" for which he offered your heartbroken parents his "apology". <br /><br />The story goes that the soldier did not really mean to shoot you. He had thought that his gun was empty – because apparently Egyptian soldiers don't learn how to find out if their gun is loaded or empty and never load them themselves. It must be some hidden force that either loads their guns or not and then falls silent on the matter so that a soldier who carries his gun through Cairo is never aware whether he can actually use it or not. It seems an odd way to run an army or a disturbing way they play games, but then, my little Omar, there are so many odd things surrounding them that one does not wonder much anymore these days. Of course, after the soldier fired the first shot into your heart realising the gun was loaded after all, he had to fire a second time into your heart just to make sure he wasn't mistaken. That we understand. The army is a responsible body and what must be done must be done to make certain that facts are facts. Even in accidents.<br /><br />Shortly after the world learned what had happened to you on that wonderful sunny February day in Cairo, a video surfaced on YouTube showing you only a few weeks earlier when you were interviewed on the street by an organisation helping needy children, checking whether you might be eligible for their projects. <br /><br />You were humble and well-mannered but a little shy and uneasy what they would come up with and whether you would be good enough for what they were looking for in you. You told them quietly that you had to sell sweet potatoes because your family was poor and your father had wanted you to support the family. And in all shyness you disclosed into the camera that you would love to go to school and learn to read and write.<br /><br />When the interviewer asked what you're dreams were, you looked away and were uneasy on this. And then you answered him. You said: "I cannot afford dreams, Sir." And you looked into the camera and then down again as if you were ashamed for this that was none of your fault.<br /><br />Seeing this video of you, dear little Omar, broke many peoples heart. Hearing that you could not afford to dream, which is a basic human right for a child, and knowing you were not even allowed to live, was unbearable to witness. Seeing your wonderful eyes, your look of modesty, shyness and subdued hope, your life might one day, just might perhaps change for the better in some far-away future after all, teared us apart. It was then that I took your picture and made it my avatar on twitter. I wanted to give you your face back that had been left so sad and soiled and empty of life after the soldier had shot you dead.<br /><br />There was no justice for you after all this. On public pressure of human rights activists and your family that the army tried to silence with money, a military trial was finally staged that we all never had any witnessing to. Only afterwards we were told that the soldier who shot you dead – just like that, on a sunny day in a street of Cairo – received a sentence of three years by the military judge.<br /><br />Imagine that, Omar, three years for killing you and destroying your life forever. Do you know that Ahmed Maher and Mohamed Adel, activists of the January 25 revolution, got just the same sentence of three years for allegedly staging a protest without a permission? So killing you, in the eyes of the army, apparently was not worse than going out to protest without requesting a permit. You see what I mean when I say, we do not understand the ways of the army, but we trust they know well what they do?<br /><br />One year on, my dear little Omar, I have thought long and deep over whether I would let you rest now in your little grave and put a shroud over your wonderful eyes that I see everyday on my twitter timeline. On twitter people have not a very long attention span, you must know. They easily get bored seeing the same avatar over and over for months and need changes a lot to be easy. And many times when I write critical tweets, some tweeps who do not know me or you come and slam me with words like: "Shut up, kid" – actually thinking, I was you and not a grown up man with 35 years working experience. They don't take my words seriously, because – just like the soldier – they think, a young boy has no value and no meaning and must not be respected. l cringe sometimes when I read their "kid", knowing they mean you, and feel the pain of your death they are unaware of and don't understand, and then I tell them to read my profile and come to the conclusion that whoever has no heart for you in his reaction is not worth thinking about anyway. And leave it at that.<br /><br />It would be so much easier now to let you rest, my little friend, after this long year of tears and pains and death that has sweeped Egypt empty of so many hopes for a decent life, for justice and freedom and bread. On twitter they would jubilate to see a fresh face. The army would love to not have to see you anymore in the public sphere. The tweeps I criticise would not be able to slam me anymore with calling me 'kid'. We would all be so much happier, dear little Omar, if we forgot about what happened a year ago and that we can't change what happened to you after all.<br /><br />But then, Omar, what can we change if we don't remember? What possibilities will we manage to create if we fall silent and look away and pretend it is all not as sad, not as bad, not as tragic as it actually is? Since your death more than a thousand Egyptians were killed, and they give us many reasons why that, different to you, was not an accident but needed to happen. But apparently they can 'live' with it just as easily. A strange tale has crept into the narrative that pretends that destroying Egyptian lives is inevitable and must be accepted, as if death more than life was the natural thing of the world that one can shrug off to return to the daily pleasures and chores. With every death of human beings falling bloodied in the streets of Egypt we are told to believe that nothing of this can be changed because it is the way of the world. And when we look away and shut our ears to the cries of the mothers and fathers of Egypt who, whether they agreed with their children or not, break down over losing what was precious to them forever and think they just cannot go on anymore, we change the world for the worst, where dying becomes the natural thing and living is just a luxury granted by some in power – whether we are lucky or not.<br /><br />It must not be luck, little Omar, whether we live. It must be a right, a birth given right that no one must be allowed to take from us. Not with any form of being deliberate, calling it an accident to fool us or an inevitable need to fool us twice. If we don't insist on this, that life is the right and death is the wrong, we have lost everything that makes it worth existing on this planet we call the earth. <br /><br />You had no dreams, Omar, because we did not allow you to be able to afford them. On that already we all failed you miserably. Your parents to this day cry over your death and will not forget the pain in their heart. Your eyes look at me on my avatar with all the shy innocence that was you in your modest way and I think of the narrative that all this has to be, is inevitable and not worse than going to a protest and forgetting to get a permission. So your killing has the value of a petty crime and your death is worth as much as not filling out a form. And I look at your eyes and mine fill with tears. <br /><br />Let them laugh about it, for all I care. The other day I saw your picture on the internet, just the one that is my avatar that I see every day. But when I saw it, my little Omar, my heart stopped still. Like yours did on that fateful February 3rd a year ago, when a soldier thought you were worth nothing and could be done away with. When I recovered from this shock, that did not seem to make any sense, I knew I would not fail you and not leave you until justice is served. To you, Omar, who could not afford to have wishes and were not allowed to have hope – and to all the others that have lost a life that was dear to them when others decided it was not.<br /><br />You will stay my avatar, my little Omar. I will tell you when Egypt is ready that we can part. Just now is not yet the time. Be patient. It will still take a long time. But where life is at stake, you know it well, time and patience means nothing. Life means all.<br /><br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-19279386607019930842016-06-16T23:56:00.000+02:002016-06-17T05:50:24.425+02:00R.I.P. Jo Cox – "Unite to fight against the hatred that killed her."I can't believe that after just four days I have to write another obituary on a wonderful woman shot dead by a maniac with a gun. <br />
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Another dark day for us all. Today Labour MP Jo Cox, mother of two little children, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/16/labour-mp-jo-cox-shot-in-west-yorkshire" target="_blank">was shot and stabbed to death</a> in broad daylight when she left a library in her constituency in Yorkshire. Britain is in shock and the flag on Parliament has been lowered to half-mast. Tributes pour in from all political sides.<br />
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Voted into the parliament only a year ago Jo Cox fascinated everyone with her sharp mind, clear cut rhetoric and determined engagement for those in need. As one of the very few in Labour, MP Jo Cox was on the side of the people of Syria, stood up for Aleppo and fought for refugee children to be allowed into Britain. I cannot hail her enough for her unwavering solidarity with the victims of Assad‘s and Russia‘s atrocities in Syria.<br />
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Just six weeks ago in parliament, MP Jo Cox held a passionate speech regarding Syria demanding answers from the Minister on many questions still vital and valid today. Watch her speak and be inspired by her determination, her compassion and her energy.<br />
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It breaks the heart to know she is gone. But she leaves a legacy that demands from us to fill her place wherever we can and continue on her path of love vs. hate.<br />
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Think about the refugee children from Syria who have gone through hell and remember the words of Jo Cox:<br />
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Only yesterday, Jo Cox was on the Thames to campaign for Britain to stay in the EU, something she was as passionate about as the children from Syria. Together with her husband Brendan she took her own lovely two little children on the boat ride and it is impossible to comprehend how these two angels will survive that their mother won't ever kiss them again.<br />
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The death of Jo Cox is a tragedy on a very personal, family level. – But it is also a tragedy for Britain, losing one of the most energetic and compassionate MPs she had.<br />
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It poses question too whether the hate spewing of those, who – like Jo Cox's killer – shouted "Britain First", has not seriously paved the way for the unspeakable crime of today that robbed a young woman of her life, a husband of his wife and two children of their mother.<br />
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In his piece <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/a-day-of-infamy/3" target="_blank">A Day of Infamy</a>, Alex Massie today puts the problem in a nutshell:<br />
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"We know that even lone lunatics don’t live in a bubble. ... When you encourage rage you cannot then feign surprise when people become enraged. You cannot turn around and say, ‘Mate, you weren’t supposed to take it so seriously. It’s just a game, just a ploy, a strategy for winning votes.’<br />
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When you shout BREAKING POINT over and over again, you don’t get to be surprised when someone breaks. ... If you spend days, weeks, months, years telling people they are under threat, that their country has been stolen from them, that they have been betrayed and sold down the river, that their birthright has been pilfered, that their problem is they’re too slow to realise any of this is happening, that their problem is they’re not sufficiently mad as hell, then at some point, in some place, something or someone is going to snap. And then something terrible is going to happen.<br />
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We can’t control the weather but, in politics, we can control the climate in which the weather happens. That’s on us, all of us, whatever side of any given argument we happen to be. Today, it feels like we’ve done something terrible to that climate.<br />
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I cannot recall ever feeling worse about this country and its politics than is the case right now."</blockquote>
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It is time, Britain, to take a deep breath and alter course. The murder of Jo Cox today is a warning sign if ever there was one.<br />
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Two hours after Jo Cox was pronounced dead, her husband Brendan issued a statement, saying:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #990000;"><i>„Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people.</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #990000;"><i>She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn't have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.“</i></span></span></blockquote>
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Let‘s honour Jo Cox by fulfilling her wish. It is the least we can and the thing we must do.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ripjocox?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag" target="_blank">#RIPJoCox</a><br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-66568707608782435852016-06-12T22:10:00.001+02:002016-06-12T22:10:29.849+02:00R.I.P. Christina Grimmie – Sing to the Delight of Angels in the SkyOn Friday night I was performing with a choir and a Shakespeare Company in a wonderful open-air venue in front of an audience that showered us with applause. Today I learn the shocking news that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Grimmie" target="_blank">Christina Grimmie</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/TheRealGrimmie" target="_blank">@TheRealGrimmie</a> on twitter) was shot on the same night after her performance in Orlando. While we revelled deep into the night in our bliss of an audience being happy, on the other side of the ocean Christina was killed when she signed autographs after her concert, by a man they presume was a deranged fan. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/11/voice-star-christina-grimmie-dies-after-shooting-at-florida-conc/" target="_blank">She welcomed him with arms open for a hug</a> – and he responded by shooting her.<br />
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I am shattered. I have admired her for years for her voice, her talent and her beautiful, friendly, natural ways, ever since I discovered her doing this amazing duet with Sam Tsui:<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2RA0vsZXf8" target="_blank">It was just a dream</a><br />
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Today, after hearing the news of the death of 22 year old Christina Grimmie, the words develop a haunting tone, speak of sadness and grief over the senseless killing of someone so young, so willing to give beauty to the world, <a href="https://www.viewerstovolunteers.com/charity-champions-league/team/the-humane-society" target="_blank">caring for others</a> and sharing her amazing talent with all. No words can describe the devastation to learn that once more beauty is ruthlessly destroyed by a man unable himself to give beauty to this world. And that obtaining guns in America is so easy and once more leads to a horrific shooting.<br />
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<a href="http://www.rappler.com/entertainment/news/136090-stars-remember-condolences-christina-grimmie" target="_blank">Many who knew and worked with her have expressed their shock over her killing</a>, saying how heartbroken they are that this beautiful human being has been denied the life she deserved to possess. <br />
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Sam Tsui took to music as the only possible way to pay tribute to Christina Grimmie, unable to put into words the grief that fills the heart. <br />
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<a href="https://youtu.be/RnFw38T-syM" target="_blank">It was just a dream</a><br />
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We say: R.I.P. Christina. But in our soul we know that you never wanted to rest in peace but sing forever to fill homes, halls and the sky. <br />
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When we performed last night once more Shakespeare and music, the sky had this time turned grey at our venue and it began to rain softly. The mood, suddenly so different to Friday, was sombre and the atmosphere inexplicably strained. Now that I heard the news, I think the sky wept over Christina Grimmie‘s killing the night before. It can only have been that. <br />
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The sky has her now but it also knows what mortals down here miss. Her voice. Her face. Her smile. Her naturalness.<br />
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May you sing to the delight of angels in the sky now, Christina. Music will never stop. Bullets can never achieve this. <br />
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No one will accept that this was just a dream. You will be unforgotten by and forever real to those who loved and admired you. <br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RIPChristina?src=hash" target="_blank">#RIPChristina</a><br />
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<b>Post scriptum:</b> Only one day later, last night, another deranged man stormed a gay night club in Orlando and fired into the dancing crowd <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/12/orlando-terror-attack-50-killed-nightclub-deadliest-mass-shooting" target="_blank">killing at least 50 and injuring 53</a>. The sadness is of unspeakable dimension. May Sam Tsui‘s tribute to you, Christina, be a tribute too to those who were allowed to live only one day longer than you. May you all know that you were loved and will never leave the hearts of your families, friends and admirers. My prayers are with those who miss you all so terribly.<br />
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jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-62745349377617063262016-01-13T00:35:00.001+02:002016-01-13T00:35:07.749+02:00German Journalist's Open Letter to Syrian Refugees who are Ashamed over Cologne AttacksAfter the events of New Years Eve in Germany's city Cologne, where groups of men from North Africa sexually harassed and assaulted women and stole their cell phones and purses, an anonymous report by a German policeman insinuated that some of the culprits were from Syria. There was no proof for this – in fact now we know that only one 20-year old Syrian was involved, the rest are from Algeria and Morocco and apparently pretended to be from Syria. Nevertheless the right-wingers in Germany, at the forefront the Pegida-Movement, slammed refugees from Syria accusing them of raping German women.<br />
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To many Syrian refugees who were never involved in the shameful attacks in Cologne, this was a shock and deeply hurtful. To show that they did not condone such actions they initiated a Facebook event and called for a protest on January 16 under the motto: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/842509442538289" target="_blank">Syrian refugees say no to the assaults of Cologne</a>.<br />
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Many Syrians have since commented and posted on this Facebook page and expressed disgust and shame about what happened in Cologne and apologised to the German population.<br />
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A German journalist now has responded to these posts, assuring the refugees that there is nothing for them to be ashamed of, nothing to apologise for and explains the reasoning behind his thoughts. In the end he urges the Syrian refugees to be strong and proud and not fall for the trap of the right-wingers who want to sow hate and division in German society.<br />
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Here is the letter that is worth a read:<br />
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Hello,<br /><br />I am a German. And a journalist. And I am deeply ashamed that so many of you get the feeling that you should be ashamed and have to apologise now. So let me say this:<br /><br />I am ashamed that so many of my journalist colleagues have used the attacks in Cologne to produce sensational headlines serving their greed for more reader – and totally ignored facts, known numbers – and that they deeply inflict damage with this on all refugees and especially refugees from Syria in Germany. I apologise for these shameful actions.<br /><br />I am ashamed that in the last year alone Germans have torched over 400 refugee camps and homes, have beaten up refugees, frightened women and children, attacked their buses – even shot at refugees sleeping at night in their beds and wounded them. Those actions are criminal and disgusting and not what Germany is about. I apologise to all refugees for these attacks and especially to those who have been wounded, frightened and robbed of their peace after all they endured fleeing here.<br /><br />I do. – But at the end of the day – you and I apologise for crimes we did not commit.<br /><br />And as much as I understand the urge to do something, to say something to make this shame go away, neither you can with your apologies nor I can with mine.<br /><br />We have to face the fact that in every basket of good apples there are rotting bad apples that ruin it for us all if we don‘t watch out.<br /><br />Germans are not a pure, innocent breed. We are humans like you with all the good and the bad that comes with it. While right-wingers now produce a huge uproar over the ugly attacks on women at New Years Eve – they never speak up for German women being attacked by Germans, sexually assaulted by Germans or even raped by Germans. And they ignore that we have special institutions in this country where women can and do flee to to save themselves from the brutality of their male companions, husbands or lovers.<br /><br />No, we Germans are humans like all, and we have terribly bad apples amongst us, men who do not respect women, who assault them sexually and act criminally and disgusting.<br /><br />We just don‘t talk about it. We don‘t want to point the finger at ourselves.<br /><br />You however come in handy. If we can point the finger at you – whether rightfully so or not – we can ignore how much bad apples we have amongst ourselves and make you the scapegoat for everything. Then we don‘t have to think about our own actions. And before you know it, everyone is talking about refugees sexually assaulting innocent German women – and no one notices anymore that we do so much bad things ourselves.<br /><br />It is true – men from North Africa and Arab states, so witnesses tell us, have attacked women on that night and shown shameful aggression. Some men. Some 40, 50 or 60, perhaps 70 men – out of way over 1 million refugees.<br /><br />If we had so few criminals within our 80 million German population we could be happy. But sadly not. In 2014 we had more than 7,200 reported cases of rapes and sexual assaults on women in Germany, in the vast majority commited by Germans. A shocking number. – We just don‘t talk about it.<br /><br />The bottom line is that those men who attacked women on New Years Eve where brainless, shameless criminals. It doesn‘t matter where they came from. And the truth is too, that those men who rape and sexually assault women in such horrific numbers in Germany in one year are also brainless, shameless criminals. Their nationality doesn‘t matter a bit. You find criminals all over the world. It is part of the human race, not of one a nation or people.<br /><br />I am not ashamed as a German when some who call themselves German torch refugee camps. Because I don‘t consider such people Germans in a way that I am German. They are standing outside of any civilisation, and you sadly find such sick people all over the globe. So, I am not ashamed – but I am outraged. Incredibly outraged.<br /><br />And so you should be. Don‘t be ashamed as refugees or Syrians or Syrian refugees for the action of some sick people who may or may not (we still don‘t know all the facts) have come from a region near you. It means nothing about you as a Syrian, nothing about your dignity, your pride and your decency – and it is not your doing. You did not attack women on New Years Eve and I don‘t torch refugee homes or rape women. These people are not us, they are outside our sphere of civilisation. They simply don‘t belong in this world, but we sadly have to face the fact that they exist. But they are neither Syrian nor German – they are just a sick breed of people we could not manage to heal with education and civilisation.<br /><br />Besides working as a journalist I took up teaching refugees in northern Germany in October last year because I feel we all have to do something to get you integrated as fast as possible, to give you back a life that will enable you to have a future and be strong and proud and able to support yourself. If we help you to help yourself, you can make it. And you will make it, I am convinced of that.<br /><br />I have a large number of Syrians in my class. They are the finest people I could possible have come across. Decent, well-mannered, polite, interested to learn, eager to shape their future and find a place in German‘s society. I am blessed to be allowed to teach them.<br /><br />Last week we talked about the events of New Years Eve. They were outraged, disgusted – and as I could see: hurt. Hurt to get blamed for something they not only did not commit – but something they would never commit. If you are a decent person there is nothing worse than if people insinuate you could do such shameful things. I really felt sorry for them. They did not deserve this.<br /><br />Here‘s what I told them: Stay proud, stay strong, don‘t let this get to you personally. And if people on the streets now in Germany occasionally look at you with a grim face because of this – just ignore it. We have idiots in our society just as every nation has. But they are not the society. They are just a tiny minority that lacks any compassion, any humanity and any decency. I could apologise for them but I shouldn‘t. They are not me and I am not them, and luckily they are not Germany.<br /><br />And I gave my ‘pupils‘ this advice: always stay friendly and walk away. And learn German to the best of your abilities, because the better you speak German, the less these idiots will be able to brand you as refugees and will have to accept the fact that you are here and welcome to stay.<br /><br />Build your future, build your life. The stronger you become the better for us all. In the end we can fight these idiots in societies only if we stick together. Because in attacking you they mean nothing else but to attack us all – the Germans who welcome you, who show humanity and compassion and who treasure this democracy that you are now beginning to be part of. We are not going to give them the pleasure and hand over this democracy and the values of civilisation we have achieved. No such luck. But it is nothing less they hope for when slashing you with insults and accusations for crimes you did not commit.<br /><br />Let‘s not play their game. You don‘t need to feel ashamed and neither do I. You don‘t have to apologise and I don‘t have to either. In the end we can only win if we keep our heads up high, stay proud and strong and not get deterred by those who want us to fall and fail.<br /><br />You are here and you will stay here. So are we. Then let‘s do it together and it will be win-win. And the triumph that those idiots had nothing in their helpless little hands but hate – useless, idiotic hate – will give us the strength to build the future. Because what they do not want to understand is this: Your future is ours too. While we help you to build your future, we build our own.<br /><br />For this reason we need you to be strong. Don‘t hang your head in shame. Keep it up high and proud on your shoulders where it belongs. Only then can we shape a future that will be a gain for us all.<br /><br />Wishing you all the very best in your new life. Never lose hope. Just never.<br />
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____________________________________<br />
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The letter has been widely read now on Facebook and commented, with many Syrians expressing gratitude for these words. It can be found <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/842509442538289/permalink/844890272300206/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-25370689937602832532015-08-30T21:58:00.000+02:002015-08-30T21:58:04.883+02:00Egypt‘s Futile Attempt to Silence Journalists - World Coverage of #AJretrial<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On Saturday, 29 August 2015, a criminal court in Cairo sentenced three journalists – <a href="https://twitter.com/MFFahmy11" target="_blank">Mohamed Fahmy</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/Bahrooz" target="_blank">Baher Mohamed</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterGreste" target="_blank">Peter Greste</a> – to years in prison in a retrial of what has become known as the <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/02/02/egypt-targets-journalists-denial-remains-name-game/" target="_blank">Al-Jazeera case</a>. (With them, three young Egyptians were also sentenced, although not ever having worked for the TV-Station Al-Jazeera.)<br />
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The criticism at the now second farcial and clearly politically motivated verdict, accusing the journalists of "falsifying news" and broadcasting material that was "harmful to national security" by covering events happening in Egypt in 2013, was powerful. <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/08/egypt-guilty-verdict-against-al-jazeera-journalists-affront-to-justice/" target="_blank">Human rights organisations</a>, the world press and governments of the <a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/08/246444.htm#.VeJH3mtalN8.twitter" target="_blank">US</a>, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fco-statement-on-sentencing-of-al-jazeera-journalists-in-egypt" target="_blank">UK</a>, the <a href="https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2015/08/29/koenders-bezorgd-over-veroordelingen-al-jazeera-journalisten" target="_blank">Netherlands</a> voiced their outrage and concern at this travesty of justice.<br />
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For the Egyptian government of President Sisi this was to be expected, seeing that nothing was done before the verdict to prevent such a development. Yet after the criticism of the verdict, Egypt today <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/30/us-egypt-aljazeera-britain-idUSKCN0QZ0B820150830" target="_blank">summoned the British Ambassador</a> to express Egypt‘s rejection of <span id="articleText"><span class="focusParagraph">"unacceptable</span></span> interference". Egypt thus hopes to silence the world with its justified criticism and reporting – and fails epically.<br />
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See here just a ‘small‘ number of international media that has covered the sham trial in Cairo against the journalists – who did nothing else but their job: report the truth.<br />
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You can't silence the press, Egypt, you can't. Stop trying.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-29/peter-greste-and-al-jazeera-colleagues-found-guilty-at-retrial/6735106" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbsg90VbVUm17OIIXdLdDLCJMJqa_gNhjRJX-WsRzJkShQtxbDT-QpmtgxP7l6vkggVDhra2Jf_g3TzMoaSVJEFTuA5m9k7rfYZTYfOYOqnRlhZfZaI5Idg3krvc-nYOpn8dBHjYcVIjTf/s320/ABC.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-29/peter-greste-and-al-jazeera-colleagues-found-guilty-at-retrial/6735106" target="_blank">ABC - Australia</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.arabnews.com/middle-east/news/798641" target="_blank">arab news - Saudi Arabia</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34096083" target="_blank">BBC - Britain</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/aljazeera-criticises-prison-verdict-for-egypt-journalists-31487006.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMp1HCxZAiATYt5gwTJCPFLTREDif1ggPBL7atxaJ8jxJ5NPjvFNorgcV8NTgHVYOpGP5YcHIFkqGESb9YhxdAwVMiuyqoYgyhkdDXV3gyWGYGXoUYpGvKP88P5TJra0JSY2HmxW5kApAo/s320/Belfast-Telegraph.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/aljazeera-criticises-prison-verdict-for-egypt-journalists-31487006.html" target="_blank">Belfast Telegraph - Ireland</a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/aljazeera-criticises-prison-verdict-for-egypt-journalists-31487006.html" target="_blank"><br /></a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/aljazeera-criticises-prison-verdict-for-egypt-journalists-31487006.html" target="_blank"><br /></a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/aljazeera-criticises-prison-verdict-for-egypt-journalists-31487006.html" target="_blank"><br /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mohamed-fahmy-trial-damages-egypt-s-reputation-globally-but-do-its-leaders-care-1.3208518" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHVziiKkSOgwJq4E8jS4mrg5_PaoBthAJSLAFlToqrLC9AZba0aE6iWkMp-Jq4hm91EHzb67tCOU6Hf1IKVShqR_6Ja0akejT-RBMKK4dW_hzk9gukzteQengFtBP82JTYtTgU1JupqkAt/s320/CBC-news.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mohamed-fahmy-trial-damages-egypt-s-reputation-globally-but-do-its-leaders-care-1.3208518" target="_blank">CBC - Canada</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/al-jazeera-journalists-sentenced-to-three-years-in-prison" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPIrbVWNPEpDOCNFta3aQF34MudoQANzErV7yz_IVJLHIYdRWJdliO5wK9CUkLcgM5jQdR62aQZG9VFcBuxIxd0XGMURHke2DiKrPY1M51z1V09UGXZTJ5reFnpfP1gmBJeAkIVemFWqVZ/s320/Channel-4-News.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/al-jazeera-journalists-sentenced-to-three-years-in-prison" target="_blank">Channel 4 news - Britain</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/29/middleeast/egypt-al-jazeera-journalists-trial/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMA6-4HMX-5o7qGnuZjD4lC584w9pdjNf2Jr774drirqv9h2lTXh3t-Eo82XUkoPdvBdu6tQEqQM3GPnJFAABsEpupMku_jcJqp5t0lqflJv7A-zEQ0XQOIyN1cQ6MK30V8Pn3zilXvYCX/s320/CNN.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/29/middleeast/egypt-al-jazeera-journalists-trial/" target="_blank">CNN - USA</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://gazette.com/the-latest-amnesty-criticizes-al-jazeera-trial-verdict/article/feed/266268" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfgWapIKO8BUZPT2d08yVKuFAx6BEZlzx_0fKiMi33rVPWRCGFjKHsBg45QSFzjizNq0uNQFc66G2HOeeXcagpHeHxBcBmJ0yaomwzEbmThCu7rugRCzf0b9U_wBrekeJkhYWNJ4warWmb/s320/Colorado-Gazette.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://gazette.com/the-latest-amnesty-criticizes-al-jazeera-trial-verdict/article/feed/266268" target="_blank">Colorado Gazette - USA</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.corriere.it/esteri/15_agosto_29/egitto-giornalisti-al-jazeera-condannati-tre-anni-carcere-2995d370-4e2c-11e5-a97c-e6365b575f76.shtml" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBuM92oEcggGwUFF-_y7R7R_buYNngV-asX5J5thtozlf8QxduDC4i7o0GUlti6pjA_Yvn6DFynbUh3h7CfbXFcr5L-CINr6mWWIEWnQhLDPqGsBGe0HoleAS7wuMoZRnFRiV8f4Wk4UR3/s320/Corriere-della-Serra-story.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.corriere.it/esteri/15_agosto_29/egitto-giornalisti-al-jazeera-condannati-tre-anni-carcere-2995d370-4e2c-11e5-a97c-e6365b575f76.shtml" target="_blank">Corriere della Serra - Italy</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/drie-jaar-cel-voor-journalisten-al-jazeera~a4131793/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHgKAc3twfGQWF5HAuf88-iNLNLQF08BkQPtjPWjlSwoax8jQl714t-nTzQSa50NFQvUcs8oSBwuXXupaTsQV9RL9zh-C_JOn9ocBy1IVCdn3nFD-njoykBEokmdaTJ8LVb9GIPeFGS79B/s320/de-Volkskrant.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/drie-jaar-cel-voor-journalisten-al-jazeera~a4131793/" target="_blank">de Volkskrant - Netherlands</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-jail/a-18680866" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhee_RRcLjIhNARIPQBKM-KjwoPPzIAin0gCrlMAnPqNSXv6Fyy2VvdVrrWXSa5dTT7OAVh_SEjz4v9OBdTjrtNI5uykN_nmk96Uu9AxDLB8et53V-uP9Dwi0sxWBRBKctDw5oi7Ial6oSD/s320/Deutsche-Welle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-jail/a-18680866" target="_blank">Deutsche Welle - Germany</a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-jail/a-18680866" target="_blank"><br /></a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-jail/a-18680866" target="_blank"><br /></a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-jail/a-18680866" target="_blank"><br /></a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-jail/a-18680866" target="_blank"><br /></a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-jail/a-18680866" target="_blank"><br /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article145779460/Reporter-eingesperrt-nur-weil-sie-ihren-Job-machten.html?config=print" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6_uad1YPdxda0GNt02Snd5NfdK1O6wun8HLCnoS6ZgmPAzRW_g_faCjHwNp7JUV7FcsyiFUIx46Al8XLtroOTGLdU5XJHu_hekfNuBya7FGDrv7EzAQgxn_BkezsYA15-q8RgbxP6AucB/s320/DIE-WELT.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article145779460/Reporter-eingesperrt-nur-weil-sie-ihren-Job-machten.html?config=print" target="_blank">Die Welt - Germany</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2015/08/29/55e171b3ca474137368b4579.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwn8WvZ4JF_1ACPilFK1sYXoGzvxtaQghKLnV7wdhQgiAb8QlJRR7fr-ZF0cFWIsaV2znZw2ll-_tIfQV5VTAFv5Mx7xYeMAeF4mhIZ_D3zOt3YZbE58LL4g9leJXK-5ubTGUeq5BteeWm/s320/El-Mundo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2015/08/29/55e171b3ca474137368b4579.html" target="_blank">El Mundo - Spain</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2015/08/29/actualidad/1440842138_970294.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgCTk9JNHs1mEHVWv4txJBr4DKHAIbvXdp3cMmOWEUkIhVENmRPRtgpXWAiaOM4dDKawW1JMM3Lq0yBZEgOsFa50Cf-fr-_Je418J4oU228NQ4t9YTaH_Hi0Vuxvv0Wi5weisjAmKZsghd/s320/El-Pais.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2015/08/29/actualidad/1440842138_970294.html" target="_blank">El Pais - Spain</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elsevier.nl/Buitenland/nieuws/2015/8/Drie-jaar-cel-voor-journalisten-al-Jazeera-2678011W/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8g37o2SW5GgpGhq2BXSCdpDtdpfMkbI120QMg-ioxbFesziCZC-Vf7ZD1ZCHHtY3BiUGuiEJiPOzGAf_4CYNEm7VvGT2T2ViKDR9FDqYvoc9VshD-3I7ksIYAbDtDMxveMx1_0JRgl86H/s320/Elsevier.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elsevier.nl/Buitenland/nieuws/2015/8/Drie-jaar-cel-voor-journalisten-al-Jazeera-2678011W/" target="_blank">Elsevier - Netherlands</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.enca.com/africa/al-jazeera-reporters-await-egyptian-court-ruling" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLlWGIy_NPqWTtRP0CMdjPmPVoY-pnz3rbxQeoOnmSZsm445SBloQ9xvYlj3kKQkOT9OZwkd5ZDrtk_ed0t5v8J5vi5QdTmoOMFjIrKPvyKOqgRqFDgd3ZVORt8jkkTg1GFd5KZXFhhmME/s320/eNCA.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.enca.com/africa/al-jazeera-reporters-await-egyptian-court-ruling" target="_blank">eNCA - South Africa</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20150829-egypt-sentences-jazeera-english-journalists-three-years-prison" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI6XkSg5yFrF-ASJGkMSY_FAqxlPxL4RwrO2cmgaGyhb5fF5slzRsgO3QOOGL1MPQ0SFwEh0YfBpsocWBP0h9dQV9hrkLSrOYRrOrj0SQMPx9tW1QeCEvPxrTnOzd8OHhyZIttFmkuBCgj/s320/France24.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20150829-egypt-sentences-jazeera-english-journalists-three-years-prison" target="_blank">France24 - France</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/world/al-jazeera-journalists-jailed-for-three-years-in-egypt/195426.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW43189C0MkqpsPeaDZK0JeCBNA1XvI_ZqIdOjOgprgsVGzqM1FpPxE5lg6fvXhaya_QK6qm6k3AldJd3-1iB2jazFpdg8ScrWitV5yRWfz90wzUXKeyyFZdzpVy48KDdOnTmrAoXCmV2y/s320/Greater-Kashmir.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/world/al-jazeera-journalists-jailed-for-three-years-in-egypt/195426.html" target="_blank">Greater Kashmir - India</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/29/egyptian-court-sentences-3-al-jazeera-english-journalists-to-3-years-in-prison" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLT3SpModbgVtLoLyUEOfeGtyS66n_0tni4pLUbiEh7ulmfpenNKo3BRBF9RIO0bfK23UJzuOxnR7uo0ZvEHDzrwUm1YTubIdu-KlGKtBxh5EUMY0JXsr82s5nXTYXrMK9Xa_EzWKRBMfT/s320/Guardian.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/29/egyptian-court-sentences-3-al-jazeera-english-journalists-to-3-years-in-prison" target="_blank">Guardian - Britain</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/aussie-mps-slam-greste-verdict/story-fni0xqi4-1227504387860" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpXTEglM2ryzllCB1oglterFYf57GNnSyB8kxC8UPBG8jMD7Bw_gKoN1rJBAwzq4Bl-uJfnYmV5Rb4uSLGdMwntwxiG0KyrFawwbEqrtNgrEOjaQ1D_fBUkjwHIQIum9S3e29C3UxdMMKN/s320/Herald-Sun.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/aussie-mps-slam-greste-verdict/story-fni0xqi4-1227504387860" target="_blank">Herald Sun - Australia</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://kosu.org/post/al-jazeera-journalists-sentenced-egypt-3-years-prison" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggF3ejMLMfDrJEn1BG2s8IT3Icq_H_ELqTSOtuH8tg06wDb0WTqhE-LEwaCuTzWSoNlA2WIvjc0-yujVQFBEEd-eMrpo1gfMmBIovEqi18h07Nf0E6rcazDhf2MICVTRf0aXUu53bYeLpk/s320/KOSU.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://kosu.org/post/al-jazeera-journalists-sentenced-egypt-3-years-prison" target="_blank">KOSUA - USA</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2015/08/29/news/egitto_tre_giornalisti_di_al_jazeera_condannati_per_aver_diffuso_notizie_false-121833374/?ref=HREC1-12" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb2DYqq04bX2k-hbmTS9A_e4c6zaCeni3VH7wZligzThqLGkf7C4JpQ03IwSEPRx8SiLFeW_6Bu5PgqbXSdU526_W6NCh2tzBBgBhA5az6wJUbLNETNnpffqq1kWxX0LwhcYXFdvnWsw6V/s320/La-Repubblicca.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2015/08/29/news/egitto_tre_giornalisti_di_al_jazeera_condannati_per_aver_diffuso_notizie_false-121833374/?ref=HREC1-12" target="_blank">La Repubblica - Italy</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lastampa.it/2015/08/29/multimedia/esteri/egitto-condanna-reporter-difeso-da-amal-clooney-e2TiUYvnU78M3dGosmMWZO/pagina.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnhDzRlX9YQye768k7iLdN4dhgtC4OfmY-2TPOMQ3SF3OHtiarI_jD-BgRLF14K_DsbeFZhhf-l1WhxFZLoit3WHwV7BCokzM9XbbHuwawBSA4VxxlnvbSJ4P0qW-JNgkQTFg_evNwFPNJ/s320/La-Stampa.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lastampa.it/2015/08/29/multimedia/esteri/egitto-condanna-reporter-difeso-da-amal-clooney-e2TiUYvnU78M3dGosmMWZO/pagina.html" target="_blank">La Stampa - Italy</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2015/08/29/en-egypte-trois-journalistes-d-al-jazira-condamnes-a-trois-ans-de-prison_4740003_3212.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYcyP4rnG-6FQ3d44qTBKdhWi0gteDhW0OtYTkQO3WhiaOQm7hZYJFBvR6TaXklSrybSuVAOz16nKwqjafL24ZrgxkoPPZC8yKnfJO0GfJUxxIKehBcR3d79DZos40DnIzJ6TWEx6vt9hU/s320/Le-Monde.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2015/08/29/en-egypte-trois-journalistes-d-al-jazira-condamnes-a-trois-ans-de-prison_4740003_3212.html" target="_blank">Le Monde - France</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.leparisien.fr/international/egypte-trois-journalistes-d-al-jazeera-condamnes-a-de-la-prison-ferme-29-08-2015-5045183.php#xtref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNezmFYB08dviEQl7-AJVoZHuuZrq96luwQEbff2NfwZJcOrJ1QB7ZP6EzipMQTPcw2enSqTpz5YVnpQ_bwMFMfTFazdoev2mCoPYkt5HD6hLwlG9Tgta1AJi04LVCOLZZ40zZ-vGOipmv/s320/Le-Parisien.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.leparisien.fr/international/egypte-trois-journalistes-d-al-jazeera-condamnes-a-de-la-prison-ferme-29-08-2015-5045183.php#xtref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com" target="_blank">Le Parisien - France</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/trois-journalistes-d-al-jazeera-condamnes-a-trois-ans-de-prison-ferme-29-08-2015-1960226_24.php" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg27RzDhImEUJQP4ywp7dq_C1MhipiVt-0Cqpf1NowN10rvvS6qSavlB70q1i8YbnrIZc2HQ05l522cVW7yS1SyTSNpc5FDkACbgFl3IrzvAGtHfM0Zt-5-8mpYV_i00buituj9A2-2J8yp/s320/Le-Point.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/trois-journalistes-d-al-jazeera-condamnes-a-trois-ans-de-prison-ferme-29-08-2015-1960226_24.php" target="_blank">Le Point - France</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://mashable.com/2015/08/29/egypt-al-jazeera/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1xrIBogPfLRrywPdLHzLeRrdqcANXP7_JevT6rcN5FBeOyIbR1xOZm9gmCZMfejBQn4DyJnneMlI_3eagTSnP7Czr6HI4eapV1X6DpTiTpgeY5kh-e6Iw60TBxM9p-4sVSL-tfgQiZ_pO/s320/Mashable.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://mashable.com/2015/08/29/egypt-al-jazeera/" target="_blank">Mashable - USA</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/3-al-jazeera-reporters-sentenced-to-three-years-in-jail-by-egypt-court-1212230" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-1FXfFqWIf_UjvnEZnYcBrmMmTKXhzhyWtWKwp2eHjDRnfQRTw0pydP73VIkURMsxgjSFMwVC1CRlQepd_PMt3IA3saxzF0gbx39xnLYPyx3Ra4vBKp9RnBH_4v-caX6QsNRr5g5a4Af_/s320/NDTV.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/3-al-jazeera-reporters-sentenced-to-three-years-in-jail-by-egypt-court-1212230" target="_blank">NDTV - India</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/world/middleeast/al-jazeera-journalists-sentenced-to-3-years-in-prison-in-egypt.html?_r=0" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8HPejN-r5DnSq_n3NWj9p8yH1UDZvtwQljCTHHAmO7cL48KiiRqnSXUUE48YtCdCizO20q8mLsybabonZ1IOlRKE6ZfTbEuChzl3oY3fmkG-wJ_Gr0C686Kl4zBjxJ_PsrAcWb9_SjYH9/s320/New-York-Times.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/world/middleeast/al-jazeera-journalists-sentenced-to-3-years-in-prison-in-egypt.html?_r=0" target="_blank">New York Times - USA</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20150829_01839819" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtFMtE0Gj9D-X1-K-eUVy6yGf7nibIVaaLQphgMffdFrGZKHMqkBq7brXreYWzonOQxaKRee4hWKBdqc_9IwyxYucizCskOd1dR_yD8KKmOSHHS31ldOxd9Rf_DMxLOdR2TrFi72nW63wl/s320/Nieuwsblad.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20150829_01839819" target="_blank">Nieuwsblad - Belgium</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/02/08/in-egypte-gevangen-journalisten-al-jazeera-krijgen-nieuw-proces/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguIPu0GFR8gk5TkKbqYXm4EbrcCoZSqErktcW9Zp-9plB4Cny4B-k_tNynkO_pLUamNY5Y4OjDmPCVgXRSQoRT3kR9xjWrQv_q8JILscDbfdvjsG-ku55O1rFMpGB5lOPeNAjE6vWzhNgV/s320/nrc.nl.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/02/08/in-egypte-gevangen-journalisten-al-jazeera-krijgen-nieuw-proces/" target="_blank">NRC - Netherlands</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powned.tv/nieuws/buitenland/2015/08/journalisten_al_jazeera_3_jaar.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8KuFsdbGxh6ZyG7KPiGoFMufuh5P0nlhhhk68Co3z__uh-D2DNtYfTaT970_DaSWxDjY7Kh50rbz4ITYs-z2hEzgfOaPwYT_ZPE8qggJwdD8HljCDhPqWUjBtxJO1I_kx0YDBLrNtOhN9/s320/Powned.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powned.tv/nieuws/buitenland/2015/08/journalisten_al_jazeera_3_jaar.html" target="_blank">Powned - Netherlands</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1543580/al-jazeera-journalists-jailed-for-three-years" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwBO7jtVv23HNbrZaqq4uUDW1-cHjSvYz0DyGnZMdJnLNSPrDq_I5OuS7qqF9qqD2iV15DpkEZz4Xep7zP4M17f-OmACHWXv_WYzu4XmT8aiWJ3t4N84QyyyPqsNjjFKEHQS4FfudofpZT/s320/SkyNews-with-ad.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1543580/al-jazeera-journalists-jailed-for-three-years" target="_blank">skyNews - Britain</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/aegypten-reporter-von-al-jazeera-zu-neuen-haftstrafe-verurteilt-a-1050498.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZNwj_QD8lgzFHmw5ghn1sWF3WzWNA0omRcg7PDvToxfGQCP_RAmYZxeycYuHLGXZZIE7luGzJSi9PBomkg6u0CWsufAyDrF9HP4RdAVuh757d6OfCQA8a5b4a1oYZa_pS9hHzmIcKn8RE/s320/SPIEGEL.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/aegypten-reporter-von-al-jazeera-zu-neuen-haftstrafe-verurteilt-a-1050498.html" target="_blank">Spiegel online - Germany</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/peter-greste-not-optimistic-as-cairo-retrial-verdict-nears-20150829-gjam1m.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9nIo4EnuEkU8OZ92X2zFA51jMS4Om8VREND7BR8rmpZJxLbYF-gXcPkVkcOr2-m4WKfNZWdmtWCikcf4EyhyDv0Fr4WswBLFwv6-F_h7kwxe3vD50oWcvzx3vC2QHye_yGY_s0Pi52iMb/s320/Sydney-Morning-Herald.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/peter-greste-not-optimistic-as-cairo-retrial-verdict-nears-20150829-gjam1m.html" target="_blank">Sydney Morning Herald - Australia</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/journalisten-aegypten-101.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgWGOmn_JrQXMPO-8Hi0LHp-0NmrT0W-aWqlFNWkdg0_GUoUEDzeDn_5AMZBs_YXsM3Nml_lIzyzZBD4NekxBHovuOjaOlhRqF1G3o1avUH7_kJc5E_MFnTuZHbhezCj84atMOFgOywjM/s320/tagesschau.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/journalisten-aegypten-101.html" target="_blank">tagesschau (TV 1) - Germany</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/world/middle-east-africa/canada-asks-for-release-of-al-jazeera-defendant/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-nAyyiw2nLDFYXpV7EJBrw02gvNPKoLQhRSkjHhghkEiQYS1tpk1HDKCzeAo9QHRTGpuEDuuo7F0PmGzarQ8utJqJhr8dVj6xgBJyhODJI2IYVg98NhtBQy7QWTT84F-_V08bGyxKwy87/s320/The-Indian-Express.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/world/middle-east-africa/canada-asks-for-release-of-al-jazeera-defendant/" target="_blank">The Indian Express - India</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/al-jazeera-trial-egypt-sentences-reporters-to-three-years-in-jail-1.2333704" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9K_DamguhFlbEIy-diqFgu5Zs822NWcxgxkaWVHpgk2nCVJGL5x6olzeAT2jS8ZaQssyeSb-GF-7xxqOH4GNmrEBylyiV2zlQmEVY3tqyeBjL6PuPM5Sj-YFFNIsYsaw3y5pmmunTeH7d/s320/The-Irish-Times.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/al-jazeera-trial-egypt-sentences-reporters-to-three-years-in-jail-1.2333704" target="_blank">The Irish Times - Ireland</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/africa/article4542144.ece" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqf82R98nDXrEI0aMmpvZjI7I410l3FQvbI8Bl-l5oOsrGts_v2tGZdVAtG6unIF5bYEZqRBK7XBK2qGEmeHgXggq-dVPbDNI4zNKZx1pRiB-JyQYX_GKumdRP4XzRUH2yVgdy6gK48gcJ/s320/THE-TIMES.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/africa/article4542144.ece" target="_blank">The Times - Britain</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-urges-egypt-to-overturn-ruling-on-al-jazeera-reporters/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvzBBRbF9clnS30WhoA6mqfF3_Dtjo6YPQ8Rg7XvY6xdiuDSKBZe-wE09r05DeE6_WOdVR5xgaDVN0O7VoTYZ5KGhUQrxEvOmxRh-8JntXvD0CZHG6elEh21moD3QMpoxNTtdYHgXZo9ZA/s320/Times-of-Israel.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-urges-egypt-to-overturn-ruling-on-al-jazeera-reporters/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter" target="_blank">The Times of Israel - Israel</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/08/29/canadian-journalist-mohamed-fahmy-sentenced-to-three-years-in-prison.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ7ngu9R3yzxfo1ZNcwgEtnqrcO_uTn0kAEYpgH0jZBBJY_F7oUxNkl9aHwDB9oFxvJwwqG9iqKvXeocAGSl4Ms0rOPhNnlonlCW_79FJ1A6zScArdNyMJKW_lpvL4el3EISaDgLSMZVVq/s320/Toronto-Star.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/08/29/canadian-journalist-mohamed-fahmy-sentenced-to-three-years-in-prison.html" target="_blank">The Toronto Star - Canada</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-prison-1440840201" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivK_4pPNJv4FGeLVYosnr1thGYiw7zxilyxpXVfRej_w_82uUhzdyMJuy_5PHXr8QS5f7gaJ80FW0izJEFmej5bbbFHx645mU-bopkooqt7FUxpZl9RNLa3n5fG7fN93mYFMqN6qwJZVY7/s320/Wall-Street-Journal.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/egyptian-court-sentences-al-jazeera-journalists-to-three-years-in-prison-1440840201" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal - USA</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/world-shocked-egypt-court-sentences-154504943.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBFNPa-ESuoXx0hcDsM1yLkWiWBjo0H6eEzuenKgXHd50E7e6qZv4OCvPOGclUkl9mMdR_qB5qjLZw7bI2VwZ1LbJliR0wn4N2T3fOjAQxZFX7_GG7DvSkImjRxy8nyNs_TqqA4arGsc6/s320/Yahoo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/world-shocked-egypt-court-sentences-154504943.html" target="_blank">Yahoo news - USA</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/news/egypt-court-sentences-aljazeera-reporters-to-three-years-in-jail_34570" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2sPtRoFdq8_GeYNhI_F6XBb1FroyaWjHF521d0FRTZAMmptXPtf8Q_65gH8dQT88HXtvLCBw66OV3JA8z8GzHLVU1b6mPV92dxZwGEhtTjRXW2S0Q7slTHGaomoKX37PRet26L4RhyphenhyphenLBL/s320/Your-Middle-East.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/news/egypt-court-sentences-aljazeera-reporters-to-three-years-in-jail_34570" target="_blank">Your Middle East - Sweden</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-08/aegypten-al-dschasira-journalisten-haft" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCzkmOTcVz_uRcj-MlCAwJPtPAJOyFfsowUntc40GQPau7_g03Tb06VD7jkLZhWFUfeqQlxvuG8eoPZ7wAx9ir05leL9r9qSQkDC925ByynawBfqLKei5CZ9afBTFpWnNhzqpTVGi_t8Uj/s320/ZEIT.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-08/aegypten-al-dschasira-journalisten-haft" target="_blank">Die ZEIT - Germany</a></td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
And there's lots more in print.<br />
<br />
In trying to silence reporting by three journalists, Egypt has evoked for over 20 months now a constant reporting by hundreds of media outlets the world over. If anything has damaged the reputation of Egypt, the stubborn ruthlessness by the regime to attack a free press and individual journalists has.<br />
<br />
A shot-in-foot story if ever there was one. And unless the regime of President Sisi finally gets this, the reporting and subsequently damaging of Egypt's reputation will continue. Worldwide. For as long as such attacks continue and definitely until the journalists <b>Mohamed Fahmy</b> and <b>Baher Mohamed</b>, criminally held in jail now, are set free and allowed to return to their families.<br />
<br />
Not to mention the <a href="https://cpj.org/2015/08/cpj-condemns-conviction-sentence-in-egypts-retrial.php#more" target="_blank">dozens of other journalists held</a> without charges in Egypt's detention hell holes, in violation of Egyptian law and <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2015/08/18/court-refuses-to-receive-shawkans-release-demand/" target="_blank">even the Egyptian constitution</a>. <br />
<br />
Journalism is not a crime, Mr President Sisi. – Suppressing journalism is.<br />
<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-12302777139488834782015-08-28T00:26:00.000+02:002015-08-28T00:26:29.365+02:00On a bus, train, plane – somewhere in the United States of America<br />
<i>(Man reading the papers, looking up at his neighbour):</i> <br /><br />– Did you know that <a href="http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/" target="_blank">Leonard Peltier</a> has been imprisoned now for 40 years for a crime he did not commit? And that he is slowly dying in jail?<br /><br /><i>(Guy next to him, bored): </i><br /><br />– He's just a fuckin' Indian. Who cares?<br /><br />– Yes, but did you hear about <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bodycam-footage-shows-samuel-duboses-death-was-completely-different-to-the-police-account-10426311.html" target="_blank">Samuel DuBose</a> who got shot dead by a police officer although he was unarmed and did nothing?<br /><br />– So? He was a fuckin' black guy. Where's your problem, dude?<br /><br />– But what about <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/former-uk-ministers-urge-obama-to-free-shaker-aamer-from-guantanamo-bay" target="_blank">Shaker Aamer</a>, an innocent man who is held at Guantánamo Bay and – even according to the Bush administration – should have been released eight years ago!<br /><br />– He's just a fuckin' Arab. Get a life. – What's wrong with you?<br /><br />– You think all of that is ok? – Who are you?<br /><br />– Me? I'm a freedom loving American. – And proud! <br /><br />– Oh.<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-48527718431298316682015-06-13T15:58:00.000+02:002015-06-13T15:58:29.038+02:00Finally: UK, US and EU condemn state terrorist attacks on civilians in EgyptOn Wednesday a suicide bomber <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/10/us-egypt-violence-idUSKBN0OQ0VC20150610" target="_blank">blew himself</a> up near the temple of Luxor, killing himself. A second was shot by police. An Egyptian civilian and a policeman were wounded.<br />
<br />
In an immediate reaction the <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2015/06/11/eu-us-condemn-luxor-attack/" target="_blank">allies of Egypt</a> in the West issued <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/132548/Egypt/Politics-/UK-condemns-terrorist-attack-at-ancient-Luxor-temp.aspx" target="_blank">statements</a> condemning the attack:<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>UK, US, EU condemn terrorist attack in Luxor </b></span></h3>
<br />The European Union, United States and UK condemned a Wednesday suicide bombing near Karnak temple of Luxor Wednesday, expressing their support to Egypt against "terrorism." <br /><br />Minister for North Africa Tobias Ellwood said in a statement on Wednesday, "I strongly condemn the appalling terrorist attack today in Luxor in Egypt." He added, "The UK continues to stand with the Egyptian government and people in their fight against terrorist violence." <br /><br />The US embassy in Cairo also commended the police officers and citizens who managed to foil the attack. "We extend our sympathies to those who sustained injuries. We also condemn the attack on the Multinational Force and Observers mission (MFO) base in North Sinai. The United States continues to stand with the Egyptian government and people in the ongoing fight against terrorism." <br /><br />The EU joined in the condemnations, also asserting their support of the country's efforts to combat 'violent extremism.' "The EU will keep supporting Egypt's efforts to tackle violent extremism and prevent new attacks. We extend our sympathies to those wounded," the EU statement said.<br />
<br />
------------------<br />
<br />
At the same time, this statement was made, it became known that in the last two months more than <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2015/06/08/163-cases-of-forced-disappearance-since-april-report/" target="_blank">at least 163</a> Egyptian students, activists or random targeted civilians have been kidnapped by Egyptian security forces and disappeared – with the family for weeks frantically and in vain searching for their loved ones in prisons around the country. This was reason for another series of statements by Western Allies that to this day has not been sufficiently reported in world media:<br />
<br /><br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>UK, US, EU condemn terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in Egypt</b></span></h3>
<br />The European Union, United States and UK condemned the disappearance of 163 activists Wednesday, expressing their support to Egypt against "terrorism." <br /><br />Minister for North Africa Tobias Ellwood said in a statement on Wednesday, "I strongly condemn the appalling attack on innocent citizens in Egypt." He added, "The UK continues to stand with the Egyptian people in their fight against state terrorist violence." <br /><br />The US embassy in Cairo also commented on the disappeared and rumours of torture inflicted on them. "We extend our sympathies to those who sustained injuries. We also condemn the attack on innocent civilians. The United States continues to stand with the Egyptian people in the ongoing fight against state terrorism." <br /><br />The EU joined in the condemnations, also asserting their support of the country's efforts to combat 'violent extremism.' "The EU will keep supporting Egypt's efforts to tackle violent extremism by the state security forces and prevent new attacks on innocent citizens. We extend our sympathies to those wounded," the EU statement said.<br />
<br />
<br />
Several human rights organisations in Egypt, the US, Europe and UK expressed satisfaction that the Western allied powers to Egypt have finally found the courage to speak up for the oppressed Egyptian civilians who are kidnapped, then held and tortured in unknown prisons in the country with the Ministry of Interior and the General Prosecutor refusing to disclose their whereabouts.<br />
<br />
"It was about high time", an Egyptian activist said, who did not want his name to be published for fear of disappearing.<br />
<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-74837635814898649972015-05-12T17:52:00.000+02:002015-05-14T20:16:34.704+02:0025 tweets about Omar KhadrOn Thursday, May 7, a judge in Alberta court said the words so many had waited for for years: "Mr. Khadr, you're free to go." <br />
<br />
These were no easy words to say to a man who had been held by the U.S. in Guantanamo and then in jail in Canada for 13 long years.<br />
<br />
With 15, Omar Khadr, a Toronto born Canadian boy, whose militant father had taken him to Afghanistan, became the victim of the atrocities that began with the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. and continued with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, where more than 50,000 Afghans were arrested and thrown in jail, many dragged under inhumane conditions to the notorious camp at Guantanamo Bay only to be tortured and robbed of all legal rights.<br />
<br />
In Afghanistan the U.S. waged a fierce war against anyone they considered to be in bed with Al-Qaeda. A compound one day in July 2002 seemed suspicious and the U.S. forces attacked it with power. When the dust settled, two were left dead on the Afghani side and one U.S. soldier was seriously injured and would die a week later. In the rubble of the totally destroyed building the U.S. forces found a 15 year old boy that they shot in the back and wounded so horrifically that the soldier bending over the bloodied body suggested shooting him dead. At the last moment though an officer held him back, and Omar Khadr, with gaping wounds in his chest and an eye shattered by shrapnel, was carried off to Bagram Air Base.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr-kiIdG7Pmr1HrRSYGPu84n_-H38avxs2lBnbJ5viIb98dXV30pOrvmDKPQHf7XTxBg9qSn98V3ynkF23N6HGMvTlV3nJs1esSoMOgJ5wsrtkF7lntjrIMi8OJcUQ7jKeLNmH7VLYWzP3/s1600/Omar+Khadr+shot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr-kiIdG7Pmr1HrRSYGPu84n_-H38avxs2lBnbJ5viIb98dXV30pOrvmDKPQHf7XTxBg9qSn98V3ynkF23N6HGMvTlV3nJs1esSoMOgJ5wsrtkF7lntjrIMi8OJcUQ7jKeLNmH7VLYWzP3/s320/Omar+Khadr+shot.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
What followed was little medical care but continuous interrogations, intimidations, torture and even <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/06/us-guantanamo-canadian-idUSTRE63R2DF20100506" target="_blank">threats of rape</a> of the boy who was shackled for weeks to his hospital stretcher while his pleas and his tears were ignored. Three months later, though nothing of value had been extracted, the child, hooded and shackled and still in pain from his wounds, was flown to Guantanamo Bay to become the youngest inmate this notorious stain on humanity had ever seen. <a href="http://www.lrwc.org/ws/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Omar.Ahmed_.Khadr_.Fact_.Summary.June_.1.08.pdf" target="_blank">More torture followed</a>, totally disregarding the fact, that Omar Khadr was a child and subjecting him to torture and solitary confinement for years was a violation of all international laws. But the U.S. under George W. Bush had no respect for international law and Omar Khadr suffered immensely. For two years the boy was not even allowed to see a lawyer.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>Canada's atrocities</b></span><br />
<br />
Canada, though obliged to intervene on behalf of its child citizen, did not object. On the contrary. In 2003 and 2004 <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2007/08/20/ottawa_played_down_khadr_concerns.html" target="_blank">Canada sent Security Intelligence Officers</a> (CSIS) to Guantanamo who – despite knowing the child had been deliberately sleep deprived for three weeks – interrogated him in the most vile manner for days, thus collaborating with the U.S. in the torture of the boy.<br />
<br />
A <a href="http://www.youdontlikethetruth.com/" target="_blank">harrowing video documentary</a> of the Canadian officers cold-hearted 4 day long interrogation marathon of the dead tired boy later shocked the world and proved, what Canada's Supreme Court would <a href="http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Khadr.pdf" target="_blank">officially confirm</a>: the unlawfulness of the Canadian officers' treatment of the child.<br />
<br />
Despite all this, Canada, especially since under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, <a href="http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/khadr-misguided-security-laws-take-a-human-toll" target="_blank">refused to show any responsibility or empathy for the boy</a>. Omar Khadr was left under harshest conditions to himself in Guantanamo Bay – but for two immensely <a href="http://www.edmontonjournal.com/From+archives+Meet+Omar+Khadr+Edmonton+lawyers/11037754/story.html" target="_blank">dedicated lawyers named Dennis Edney and Nate Whitling</a> from Edmonton. Edney had been called to help defend the Canadian boy in the U.S. military trial that was to be held in Guantanamo, accusing Khadr of killing the one U.S. soldier at the compound by throwing a hand grenade just before being struck down by U.S. fire. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-case-against-gitmo-youth-shaken/" target="_blank">Proof for this allegation is lacking to this day</a> as it was revealed in 2008 that <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/omarkhadr/2009/10/28/omar_khadr_innocent_in_death_of_us_soldier.html" target="_blank">no one had seen him throw the grenade</a> while the U.S. forces <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/friendly-fire-might-have-killed-u-s-medic-not-khadr-lawyer-1.746590" target="_blank">threw grenades into the compound</a> at the time the U.S. soldier was inside. But the narrative conveniently became the official tale told by both the U.S. and Canada to defend the gross human rights violations against this horrifically wounded child.<br />
<br />
When Edney first flew into Guantanamo in 2007, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjIzx6io8_A" target="_blank">he later said</a>, he arrived as a naive, cocky lawyer exited to be one of few to be able to visit there. When, after having paid many visits to the boy – shackled to the floor, sitting handcuffed, shivering in a cold concrete cell, crying – he left the island, he admits, he was in shock. "Guantanamo changed me forever."<br />
<br />
It was then that Edney made a promise not to desert the child that had been deserted by the adults of both the U.S. and Canada.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>Blackmailed into confession </b></span><br />
<br />
In 2010, after having spent eight gruesome years in the camp, subjected to incredibly inhumane treatment, the U.S. military made it clear to Khadr that the only way for him to ever leave Guantanamo Bay was by pleading guilty to the murder of the U.S. soldier. A deal would then be struck for Khadr to be deported to Canada, where he should spend another 8 years in jail. It was a hard decision to take but, as <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/omar-khadr-explains-war-crimes-guilty-pleas-in-court-filing-1.2463558" target="_blank">Khadr later acknowledged</a>, the only way to ever leave the notorious torture camp. Khadr in the end accepted and pleaded guilty. The U.S. military triumphed. Without proving his guilt beyond reasonable doubt but through sheer blackmail, threatening him to rot forever in Guantanamo Bay, they had achieved their goal – a guilty verdict.<br />
<br />
At least they kept their part of the deal and prepared for Khadr to be deported to Canada. But Canada's conservative Harper government showed no mercy and kept stalling the transfer of its own citizen to his home country despite the urgings of <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/transfer-khadr-to-canada-amnesty-international-urges-1.673009" target="_blank">Amnesty International</a>, <a href="http://www.lrwc.org/ws/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Omar.Ahmed_.Khadr_.Fact_.Summary.June_.1.08.pdf" target="_blank">UNICEF</a>, <a href="http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=de87c6ab-05b7-48c2-a5e7-89e2b554043f&%20k=80491" target="_blank">the Canadian Bar Association</a> and other prominent organisations, until finally, in 2012, even Harper could no longer refuse and Khadr was transported to Ontario, where he was held at a maximum-security prison. Later, because of his good conduct and the legal fight by his lawyers, he was transferred to the medium-security Bowden institution in Alberta, where he was held ever since.<br />
<br />
With the Canadian government not shy in continuously slandering the former child as a 'jihadist terrorist' who had committed a 'heinous crime', the Canadian public in its majority was hostile towards Omar Khadr. And Harper made sure this was not going to change by Canadians getting to know any truth. A media gag was decided such that no journalist was allowed to interview the former Guantanamo inmate. Ridiculous reasons of <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/409276/ottawas-denial-of-media-access-to-jailed-omar-khadr-branded-propaganda/" target="_blank">security issues or fears of disruption of daily routine at the institution</a> were cited year in and year out to keep the press at bay.<br />
<br />
And while the Harper government kept painting Omar Khadr as a horribly vile, aggressive terrorist threatening Canada's security at any given opportunity, the man attacked was refused even the slightest chance to present himself or his side to the story to the Canadian public. To them Harper vowed that his government would ensure that Khadr would not leave prison one single day earlier than the sentence stipulated, for a terrorist had to be punished with full force of the law for his evil deeds.<br />
<br />
That Omar Khadr was but a 15 year old boy at the time the U.S. attacked the compound and that compassion and empathy for this horrifically wounded child would have been obligatory, to Harper was irrelevant. No considerations of international laws how to treat minors involved in an armed conflict ever made it into the minds or hearts of the government officials in Ottawa. To Harper and his conservative colleagues Khadr was the ideal boogieman to present to the Canadian public – never in person but always in fear mongering narratives – as proof that only a hard hand against Muslim terrorists would ensure the safety of the country. And since no one ever got to see this young man in person, the public in large parts was willing to buy Harper's story. They developed a picture of Khadr in their heads bigger than life, of a ruthless terrorist who would kill every decent Canadian on sight the very minute anyone would let him out of the cage. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The fight for freedom and truth</b></span><br />
<br />
But many of the press would not buy it. The fact that no journalist was allowed to ever speak to Khadr rightfully made the media suspicious. What exactly was Harper trying to hide from the public eye? Stories were increasingly coming out of Bowden institution by citizens who had met Omar Khadr on visits, and their tales sounded very different to the one the government kept telling. They spoke of a mild-mannered, friendly young man, keen on learning and listening and discussing all sorts of aspects of normal life. No aggression was ever witnessed, nor extreme ideas or political agitation. Those who met Omar Khadr at Bowden started to become immensely fond of him, started to help him with his urgent need to be educated and enjoyed the pleasure, as they could not tire to point out, of the company of a very friendly, kind-hearted young man. A <a href="http://freeomar.ca/" target="_blank">web-site of support</a> and a <span id="goog_958538590"></span><a href="https://twitter.com/aafpost" target="_blank">twitter account demanding his freedom<span id="goog_958538591"></span></a> sprung up and hundreds send him letters from Canada and even the rest of the world, urging him not to lose hope despite all he had to endure.<br />
<br />
In November 2013 Edmonton lawyers Dennis Edney and Nate Whitling filed an appeal against the U.S. military verdict of guilt, stating that Omar Khadr had only agreed to the deal as it was his only way to escape the gruesome conditions of Guantanamo Bay, a detention centre, as everyone agreed, outside the realm of law. Such a deal was unlawful.<br />
<br />
In the beginning of 2015 the lawyers filed an appeal to release Omar Khadr on bail, as it could be seen, that given the snail’s pace of the proceedings, his appeal, though with realistic hopes of success, would not be dealt with by the U.S. military court before his jail sentence would have ended. This would mean years still in prison that later – once his appeal would be successful – could not be undone.<br />
<br />
On the basis of this argumentation, on March 24 and 25, a judge in Edmonton court <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/03/24/omar-khadr-makes-edmonton-court-appearance.html" target="_blank">heard the arguments of the lawyers</a> and the counter-arguments of the Harper government regarding a release of Omar Khadr on bail.<br />
<br />
On April 24, Justice June Ross released her <a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2065329/court-of-queens-bench-memorandum-of-decision.pdf" target="_blank">carefully crafted ruling</a>, noting that the former Guantanamo inmate had “12 1⁄2 year track record as a model prisoner", arguing that no indication existed that Omar Khadr posed a threat to the Canadian public – and that the Harper government had failed to even attempt to prove otherwise. – Khadr was to be freed on bail.<br />
<br />
To no one's surprise the government filed an appeal against this ruling with Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney's spokesperson handing out the well known mantra, that Khadr had admitted to a 'heinous crime' and that the government would "vigorously defend against any attempt to lessen his punishment for these crimes.” Minister Steven Blaney added more ludicrous acid in a statement: “Our Government will continue to work to combat the international jihadi movement, which has declared war on Canada and her allies."<br />
<br />
When and were exactly Omar Khadr had declared war on his home country Canada, he failed to explain. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>Finally coming free</b></span><br />
<br />
On May 7, the day everyone had waited for for so long had finally come. In the Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Myra Bielby came to a ruling on the appeal by the government of Canada in the matter of bail for Omar Khadr. Again <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/1985470/edmonton-judge-allows-release-of-omar-khadr-on-bail/" target="_blank">the court pointed out that no danger could be seen</a> coming from the defendant and that the government had totally failed on showing how his release could pose a threat to the Canadian public. Under the conditions laid out for a release on bail – wearing a tracking bracelet, living with lawyer Edney and his wife, respecting a curfew from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m., enjoying only a restricted access to the internet and conversing with his family only via telephone and under supervision – the judge saw no reason to accept the appeal. Pointing out that this case was undoubtedly unusual, she said the magic words everyone hoped to hear after 13 years of incarceration: "Mr. Khadr, you're free to go."<br />
<br />
Lawyer Edney hugged his wife Patricia, who cried with joy, in the gallery people were clapping, laughing and crying – and when Edney walked over to Omar Khadr who sat almost motionless in the dock not able to grasp that it really had happened, his lawyer, after being undeterred and never willing to give up on hope for justice in eleven long years of battle, reached out his hand and said: "We've done it."<br />
<br />
Hours later, in the early evening of the day when all the papers had been signed and the truth started to sink in, Omar Khadr gave a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lTSMBYJ1Sg" target="_blank">brief press conference</a> on the lawn of lawyer Edney's home. Flanked by both Dennis and Patricia Edney, his invaluable guardians throughout this unbelievable ordeal, Khadr charmed the stunned public by being just the way his friends had described him: soft-spoken, friendly, well-mannered, considerate and kindhearted. The boogieman the Harper government had painted on the wall for so many years evaporated as a terrible lie into thin air within minutes of him speaking for the first time ever to journalists and in freedom. Canadians glued to their TV-screens rubbed their eyes in disbelief on seeing not a demon but a young man free of hate or bitterness or aggression and full of compassion and empathy and with a smile so sympathetic to win them over.<br />
<br />
And instead of uttering accusations or bitter complaints, this young man actually thanked them for any kindness they had shown and asked them to give him a chance, assuring them that he would not fail them. <br />
<br />
When asked if he had anything to say to Prime Minister Harper, the man who had hunted and haunted him for so long without any reasonable justification, Omar Khadr bore a shy smile, contemplated on this for a moment and then said humbly but with self-confidence: "Well, I'm going to have to disappoint him. I'm better than the person he thinks I am."<br />
<br />
The next day, Prime Minister Harper at a press conference expressed just that – his disappointment – that Omar Khadr had come free.<br />
<br />
Some things – and evilness – just never change.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The Battle is not over</b></span></div>
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Upcoming court challenges that must be fought:</div>
<ul>
<li id="magicdomid8"><span class="author-p-105992">May 14th – </span><span class="author-p-70729">Supreme Court hearing - Federal g</span><span class="author-p-105992">overnment</span> <span class="author-p-105992">appeal</span><span class="author-p-70729">s Alberta Court of decision regarding Omar’s youth sentence </span></li>
<ul>
<li id="magicdomid8"><span style="color: #990000;"><span class="author-p-70729"><b>UPDATE May 14</b>: <span style="color: black;"><b><a href="http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/supreme-court-rejects-federal-bid-to-consider-omar-khadr-adult-offender/" target="_blank">Court rejects Federal appeal</a></b>. </span></span></span><span style="color: #990000;"><span class="author-p-70729"><span style="color: black;"><span class="author-p-70729">Omar Khadr was not an adult offender but sentenced as juvenile – and
only to 8 years, not 5 times 8 as Harper governments wants to make
believe. </span></span></span></span><span class="author-p-70729">Quote: "Justice Rosalie Abella wondered aloud whether the U.S.
government actually views Khadr’s sentences as being concurrent. The
only party that seems to take that view, Abella said, is the Canadian
government." – What a disgraceful attitude towards your own citizen, Mr.
Harper!</span></li>
<li id="magicdomid8"><span class="author-p-70729">Note: It is the third time the Supreme Court of Canada has sided with Omar Khadr against the Harper government.</span></li>
</ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li id="magicdomid10"><span class="author-p-105992">June 2015 – </span><span class="author-p-70729">Omar’s first p</span><span class="author-p-105992">arole</span><span class="author-p-70729"> hearing scheduled. (was due mid-2013)</span></li>
<ul>
<li id="magicdomid10"><span class="author-p-70729"> </span><span style="color: #990000;"><span class="author-p-70729"><b>UPDATE May 12</b>: <span style="color: black;"><b><a href="http://metronews.ca/news/canada/1366876/parole-hearing-cancelled-for-omar-khadr-2/" target="_blank">Parole Board has cancelled the parole hearing</a></b>. As Omar Khadr is not in jail serving sentence but out on bail, the board has no jurisdiction anymore.</span></span></span></li>
</ul>
</ul>
<b><span class="author-p-70729">Excellent. </span></b><br />
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<b><span class="author-p-70729">Two more to go:</span></b><br />
<ul>
<li id="magicdomid12"><span class="author-p-70729">September 2015 – Federal government’s appeal of Justice Ross’ decision to grant </span><span class="author-p-105992">bail</span><span class="author-p-70729"> to Omar.</span></li>
<li id="magicdomid14"><span class="author-p-105992">Ongoing</span><span class="author-p-70729"> appeal to the Court of Military Commission Review in U.S. to vacate all Guantanamo Bay “convictions”. </span></li>
</ul>
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<b>May you win, Omar. May you win in every possible way. </b></div>
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jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-48471228317552902722015-01-25T22:30:00.000+02:002015-01-26T01:26:35.744+02:00The thoughts are free, Egypt!On the fourth anniversary of Egypt's revolution, things are not the way they are supposed to be. But don't despair, #jan25. They can arrest activists – but never their thoughts. The thoughts are free – and will always be!<br /><br />This German protest song, in a wonderful interpretation by Italian singer Milva, has scared tyrants for over 200 years and robbed them of their sleep.<br /><br />The thoughts are free! – There is nothing they can do against it.<br /><br />Keep going, Egypt. #jan25 is alive in your hearts and can never be removed anymore from the system.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/V2z5Epf3qkM?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br /><br />Here is the translation in full:<br /><br />The thoughts are free - <br />who ever can guess them?<br />They fly by<br />like nocturnal shadows<br />No man can know them<br />No hunter can down them<br />with powder or lead -<br />The thoughts are free!<br /><br />I think what I want<br />and what satisfies me<br />In my inner space<br />and just how it should be<br />My wish and desire<br />no one can deny me<br />It remains a fact to be -<br />The thoughts are free!<br /><br />And if they arrest me<br />and throw me in dungeons<br />All that will be nothing<br />but futile attempts<br />Because my thoughts<br />manage to tear down<br />the barriers and walls.<br />The thoughts are free!<br /><br /><br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-61778784934694119882014-07-30T19:53:00.001+02:002014-07-30T19:53:31.495+02:00Israel's deadly attack on Gaza - A never-ending déjà vuA few weeks ago I bought the book "<a href="http://justworldbooks.com/the-generals-son/" target="_blank">The General's Son</a>" by Miko Peled. Peled is an Israeli. His father – Matti Peled – was one of the most respected Israeli Generals fighting in the 1967 Six-Day-War at the side of people like Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon. As a colonel in the preceding 1956 war against Egypt, when Israel conquered the Gaza Strip and Sinai, Peled had been made military governor of the Gaza Strip. As his son writes: "This was a defining role for him, and it influenced his entire life."<br /><br />In 1953, when Matti Peled was still a young lieutenant colonel, his visions were clear. His army, he publicly said, was preparing for war "in order to complete the conquest of the Land of Israel and to push Israel's eastern border to its natural location on the banks of the Jordan River." It is a view that many right-wingers in Israel's cabinet and society <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15326#.U8w97Cg_Fut" target="_blank">hold to this day</a>.<br /><br />After the experience as governor in Gaza in 1956 and the bloody, albeit short war in 1967, Peled's views however changed. He had seen too many atrocities not only from the enemy but from his own army too, atrocities that chilled the blood. <br /><br />A week after the Six-Day-War in 1967 was over, as Miko Peled recounts in the book about his father, an Israeli army officer showed up in the neighbourhood at the Rafah Refugee Camp in Gaza, leading a company of soldiers and a bulldozer. The soldiers ordered everyone to come out of their houses and an inspection began. Finally the women and children younger than 13 were sent back home. The men however – around 30 of them including a 13 year old boy and a 86 year old man – were taken away far enough so that their families could not see. Then the soldiers lined the men up against the wall and shot all of them. As they lay on the ground, the officer went from body to body and shot each person in the head.<br /><br />As if this crime was not atrocious enough, what then came horrified those who were eye-witnesses from afar. The bodies of the dead men and the dead child were laid in a row on the ground and the bulldozer began driving over them, going back and forth several times until the bodies were unrecognisable. When the families finally were allowed to the scene, they could only tell who was who by the clothes they wore.<br /><br />When I read this story in Peled's book, horrible pictures of Srebrenica showing torn clothes on badly crushed bodies came back to my mind to haunt me. But more pictures started to form in my mind, pictures of bulldozers shovelling heaps of humans into piles in Bergen-Belsen, when the Allies had freed the concentration camps and were at shock over the amount of killed people they found. While the numbers of dead, both in Srebrenica and Bergen-Belsen, outnumber those of the crime Peled writes about by far, the use of bulldozers on the dead and the incredible vileness of the killing act evoke pictures that are hard to take. How low, I wondered reading this horrible story, can anyone sink to perform such atrocious acts on humans? And how, in anyone's right mind, can one then – as Israel's Prime Minister <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Netanyahu-Israel-could-pay-a-greater-price-without-a-ground-operation-363356" target="_blank">Netanyahu keeps repeating</a> – speak of "the most moral army of the world"?<br /><br />Matti Peled, the respected Israeli army General and former Governor of Gaza was shocked when he, much later, learned about this "massacre", as he termed it. He personally went to Gaza, spoke to the victim's families, inspected the place were the killing and bulldozing had taken place and was utterly disturbed. When Miko Peled, after learning of this story decades later, confronted his mother with it, her reply came immediately: "Yes, I remember this. Your father was so upset he couldn't sleep for weeks. He wrote to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and to Minister Haim Bar-Lev about it, but they did nothing. This changed him completely."<br /><br /><b><span style="color: #990000;">Egypt refuses medical aid to Gaza</span></b><br /><br />When I had bought Peled's book a few weeks ago, the current war on Gaza was not yet waging. I managed to read a few chapters and then was distracted by the real atrocities currently happening on the ground, where by now over 1300 people, almost 80% of them civilians and including more than 300 innocent children, have been killed in indiscriminate bomb attacks by Israel. I couldn't continue to read about the horrors of the past seeing the horrors that now once more happened day after day before the world's eyes.<br /><br />One night, worn out by witnessing the attacks going on for the 12th consecutive day, and feeling helpless knowing that yet more children would die in the next hours and I could not do anything against it, I picked up Peled's book almost indifferently at 4 a.m. to find some distraction. A ridiculous notion of course, seeing what his book was about. But what I then came across was more than just a simply distraction.<br /><br />When I opened the book randomly, it fell open on page 164 and I started to read about an effort Peled undertook in 2008 to get into the Gaza Strip to deliver medical aid. <br /><br />As Gaza was sealed off from the Israeli side at the time, the only possible way to enter and deliver the badly needed aid was via Egypt. So, after having flown all the way from America via Amman to Cairo, together with a Palestinian-Arab friend with whom he had successfully worked on aid projects for Gaza and the West Bank for years, he set off for the Rafah border crossing, trying to enter Gaza from the Egypt side. He was in for a bad surprise. The border was closed and Egypt refused them entry into Gaza.<br /><br />The border officials, from the soldier up to the officers, were not only denying them entry, they were also exceptionally rude and assaulting. As Peled writes: "Our (Egyptian) guide and driver were in shock at the lack of courtesy displayed by these officials. They knew we had come all the way from America to help people in Gaza and that we had medical equipment to deliver. They were as appalled as we were by the fact that the Egyptians were no more helpful than the Israelis."<br /><br />In the end, Peled and his companion, who had both invested enormous amounts of time and money to help the people of Gaza in need of medical supplies, had to give up and fly back to Amman. "As it stood," he writes, "the Egyptian government appeared to be committed, along with Israel and the U.S., to maintaining the siege on Gaza."<br /><br />This was 2008. Today we write 2014, but what Peled described was nothing short of a déjà vu for me, seeing that on the same day I read this a convoy with Egyptian activists that had left from Cairo for Gaza with medical supply <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/07/19/aid-convoy-gaza-stopped-border-security-reasons/" target="_blank">was stopped by the Egyptian army</a> half way across the Sinai and after hours of unfriendly debates was forced to turn back and give up their mission, returning deeply frustrated in the evening to Cairo, while the wounding and killing in Gaza went on and the medical supplies were badly needed there. <br /><br />It seems, nothing has changed from 2008, and one can't help but wonder, if the stories we hear today are not just repetitions of stories we already witnessed. <br /><br />What is most striking about this incident that Peled describes from back then is what it tells us about today.<br /><br />The argument that Egypt is currently so staunchly opposed to help Gaza because they blame Hamas, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (ousted out of power by the Egyptian army under now President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi), for the terror attacks by Islamists in Sinai, loses credibility in the wake of Peled's report. In 2008 no such terror in Sinai had endangered Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood was banned and had little power in the political, public sphere. What was no different then to today however were the interested parties involved: Israel and the U.S., which paid Egypt's army billions of Dollars over the years to behave like a good boy should. And Egypt only too readily complied. <br /><br />A true déjà vu. Nothing, as the denial of medical aid into Gaza by activists now again shows, has changed. The Egyptian government appears to still be "committed, along with Israel and the U.S., to maintain the siege on Gaza."<br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><b>People have nowhere to go and die in hundreds</b></span><br /><br />Three weeks after Peled and his friend had been turned away by the Egyptian army at Rafah crossing in 2008, the war on Gaza, dubbed by the Israel army "Operation Cast Lead", broke out. Within a period of eight hours the Israeli air force dropped 100 tons of bombs on Gaza and caused incredible devastation in the densely populated area. It was the beginning of 21 days of indiscriminate air attacks assisted by ground forces, turning the Gaza Strip into a place of hell and killing more than 1,400 people including hundreds of innocent children and women, wounded thousands and displaced thousands more with nowhere to go. A picture that we see right this day today, as almost 200,000 people in Gaza have fled their homes to seek shelters in U.N. buildings – where they've been repeatedly bombed by Israel with many dead –, and where hospitals – if they have not been bombed into rubble, as has already happened – despair over the incoming injuries they can't cope with anymore at this scale and the immense numbers of casualties – many of them being children as young as 5 months old who die in what Israel's army and government daily describe the "war on terrorists".<br /><br />With the narrative that Israel had been "dragged into this escalation by Hamas" and the reiteration that Israel was only "defending" itself legitimately against the rockets from Gaza, being "sorry" for the civilian casualties that go with it, Israel currently makes sure that once more the international community finds no decent words for the ongoing bombing of a densely packed, populated strip of land, where people have nowhere to go and no place to flee to when the bombs rain down and can only die in the hundreds. Which they do.<br /><br />A terrible déjà vu.<br /><br />Paging through Peled's book describing the Gaza war of 2008, I read: "To make things worse, Israel claimed that notices were given to the local population that the attack was imminent and that people should leave areas that were going to be bombed." The same exact technique Israel uses today knowing full well that in reality this cannot work and has cost more than 1,400 lives during Operation Cast Lead and further hundreds of lives in the following Gaza war in 2012. It keeps costing lives even today, as those 'warnings' ahead of a bombing often only come a few minutes, sometimes <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/seconds-warning-destroys.html" target="_blank">not more than 57 seconds before</a> an air strike, making it impossible for whole families, especially old or ill people, to get out of the house in time before the deadly bomb hits. In consequence the death toll in Gaza since the outbreak of this new war keeps rising in harrowing numbers and Israel shows no willingness to do anything to prevent so many civilians getting killed.<br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Cheering Gaza strikes with popcorn and drinks</b></span><br /><br />When I read on, I once more by chance came across a passage in Peled's book that chilled me, because it seemed to have been written only yesterday. <br /><br />After returning to the U.S. in 2008, where he lives with his family now, the Israeli Peled was invited to give a talk at the University of San Diego and writes:<br /><br />"During my remarks I mentioned that the latest assault on Gaza was not isolated but rather part of a continuous Israeli campaign against Gaza, a campaign that by that point had been going on for more than six decades. Every few years, the Israeli army found a reason to conduct a brutal attack on Gaza and leave behind as many casualties as possible, beginning as early as 1953 with the infamous Unit 101, led by Ariel Sharon. What happened shortly after our failed attempt to cross the border was a continuation of an ongoing war, a war that aims to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestine."<br /><br />And as if that remark from 2008 did not already seem immensely current seeing what is happening before our eyes this very minute once again in Gaza, Peled added one more sentence of frightening actuality, when he wrote 2008:<br /><br />"I heard stories of people who drove to the Gaza border to sit on lawn chairs and view the bombing."<br /><br />A déjà vu of the chilling kind.<br /><br />The world has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing" target="_blank">just witnessed</a> how Israelis dragged plastic chairs and even sofas up on hills, settle down with drinks and popcorn to cheer every air strike that hits Gaza, making for a spectacular display of colour in an otherwise frighteningly dark night and resembling fireworks rather than the lethalness that kills a child in the very minute the crowd cheers on the hill.<br /><br />Reading Peled from 2008 is like opening an article of the atrocities of 2014. It happens all over again with all the brutality and unbelievable vile repetitiveness that the world has so often now witnessed again and again. And while we show our outrage over the atrocities happening today we totally overlook the pattern we have been a witness to in so many attacks on Gaza that all left hundreds of civilians, including innocent children, dead, with nothing different now than ever before. And think nothing of a world that has found its own repetitive pattern of shrugging it off as something that can apparently not be changed, only ignored.<br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><b>International powers meddle</b></span><br /><br />Everyone who thinks, the Israel-Palestinian problem is a local one that just won't stop because of the viciousness of the involved parties, is little informed however about how the U.S. is pumping millions into efforts, to make sure only those who to them are politically acceptable run the place. <br /><br />When Hamas was democratically elected in 2006, President George W. Bush was not willing to take this lying down. It is one thing if elections within America provide results you have to live with, but outside America the nation dedicated to freedom and peace will hear nothing of it, one must gather from revelations and secret documents <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804" target="_blank">that surfaced in 2008</a>. Democracy and democratically elections are supported if they produce the results America is comfortable with. If not – see Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and many more – direct involvement to get rid of the government the people of the country voted into office start almost immediately. <br /><br />When Hamas won the elections in Gaza and the West Bank, Condoleezza Rice, the then Secretary of State of America, secretly flew into Ramallah with a respectable bundle of dollars in her bag to make sure, this was a short term victory. Promising $1.27 billion in aid Rice demanded from Abbas to oust the Hamas government within two weeks by staging a coup. Abbas was hesitant if the constitution allowed him as president to depose the elected government. But Rice brushed that aside. She was not going to let the Palestinian constitution get in her way. She pressed on. Her counterpart remained uneasy. It was Ramadan. Abbas said it could not be done before Eid, the end of the holy time. He then asked her to join him for <i>iftar</i>, a light meal with which Muslims break their fast when the sun sets. As Rice later got into her armoured SUV she fumed: "That damned <i>iftar</i> has cost us another two weeks of Hamas government!"<br /><br />Rice should err. It took much longer to get rid of the government the Palestinian people had – to the complete surprise of the U.S. – voted into office. America pumped millions into a military training of thousands of Fatah soldiers and even got Israel to allow the smuggling of thousands and thousands of weapons into Gaza, so that Fatah would be armed and trained and could stage the coup against Hamas (arms that – another déjà vu – later fell into the hands of Hamas and trouble Israel to this day). <br /><br />As vileness and stupidity often go together, word of this monstrous plan got out. And when Hamas learned that Abbas with the help of both America and Israel was planning to stage a coup – Hamas struck first and fierce battles began, at the end of which Hamas triumphed in Gaza and won full control of the Strip. <br /><br />America's game had not payed off. And to this day the consequences are felt in the region and both Israel and America keep trying everything in the book to reverse the political facts in the Gaza Strip, now held – not little thanks to the ignorance and arrogance of the U.S. – by Hamas alone. <br /><br />The current war against Gaza, that Israel, innocently blinking eyes, says it was "dragged into", is a <a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/opinion/gaza-and-israel-the-road-to-war-paved-by-the-west.html?_r=3&referrer=" target="_blank">direct reaction to the Government of Unity</a> that Fatah and Hamas finally agreed upon and established in June. The idea that the Palestinians would unite in harmony and become, lo and behold, a strong democratically elected power in the region, send shock waves through Tel Aviv and Washington. With the killing of three innocent Israeli teenagers, Netanyahu got just the pretence he needed to go into the West Bank, kill eight Palestinians, raid thousands of Palestinian homes, leaving most in shatters, and arrest – without charges – more than 500 Palestinians. It was this that triggered off what Netanyahu had hoped for: futile, ineffective rockets fired by a furious Hamas that would give him the possibility to bomb back with high-tech lethal weapons, citing the "right of Israel to defend itself" and stage yet another war on Gaza to avoid having to accept that Palestinians – Fatah and Hamas – agreed on a unity both Israel and America were not willing to allow. As Peled wrote back in 2008: "Every few years, the Israeli army found a reason to conduct a brutal attack on Gaza." The fear, Palestinians, united in one government, would become strong, was the reason found this time.<br /><br />To think all of the atrocities, the killings of innocent women and children we are once more witnessing on a daily, haunting basis in Gaza, is Israel's work alone, is based only on what Miko Peled describes as the wish to "ethnically cleanse the landscape of Palestinians", would be ignoring the broader picture and interests at stake. It is a fight of international proportions, where next to Israel's very own interests to gain control over all the territory of the Palestinians, America has a very personal geopolitical security interest to defend Israel and a desire to fulfil the unabated wishes of a strong pro-Israel constituency. It is this which makes it so impossible to bring the conflict to an end. The parties involved locally – Hamas and Fatah – had already agreed and established "one government representing the Palestinian people", as is now sternly demanded as an ultimate and only acceptable goal by Israel, the U.S. and its allies. However, as the events after the democratic elections 2006 and the current warfare show, not any "one government" will do. It has to be one that serves the interests of those who meddle in the region and are not short of cash to finance what they want to get.<br /><br />On Sunday, 20 July, the Israeli newspaper <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premium-1.606091" target="_blank"><i>Haaretz</i></a> reported, that the Gaza war so far has cost the Israelis $585 million. But Israel has no reason for concern. Only two weeks ago, the <a href="http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-us-senate-approves-351m-transfer-for-iron-dome-1000955574" target="_blank">U.S. Senate approved $621 million</a> to finance Israel's defence system in the sky, the Iron Dome. There is still money left in the till after that, so the war can go on. And it will.<br /><br />Grab your chair and your popcorn if you have the stomach to handle it. Thanks to international politics denying the Palestinians their basic rights and an indifferent world not wanting to get involved it's déjà vu all over again.<br />
<br />
------------------<br />
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<i>(A slightly shorter version of this text appeared in the <a href="http://t.co/l4v0fB6oBb" target="_blank">Daily News Egypt</a>, Cairo, on 24 July 2014</i>)<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-24036694916882018112014-06-17T17:48:00.000+03:002014-06-18T00:06:35.265+03:00Brave Irish historian demands dignity for 796 dead babies of Tuam<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ireland is once more in a mess. After numerous scandals revolving around revelations on abhorrent conditions in orphanages, industrial schools and similar institutions have rocked the Irish society in the last decades – with a hard to read <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_report" target="_blank">Ryan Report</a> only out in 2009 – new discoveries two weeks ago on 796 children who died in a mother-and-baby-homes in Tuam without getting a proper burial have caused again ripples that by now turned into huge waves. The Irish government, reluctant at first, has decided to establish a full scale investigation into not only this case but all similar cases of mother-and-baby-homes in Ireland, and it is feared that discoveries made there might bring even more shocking news.<br />
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The mother-and-baby-homes had the concept of locking away young girls who had become pregnant without being married. Society regarded them, not least due to the harsh teaching of the Catholic Church, as sinful and a shame to their families. For this reason such 'fallen' women were literally dumped by their families at mother-and-baby-homes run by religious Orders, where the girls were hidden away from the curious looks of the neighbours, who were told the girls had gone overseas. <br />
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In the homes, the girls, who were not permitted to leave the premises, were kept like slaves, working hard without any pay. They gave birth there, and almost always had to give up their children a year later for forced adoption. Something that the sisters seemed to have made a lucrative trade of, selling the babies off to as far as America, promoting them like a commodity to prospective buyers, as a letter by a Reverend Mother of Roscrea's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Ross_Abbey" target="_blank">Sean Ross Abbey</a> shows. The dealings of the nuns was nothing short of human trafficking, consented by society and families who seemed to care less what became of these so called 'illegitimate' children.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDwOWpjud65lZvJHYKvzdZQfsjIyQtXdWKUg4oN9xvdmEqQaRSx5VukaTgXCWZqrQJwkqPBWegYmYbF7MhwpISTRmH0i-q9dmrMf5fXeSpg50ZAMYGx8CyT9aeM4Wj_lLcb7nQo6-0Erma/s1600/Letter+by+Rev.+Mother+from+1961.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDwOWpjud65lZvJHYKvzdZQfsjIyQtXdWKUg4oN9xvdmEqQaRSx5VukaTgXCWZqrQJwkqPBWegYmYbF7MhwpISTRmH0i-q9dmrMf5fXeSpg50ZAMYGx8CyT9aeM4Wj_lLcb7nQo6-0Erma/s1600/Letter+by+Rev.+Mother+from+1961.jpg" height="268" width="320" /></a> Harrowing accounts of maltreatment in these mother-and-baby-homes have come up, of the authoritarian rule by the nuns – in the case of Tuam the <a href="http://www.bonsecours.ie/sistersofbonsecours-ourhistory" target="_blank">Sisters of Bon Secours</a> – and how they deliberately inflicted pain and humiliation on the fallen girls to punish them for their sin. Long times of complete silence or prayers were demanded from them while at the same time doing hard labour in the house or in the gardens. Some of these girls were as young as 15 years and had no understanding of sexuality or the concept of pregnancies that resulted from something where the boy had told them: "Don't worry, it's ok." When however they became pregnant, the boys turned their backs on them, their families discarded them and the nuns had a free hand to punish them in every way they wanted. It is reported that painkillers during birth were deliberately refused so that the women would feel the pain of the sin they had committed. Other witnesses report that babies, when in need of food, were by order of the nuns breast-fed by other women while the original mothers had to scrub floors somewhere else in the building. Another attempt to humiliate and punish the girls for what a deeply conservative society and a Church regarding sex before marriage a crime deemed to be their unforgivable sins. <br />
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At the same time, the young men who had had their fun and were the root problem of all this went unharmed and retained their respectable lives in their families.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><b>A story of skeletons</b></span><br />
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The cause for all this to surface now, decades after these horrific conditions were forced upon 'fallen' girls and their offspring, is the determination of a local historian from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuam" target="_blank">Tuam</a>, a small town north of Galway on the west coast of Ireland. Catherine Corless, who, as she herself says, has always led a quiet secluded life, never anticipated that her persistency on getting to know the truth behind the fate of children who died in Tuam would ever lead to a world-wide media storm and a governmental investigation.<br />
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It was hearing a story back from 1975 that led her on her path of research. At the times two young boys from Tuam had played on the grounds behind the – by then torn down – mother-and-baby-home of the Bon Secours Sisters, had as so often hopped over the wall to play in a small patch of grass, when they discovered concrete slabs that seemed to hide a secret. As the slabs were broken, the inquisitive boys did their best to push them aside – and froze. Beneath them, in a pit of approximately 3 metres depth, skulls and bones of little children were chaotically piled up right to the top. Scared, as eleven old ones would be at such a sight, they ran off and informed their parents. Other children came to check what the fuss was about, and in the end, the two boys, now grown men and still living in Tuam, report, a priest from the Parish came and held mass over the open pit. Then the slabs were put back in place and no one ever spoke about it anymore.<br />
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When local historian Catherine Corless heard this story, at the time not knowing the two boys were still around as grown men to be interviewed on this, she wanted to find out the truth behind the pit "filled to the brim with bones". She contacted the local registrar and asked how many children had died in that mother-and-baby-home of the Bon Secours Sisters, that existed from 1925 to 1961, when it was finally shut down, later bulldozed and replaced by a housing estate now on its grounds.<br />
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The registrar needed a week to check up on Catherine Corless' request, but the news she had when she came back for her, was a shock. Almost 800 children had died in the care of the nuns of the Bon Secours Sisters in the time from 1925 to 1961, meaning in average one child died in the home almost every two weeks throughout its existence.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The investigations</b></span><br />
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This in itself disturbing news, Corless however wanted to know more. She wanted to research the reasons for such a high number of deaths and she wanted to know where these 796 recorded children had been officially buried, seeing that there was a pit behind the home filled with children's skeletons. She asked for copies of the death certificates to these children and learned that each official copy meant a fee of € 4. "Do you really want them all?" the registrar inquired doubtfully.<br />
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Corless did. It took her two years until finally, in September 2013, she had spend a considerable sum of money but held all 796 death certificates to the – today on social media dubbed – <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/tuambabies" target="_blank">#tuambabies</a> in her hand.<br />
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The reading was hard to take. Most of the often only months old babies had died of infectious diseases, others were said to have been 'idiots' or 'mentally defective' or born with disabilities in numbers, that seemed dubiously high. Besides that, the death certificates listed measles, mumps and other illnesses, that, given the cramped space the children were subjected to, spread like wildfires in the home and led to horrible, painful deaths. A local health board inspection report from April 1947 described the children as “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs” leading to impressions of malnutrition, which even given the hard times Ireland had been through, could only be considered gross neglect by the nuns. After all they received considerable amounts of payments from the Irish state per child in addition to the lucrative income achieved through selling the babies off later to adopting parents. This malnutrition had no doubt a disturbing impact on the immune system of the babies and in itself needed urgent research. <br />
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All in all the <a href="http://darkroom.sundayworld.com/original/ceb7e622d53f2b67bf1cd99228b41b57:276be5a65b9eb1f5777c83244dcbc798/tuam-deaths-records.pdf" target="_blank">causes for deaths</a> made for a disturbing read. Yet the most troubling question of all remained: Where were these 796 dead children?<br />
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Corless set out to the Tuam graveyard, situated conveniently across the road from the plot, where in former times the Bon Secours Sisters home was situated. She asked to see the cemetery register and compared all names at the given times to the 796 names she had with her. To no avail. None of the babies had been buried there. Catherine Corless is still bitter about this.<br />
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"These babies were not buried in the main Tuam graveyard across the road, where they should have been buried in an angels plot in consecrated ground. Why? - They were just illegitimate babies. Illegitimate children don't matter, do they?"<br />
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But the historian did not give up easily. With her list of dead babies she travelled around the region, visiting many graveyards around Tuam in other villages, hoping to find something there. But at the end she had to accept that, but for one boy who she could trace to having been laid to rest in a families plot, 796 babies of the Bon Secours Sisters had vanished without a trace of a decent, proper burial anywhere.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The Archbishop apologises</b></span><br />
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In January 2014 Catherine Corless wrote an essay about her findings on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/MotherBaby-Home-Research/1381096678815670" target="_blank">her Facebook page</a>. She was so engaged with this case by now that she searched for old maps of the Bon Secours Sisters home, only to find that the place, where the boys had discovered the children's remains, was used as a septic tank by a workhouse originally located there and then still in the early years of the home. When public sewage came to Tuam in the late 1930s, the septic pit, just behind the grounds of the home, was no longer needed. Placing the old maps over the current ones shows that the area of the old septic tank was where the skulls and bones of the children had been discovered in 1975 by the two boys.<br />
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The findings were reported by local newspapers without stirring any public reaction. Something, that still puzzles the historian to this day. Only when the Irish Mail on Sunday picked up the story at the end of May, did heads shoot up and people started to take notice. And before Corless knew what was happening, the story made headlines all over the world and had been published more than 2000 times in just over a week. <br />
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The Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, responded swiftly with a <a href="http://tuamarchdiocese.org/2014/06/statement-of-archbishop-neary-in-support-of-home-inquiry/" target="_blank">strong statement</a>, the honesty of which Corless finds "admirable". <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I am horrified and saddened to hear of the large number of deceased children involved and this points to a time of great suffering and pain for the little ones and their mothers." Neary said. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I can only begin to imagine the huge emotional wrench which the mothers suffered in giving up their babies for adoption or by witnessing their death. Many of these young vulnerable women would already have been rejected by their families. The pain and brokenness which they endured is beyond our capacity to understand. It is simply too difficult to comprehend their helplessness and suffering as they watched their beloved child die."</blockquote>
Neary welcomed the decision of the government to establish an investigation about the fate of the Home Babies in Tuam and noted that, "regardless of the time lapse involved this is a matter of great public concern which ought to be acted upon urgently." <br />
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The Archbishop pointed out that as the diocese did not have any involvement in the running of the home in Tuam it did not have any material relating to it in its archives but went on to say: "While the Archdiocese of Tuam will cooperate fully nonetheless there exists a clear moral imperative on the Bon Secours Sisters in this case to act upon their responsibilities in the interests of the common good."<br />
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In accordance with the statement of the Bishop the archivist of the Archdiocese of Tuam has tried to find anything relating to the Babies Home that was run by the religious order of the Bon Secours Sisters. To little avail, as Fr. Fintan Monahan, Secretary to the Archbishop, points out. <br />
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"In our archives - the only thing we have in my knowledge is a letter from the head of the Bon Secours asking the Bishop of the time to open a separate foundation which turned out to be the Grove Hospital in Tuam. That hospital closed down over 10 years ago to the sadness and disappointment of Tuam people. The only other item we have in the Tuam Parish that might be of assistance to the commission is the baptism register and the death register."<br />
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So far at least, no notes have been found by the priest who back in 1975 was said to have held mass over the opened pit containing unknown children's remains. "I have asked the older priests and they genuinely have no knowledge of this as the priests that ministered in Tuam then are now deceased." says Fr. Monahan, ensuring once more that the Archdiocese of Tuam will assist the governmental investigation in all points "and support the memorial committee in whatever way we can."<br />
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The Archbishop of Dublin, who is also the Primate of Ireland, put out a statement <a href="http://www.thejournal.ie/archbishop-diarmuid-martin-investigation-mother-and-baby-homes-1505876-Jun2014" target="_blank">demanding a full investigation </a>into all mother-and-baby-homes, as in his opinion "there's no point" in just investigation Tuam. "It probably happened in other mother-and-baby homes around the country,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said, acknowledging that "there was collusion between church and State institutions.” The Archbishop added: "We need to investigate exactly what happened... to try to identify the areas of culture that were there, and to make sure they’re all gone."<br />
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A few days later Archbishop Neary on his part directly <a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/archbishop-religious-orders-must-ensure-truth-comes-out-30338949.html" target="_blank">addressed the victims</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"As a minister of the church, I apologise to the people who are hurt and have suffered and who are pained by this. We must think about them at this time. This is a time for transparency. Our diocese is committed to transparency and for that reason, all who have been involved in the management of those homes throughout the country have a responsibility to contribute to the inquiry and ensure that the truth comes out."</blockquote>
The <span id="goog_638022505"></span>reaction of the Bon Secours Sisters<span id="goog_638022506"></span> to the revelations so far however have been limited. In a <a href="http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/deeply-saddened-bon-secours-sisters-welcome-tuam-mother-and-baby-investigation-632622.html" target="_blank">statement</a> the Sisters had said that they welcome an investigation into the matter without letting out, what their position was on the allegations. A little later however, when the media storm grew in intensity, the Bon Secours Sisters made use of one of the best PR firms of Ireland only to let journalists know that from now on the Sisters would not say anything anymore.<br />
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A troubling reaction seeing that the Bon Secours Sisters, in whose home these 796 children died without a burial recorded anywhere, have a lot to explain. Credible testimonies have been given to Catherine Corless by mothers who gave birth in the Tuam Homes who state that their babies have been baptised by the local Priest when he came by for holding daily mass at the Home each morning at 7 a.m. The mothers, as they recounted, were not allowed to attend the baptising of their own children, another disturbing aspect of the inexcusable way the nuns treated the 'fallen' women. No governmental inquiry would be needed for the Sisters of Bon Secours to open up on this dark chapter of their own Homes and explain this inexplicable treatment of young mothers during the sacred act of baptising of their children. All it would take is the courage and decency to face the past, in order to help those that were victimised to find healing after all they have been through.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The rejected Home Babies</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEmcR-yXDofCiiREGmQwUIlD-tYhCjBIU3KWCyjoi7PEo1Dvby1lKSEASpUPkO2262cbwYsy6joStAr8djhEmq_nEbPg8qJqZ7HCL5wF6t2lcjT55FOPt7Q21Kpwl8is1ztLERe8KefnKs/s1600/Who-does-God-love-the-most.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEmcR-yXDofCiiREGmQwUIlD-tYhCjBIU3KWCyjoi7PEo1Dvby1lKSEASpUPkO2262cbwYsy6joStAr8djhEmq_nEbPg8qJqZ7HCL5wF6t2lcjT55FOPt7Q21Kpwl8is1ztLERe8KefnKs/s1600/Who-does-God-love-the-most.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEmcR-yXDofCiiREGmQwUIlD-tYhCjBIU3KWCyjoi7PEo1Dvby1lKSEASpUPkO2262cbwYsy6joStAr8djhEmq_nEbPg8qJqZ7HCL5wF6t2lcjT55FOPt7Q21Kpwl8is1ztLERe8KefnKs/s1600/Who-does-God-love-the-most.jpg" height="196" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From "Christ's life in us. Workbook." Dublin: CJ Fallon, 1970s</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
For Catherine Corless, finding the truth and restoring the dignity of those who perished in the home with no tombstone to their name has become a matter of huge importance. As a child she herself had been in school with children from the home, called by all the Home Babies and subjected to maltreatment and rejection. The Home Babies were considered unclean and fruits of sin. In school they had to sit separately in class and had to leave early when school was over to make sure they would not mingle with the decent children who were encouraged by the nuns not to be nice to the outcasts.<br />
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Corless had played a trick once on one of the Home Baby girls, offering her a little stone wrapped in candy paper. She had seen this done by a friend of her and found the reaction of the poor girl on discovering she had been fooled funny at the time. The idea that that girl would never have seen a kindness in her life and the unfairness of the trick haunts her to the day. “Years after I asked myself what did I do to that poor little girl that never saw a sweet? That has stuck with me all my life. A part of me wants to make up to them.”<br />
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For this she has gone to great lengths, has been tireless in her research and persistent in trying to find out the truth. She even build a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1391410747783372&set=a.1391415284449585.1073741827.100007433798188&type=1&theater" target="_blank">model of the Bon Secours Sisters home</a> using the old plans of the workhouse she had found.<br />
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"Building the model kept my mind focused on the mother-and-baby-home and I felt that it might help those who spent time there to see and remember and perhaps find a healing of some sort," says Corless.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKokVvd7V3-w5WnSOSLTpFC5xhM-tvG5YnQiOJUyEOh7kdjqrfezFPyvdB4Bx91__UCualRHwQPDzFv-qdMfoYYAmlAYxnDOhBZiiI0iEJRbN9DOxBhAfVJPHtwc7eGafscjJd78-qnSeS/s1600/Photo-Tuam-home-model.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKokVvd7V3-w5WnSOSLTpFC5xhM-tvG5YnQiOJUyEOh7kdjqrfezFPyvdB4Bx91__UCualRHwQPDzFv-qdMfoYYAmlAYxnDOhBZiiI0iEJRbN9DOxBhAfVJPHtwc7eGafscjJd78-qnSeS/s1600/Photo-Tuam-home-model.jpg" height="287" width="400" /></a><br />
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The model shows where the mothers dropped off their unfortunate girls in the front house, handing them over to a stern Reverend Mother who would hold them in her possession and at her continued disposal from now on. The horrific insults and accusations hurled at those poor girls on such occasion one can only imagine. <br />
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For all this to be known, the historian made huge personal contributions, especially in her attempt to obtain all the records of the 796 dead children. The Irish state should reimburse Catherine Corless for her expenses. Had it not been for her willingness to invest such a lot of private money and time, Ireland would not know what it knows know and urgently needed to know about. Especially as the mother-and-baby-home in Tuam was only one of many. And even the Archbishop of Dublin fears that this is only the beginning to more gruesome discoveries.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><b>A story of the battle of the Faiths</b></span><br />
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Not everyone naturally is pleased about the revelations of the historian in Tuam. Denialists in the Church, the media and on social media were quick to refute all findings, denying such atrocities ever happened. Some, calling themselves "Catholic militant" refused to acknowledge the existence of dead babies in the pit or took great efforts to explain that the pit was a burial ground as used in medieval times and not, what the maps showed in fact, a septic tank. Some called it a 'hoax' or spoke of a fake story invented to tarnish the image of the Catholic Church.<br />
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The story of the 796 vanished Tuam babies is after all also a story of the not yet buried war of Faiths in Ireland and a troubled relationship with the British. Having gained independence in 1922, everything connected with the former colonial power, including their Protestant belief, was strictly rejected. Many girls were taken up in the homes so to ensure they would not leave for England, while others were brought back from Protestant homes in England under great troubles to make sure they remained in the realm of Catholicism. The war of beliefs over which church is the right one, ignoring the valid question if God cared for such quarrels, has been waging ever since, and even the Ireland of today, having officially a non-religious government, still shows the rift when emotions run high on the comment section of newspapers or on social media where the Catholic Church is defended blindly despite all the scathing reports of the past, or the call for finally separating the Church from the state can be heard loud and clear. <br />
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After all, since the Irish Constitution of 1937, the draft of which the then government send twice to the Vatican for reviewing, "the State recognises the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens", a right that is not reserved for the Protestant Church seen as closely connected with the former colonial ruler. And so the battle wages on with every new finding from the past shedding a light on the dubious system of the state paying the Catholic Church to put up institutions, including the mother-baby-homes, where the 'fallen', shameful girls of society could be put away and out of view. The one – the state representing the society – paid and the other – the Catholic Church – offered gladly to do the job. Both will now once again need to come to terms with their horrible past and their collusion on any wrongdoings against children where welfare of the vulnerable should have been the dutiful concern for the parties involved.<br />
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The Archbishops with their strong worded statements and demands for full investigations they promise to be part of have set the tone for how the Catholic Church of Ireland has to deal with this new crisis. Stepping back from this would be a great failure. As Archbishop Martin pointed out in response to earlier scandals already in 2009: "There is always a price to pay for not responding. The church will have to pay that price in terms of its credibility. The first thing the church has to do is to move out of any mode of denial." What the denialists in contrast don't see is that with their militancy denying even the facts that are proven they do damage to the very Church they pretend to protect.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>Little bodies stacked in shelves</b></span><br />
<br />
In the meantime more revelations have come up. A media company financed a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2651766/We-need-dig-babi...ound-Penetrating-Radar-reveals-lies-beneath-Tuam-Home-site.html" target="_blank">subsurface radar examination</a> of the plot where the boys said they had found the skeletons in a pit. The results showed two 'anomalies' in the ground of that area – a rectangular shaped plot A and a plot B resembling the former septic tank. At the same time a new witness came forward supporting Catherine Corless and her research. <br />
<br />
Mary Moriarty, who lives close to the area, <a href="http://philipboucher-hayes.com/2014/06/12/tuam-new-understanding/" target="_blank">told an Irish reporter</a> that in the mid-70s a child had played with a children's skull and, startled, she had gone to investigate the matter with her neighbours. On crossing the area that contains the two anomalies, the ground over todays plot A suddenly caved in and allowed her to enter what she describes a huge vault with shelves stacked from bottom to top with over 100 children's bodies wrapped in clothes. The witness recalled the conversation afterwards with a woman in her late 70s, called Julia Devaney, who said that she had worked at the Bon Secours Sisters home at the time and repeatedly had helped the nuns carry dead babies through a tunnel to this vault. <br />
<br />
Such a tunnel, Catherine Corless had found out in her research, had indeed been build. The Co. Galway Homes and Home Assistance Committee had decided to prepare it as a shelter in case of possible air raids, as was reported by the Tuam Herald in July 1940. The story of Mary Moriarty seemed to make sense against this background, presenting not only for the former septic tank, found as plot B in the subsurface radar examination, but now in addition also for the marked plot A an explanation and a story of a grim discovery of babies' bodies. <br />
<br />
How many children indeed are buried in these two places and if all 796 babies who have no burial record are to be found here, only an excavation could establish. As things stand, there are testimonies of witnesses so far and subsurface radar results but no view of the skeletons yet, giving those who want to fight or defend the Catholic Church enough room for heated arguments and accusations in public forums, often coldly ignoring the fate of the children who lost their lives in the Tuam mother-and-baby-home.<span style="color: #990000;"><b> </b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>She won't give up</b></span><br />
<br />
To Catherine Corless the battle of the Faiths and their followers matters little. She demands justice and dignity for the 796 children that died and simply vanished. "All that matters is the truth", the undeterred historian says. "796 children must be accounted for." Surely, she argues, the children had a right to a proper burial, to dignity and respect. In her opinion, the fact that they vanished without an official trace of having been laid to rest is an inexcusable failure of the nuns of the Order of Bon Secours, the Catholic Church and the conservative society of Ireland that needs to be fully investigated. And before anyone should get any doubts on her determination, she insists: "I will not give up on them." <br />
<br />
It is not hard to see, the babies of Tuam, wherever they might be buried, have finally in death found a friend they clearly didn't have in their short, suffering life. It can only be hoped that the governmental investigation into the fate of those that perished in mother-and-baby-homes will finally uncover the full truth about sadly yet another dark chapter of Ireland's haunting past. If so, Ireland has no one to thank but a stubborn local historian from Tuam who just wouldn't give up.<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-91708814011002109132014-05-01T21:31:00.000+02:002014-05-01T22:09:54.713+02:00Why Do The Good Die Young? - R.I.P. Bassem SabryBusy with a strenuous move of both house and offices this last week and thanks to a telephone company that mucked up, I was left without both phone and internet. Cell phone connection is slow, so surfing social media sites is not exactly tempting in the middle of such an endeavour. It is for this reason that I had not been on twitter for days when last night I felt a calling that there was something urgent I was missing. Today I could no longer take it and took the enduring cellphone road to twitter – only to read the shocking news, that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egyptian-blogger-bassem-sabry-dies/2014/04/30/ed1f225e-d04e-11e3-a714-be7e7f142085_story.html" target="_blank">Bassem Sabry had died</a> on Tuesday at the age of 31 years and was buried yesterday evening in Cairo. It was a blow. The idea that he won't be around anymore, that I won't see him on my twitter timeline or read his well phrased thoughts in articles ever again, is hard to bear. The devastating side to the word death is the forever. It is this which we cannot take.<br />
<br />
I can easily think of how, whenever I applauded him for some excellent writing, he always reacted with thankful surprise, as if he could not believe that anyone could be so impressed by his words. I had yet to see vanity in Bassem Sabry. And I remember when under SCAF's transitional rule that hideous video was published, showing an alleged foreign spy enter a café in Cairo only to be embraced by smiling young Egyptians who innocently fell for his evil tricks – it was Bassem who publicly pointed out that this piece of revolting propaganda was already flawed in that no Egyptian would warmly embrace a stranger like that in a café. "We Egyptians just aren't that friendly, it's a fact", Bassem said. When it came to being honest about Egypt and the Egyptian way, Bassem was the one. My parody of that video he found so amusing, that he asked for permission to put it up on his blog, which he did. He had humour and the ability to accept that one should laugh about oneself too, when necessary.<br />
<br />
All these are just bits of memories that linger in the mind and heart but won't alter the fact that he is gone. Egypt has lost a voice of reason, of modesty and responsible contemplation and a great political analyst above all. In times of incredible division and polarisation, Bassem Sabry was a comfort to listen to. As many others, he became less vocal on twitter in the last months, perhaps needing time of quietness amidst the growing insanity, but he became more active again in the last weeks. And his last tweet two days ago was the call to help a girl who was in need of a blood donation. <br />
<br />
Now he himself is gone and sorely missed by those who liked and loved him. And while hardly any death in Egypt in the last years – and there were many – ever seemed to make sense, his death seems to be the most senseless of all.<br />
<br />
What strikes me heavily, besides trying to come to terms with his irrevocable disappearance, is the age at which he died. 31 years is horrifically young to go and inexcusably unfair to a man who had so much to give, who was willing to invest so much in making a human existence worthwhile. As always the unanswered questions arise: Why does life deal such blows? Why is hope so often crushed? Why do the good die young but the tyrants are never struck by lightning? Is it really too much to ask of life to just once reverse the order and let those who are evil at heart go early and leave us the ones we so badly need to make this world a better place?<br />
<br />
Apparently so. Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, who killed his people in the tens of thousands, is spilling his hate still at 90. Bassem Sabry, who never hurt a soul, had to die at 31. If ever we had been in doubt if there was injustice in life, here's a new update. Thanks very much.<br />
<br />
So what is left is devastation, loss of hope, fatalism. All the things Bassem would not have wanted us to have. His way, while not denying the negative realities, was optimism. The unshaken determination and belief that Egypt would one day have a future worth experiencing, worth living, and that the road was thorny and full of unexpected backlashes but needed to be walked to finally one day reach a better life for all.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>His legacy</b></span><br />
<br />
When the good die young, our hopes seem to crumble. For the young are the future, the chance for progress, the inspiration for a change for the better. When Bassem Sabry was laid to rest yesterday, to many of those who attended his funeral it must have felt as if hope and future of Egypt received one more heavy blow and died with him. So many wonderful people Egypt so badly needs for her future were either killed or jailed or left the country in the last three years. With such a brain drain, who is still left to do the job? When a voice like that of Bassem Sabry falls silent too, it might feel as if no hope is left anymore. <br />
<br />
If Bassem could talk now, I am sure he would tell us that he did not want to go this early. But at the same time he would quickly pass over his personal feelings on this and tell us that losing hope is the last thing that should be on everyone's mind because of his demise. After all – he might have left, but his thoughts haven't. His words are still there to read, his ideas for a better future of Egypt still valid and to be found, his voice of reason still carries on and was not silenced by his death. Would Egypt lose hope now and believe that he was silenced forever, it would say unfavourable things about how serious we took him when we read his words. How can we believe they don't exist anymore? How could we not see that his thoughts, the tools for a better future, are still within our reach? No, Bassem has left, his way hasn't. He left us his legacy of 31 years to hold on to, and hold on we should. The point is not that he died. The point is that he lived. In just mourning his loss we might forget the blessings he gave while he was around. There is so much to remember, so much to think about, so much to contemplate. He left more than one could ask for in such a short time of life. He did not go. His body did. His spirit didn't. If Egypt wants it, it is still there to have and to hold and to make the best of it, as Bassem would have earnestly wanted.<br />
<br />
As H. A. Hellyer put it in his very personal <a href="http://madamasr.com/content/my-friend-bassem-sabry-one-good-people" target="_blank">tribute</a> to his friend: "If you want to honor his memory, I suggest you do what he did: Start building something beautiful and just put the hate away."<br />
<br />
Bassem would have loved this. <br />
<br />
Come, stop the mourning. And take the cue.<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-92071630471875353942014-03-05T00:22:00.000+02:002014-03-06T00:55:55.046+02:00The Bitter Truth about Reeva Steenkamp's Death<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Chm3H8dIKUeD1s76STkuPjKgUFJ-uyWhMwRsMT6jN79OphCzZGzjT5JZWfiwB4YBPSSS25N9_xzSpEXFgSRl3yOo0EgvnjcaXKj-niUGbeDJfnLxjk8XnmLyj9_ao3-TNq0nBrvRVfDg/s1600/Reeva01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Chm3H8dIKUeD1s76STkuPjKgUFJ-uyWhMwRsMT6jN79OphCzZGzjT5JZWfiwB4YBPSSS25N9_xzSpEXFgSRl3yOo0EgvnjcaXKj-niUGbeDJfnLxjk8XnmLyj9_ao3-TNq0nBrvRVfDg/s1600/Reeva01.jpg" height="400" width="212" /></a></div>
For 13 months I have refrained from voicing any public opinion or passing judgement on the killing in South Africa of <a href="http://jonamorem.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-legacy-of-reeva-steenkamp.html" target="_blank">Reeva Steenkamp</a> by her boyfriend Oscar Pistorius. As is known, he shot his girlfriend around 3 a.m. on the morning of Valentine's Day 2013 with four bullets fired at a toilet door behind which she had been. Three of the four bullets hit her and led to her death.<br />
<br />
From the morning of February 14 when the news broke that the famous 'blade-runner' had killed his girlfriend, a well known model and reality TV celebrity of her own in South Africa, the speculations about what happened in the night at the Silver Woods Estate where Pistorius has his house went wild. Had he shot her deliberately after a quarrel or, as he described it, had there been a terrible mistake on his part? Pistorius gave a statement to the effect that he had thought there was an intruder in his bathroom, had grabbed for his gun, which he always has at his bedside, went to the bathroom, panicked and shot at the door while believing his girlfriend Reeva was lying in bed sleeping.<br />
<br />
The story, with which Pistorius managed to achieve bail and thus freedom, sounded incredulous for many reasons, yet as a jurist I know that only facts laid down in proven evidence can lead to truth and justice needed in a criminal case. And for that reason I thought it wise to not publicly voice my opinion on his version of the story but wait for the trial to show what really might have happened that night between Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp.<br />
<br />
Two days have now gone into the long awaited trial that is taking place in Pretoria's High Court, and the two days with three witnesses testifying to what they heard that night have been nothing less than a shock. For never would I have thought that the hard to bear truth of that night would be exposed so quickly in what has been planned to be a several weeks long trial.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>Pistorius account of the night </b></span><br />
<br />
The story Pistorius had almost immediately told to the police after his arrest had been that he had woken up and gotten out of bed to close the sliding glass balcony doors. It was then – in pitch darkness of the bedroom as he says – that he had heard noises from the bathroom area, had – again in total darkness – grabbed his gun next to his bed, had run on his stumps to the bathroom, had felt vulnerable as he did not have his blades attached, and for that reason started to fire at the toilet door, not enquiring who was behind it. Since it had been, according to his account, so dark in the bedroom, he could not see if his girlfriend was lying in bed but simply took it for granted that she was sleeping and thus not expecting it to be her behind the toilet door. Killing her was thus not intended and when, after the shots were fired, he called out to her in bed and got no reaction he realised it must be her in the toilet, got a baseball bat and bashed in the locked door to find Reeva seriously wounded. He then screamed for help, called security, family and a friend and carried his girlfriend downstairs to the hall where she died. The police were on the scene shortly after and the known events took their course.<br />
<br />
There were many aspects of this story that seemed hard to believe. <br />
<br />
It had to be noted with surprise that while Pistorius – living in a gated community with almost zero crime incidents – said he thought there was an intruder in his bathroom and because he was on his stumps felt vulnerable and in panic shot at the toilet door, the same man that so lost his head in the fear of a possible intruder slept peacefully without closing the sliding glass doors of his balcony. After all he had said he had gotten out of bed to shut them before allegedly hearing a noise. <br />
<br />
The argument of Pistorius that South Africa was a troubled country with many burglaries – "I am acutely aware of violent crime being committed by intruders entering the home with a view to commit crime, including violent crime." – which according to him explained his irrational, fear-stricken, immediate shooting reaction, seemed odd at best coming from a man who, instilled with such fear, at the same time saw no problem in sleeping with the balcony wide open – which he hardly would have done had he truly been afraid of burglars climbing into his home.<br />
<br />
The narrative that in the pitch darkness of the bedroom he never once thought of waking and alerting his girlfriend to the alleged intruder, and thus the imminent danger lurking only metres away in the bathroom, again was hard to take.<br />
<br />
The door leading to the stairways to the hall, down which, after the shooting, Pistorius immediately carried the dying Reeva, was just adjacent to the bed. Any man with normal reactions on apparently hearing an intruder in the bathroom would have immediately and quietly woken up his girlfriend, probably holding his hand over her mouth so she would not make any noise, would have whispered to her that there was an intruder in the bathroom and told her to silently slip out the door down to the hall and call security and police. Only then, after knowing the girlfriend to be out and safe, would any normal person have taken the gun and walked off to the bathroom area, normally not to randomly shoot at a closed door not knowing who was behind it and what injuries such a shooting could cause, but to ward off the apparent intruder until the police would arrive. <br />
<br />
After all, there was only the one door as exit out of the toilet cubicle. The intruder could not have stepped into the bathroom area other than by opening that door. Covering it with a loaded gun and voicing the willingness to make use of it should the intruder dare to open the door would have been a unfailing safe way to keep the intruder at bay until the upcoming arrest by the arriving police.<br />
<br />
None of this, according to Pistorius account, however happened. Not one of these normal reactions one would have expected were part of his story. Instead he said he let Reeva continue sleeping while walking on his stumps with his gun to the bathroom area where he immediately opened fire at the locked toilet door – as he felt so vulnerable on his stumps that he lost his head.<br />
<br />
What, besides everything else, one wondered at the time, kept him from putting on his blades before tackling an unknown, supposedly deadly dangerous intruder, when being on stumps scared him so massively? Something he surely must have known after decades of living with this disability?<br />
<br />
Pistorius, confronted with interpretations of what really might have happened that night, rejected that any argument between him and Reeva had preceded the shooting. The blade-runner had a reputation of turning aggressive at times, both in speech and with guns, so the accusation of the prosecution ran that Pistorius and Reeva had quarrelled that night, that Pistorius had run into a temper and grabbed for his gun, that Reeva had fled into the bathroom and locked herself in the toilet cubicle at which Pistorius in rage then shot, killing her with three bullets to her side, her shoulder and her head.<br />
<br />
Pistorius denied that anything like this had happened. Yet next to the fact that his version to the story seemed hardly believable, there were other questions arising to which he could not give a satisfactory answer. Because in the bathroom on the floor, in front of the shower next to the toilet door, the cell phones both of Reeva and him were found lying, when the police entered the house.<br />
<br />
Why would Reeva, had she, as Pistorius alleged, gone to the toilet at night, have taken her cell phone with her and then dumped it on the bathroom floor? At 3 a.m. in the morning? And why, if no quarrel or fight had taken place, had his phone too fallen to the floor?<br />
<br />
It remains one of the unsolved questions so far what those cell phones were doing on the bathroom floor as it also still has to be seen whether the bullet trajectories will show if Pistorius indeed was on his stumps when shooting – which would have led to the bullets going up into the toilet door – or, as the prosecution believes was in fact on his blades – which would have led to the bullets going down into the toilet door. These questions the trial on the second day has not tackled yet. But after what one has had to listen to in these two days makes these questions almost irrelevant. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The witness testimonies that crush Pistorius' story</b></span><br />
<br />
On day one of the trial, Monday, March 3, the first witness, neighbour Michelle Burger, testified to what she heard the night Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead. According to Burger she and her husband woke up around 3 a.m. to terrified screams of a woman clearly in fear. "I sat upright in bed." Her husband rushed to the balcony while the screams of the woman continued. <br />
<br />
Burger: "She called for help. She screamed terribly and shouted for help. Then I heard a man also call for help. He called for help three times." <br />
<br />
Burger said she had believed she was hearing the sounds of a robbery next door, had taken her cell phone and dialled for security, then her husband had talked security guards and asked them to investigate.<br />
<br />
"Then I heard her screams again," said Burger. "It was like a climax. I heard her anxiety. She was very scared."<br />
<br />
Then she heard the shots, with a pause between the first and second shot, rapidly followed by two more.<br />
<br />
"It was bang... bang, bang, bang," Burger said.<br />
<br />
Then she heard a voice and all went silent.<br />
<br />
On being aggressively cross-examined by Pistorius' defence lawyer Barry Roux, who tried hard to get Burger confused or tarnish her credibility, the witness remained unshaken, even when Burger insinuated she could not know if she had heard a woman scream or a man. <br />
<br />
Burger insisted that it had been a woman she heard and that it was the "fear from her voice that startled" her, and added: "It was very traumatic for me. You could hear blood curdling screams. It is something that leaves you cold."<br />
<br />
On day two, Tuesday, March 4, Roux once more cross-examined Burger and questioned her testimony with regard to the alleged help screams of a man, which in Roux's eyes made no sense. Burger insisted that she had heard a man also scream three times for help – "perhaps out of mockery? I don't know. You must ask Mr. Pistorius why, not me." – and again did not deviate from her previous testimony. She insisted on having heard the petrified screams of a woman clearly in fear and said to the presiding judge: "My lady, you only shout like that when your life is in danger."<br />
<br />
When asked what impact on her life this experience had, Burger, who had defied four hours of grilling by the Pistorius' defence lawyer, got emotional for the first time. <br />
<br />
"When I'm in the shower I relieve her shouts," Burger said battling with tears, "her terrifying screams."<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>Her husband confirms her statement</b></span><br />
<br />
Later in the day, Charl Johnson, husband to Michelle Burger, confirmed her version of events of the fateful night. <br />
<br />
According to him he too woke up to the screams of a woman. He got out of bed and walked out onto the balcony and heard clearly the screams of a woman in "extreme distress". The woman was at one point shouting for help and then afterwards a man too was shouting three times "Help!"<br />
<br />
Johnson went back in, took the phone from his wife who had dialled security, and he related to two different guards that apparently a couple nearby was under attack and needed help. Then he discovered that his wife had mistakenly called the wrong number of guards at the security complex where they had lived previously. He therefore ended the call as he realised he was speaking to the wrong persons.<br />
<br />
Johnson said he ran back to the balcony where he heard the woman scream again. He said the intensity and fear in her voice escalated, making it clear to him that her life was in danger.<br />
<br />
Then he heard gunshots, some more screaming with the last screams fading after the last shot. Then silence set it.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>A first conclusion</b></span><br />
<br />
After these two statements of Michelle Burger and Charl Johnson, whose bedroom was only 177 metres away from the scene of the crime, the shock set in that indeed Pistorius could not have told the truth with his statement.<br />
<br />
No matter what Roux tried, he could not erase the fact that both, husband and wife, were awoken by horrific screaming of a woman clearly in death fear, that the screaming went on and on, turned into help calls and then went silent when four gun shots rang out.<br />
<br />
From this it is clear that prior to Pistorius shooting at the bathroom door, Reeva Steenkamp had been screaming in fear for her life, something that Pistorius could not possibly have missed, seeing that even neighbours 177 metres further down the road heard it clearly. <br />
<br />
Especially Johnson's account gives a time impression to the event that can easily been reconstructed:<br />
<br />
Waking up to the screaming of a woman in itself takes about one or two minutes until a person is able to understand at 3 a.m. what exactly woke him or her up.<br />
<br />
Then Johnson went out onto the balcony to listen to more screaming, which easily must have taken up at least another two minutes.<br />
<br />
On getting back in he took the cell phone from his wife and then talked to two different guards one after the other – only to discover that he was talking to the wrong people at another complex. Such a conversation is expected to again take up two, perhaps even three minutes.<br />
<br />
Johnson then terminated the call and rushed back to the balcony to hear even worse screams from the woman. <br />
<br />
By this time, from waking up to her screams to entering the balcony once more, anywhere between five to seven minutes would have passed, in which the woman – Reeva Steenkamp – could be heard screaming.<br />
<br />
Then the gun shots rang out – and the screaming stopped.<br />
<br />
This course of events can not be disputed anymore after these very clear cut, unwavering testimonies of two adults who would have no reason to give such detailed accounts of something that had not taken place and who were so consistent in their testimony even under the most heavy questioning in the cross-examination. The story makes sense in every way – but in confirming Pistorius incredulous version.<br />
<br />
How could Pistorius say he believed Reeva had been silently asleep in bed when he went on his stumps with a gun to the bathroom area when clearly his girlfriend had screamed for at least five to seven minutes, as the neighbours clearly heard? It is impossible and leads to the frightening conclusion that Pistorius is not telling the truth about the course of events that night when saying there was no quarrel and he thought his girlfriend was quietly sleeping when he shot through the toilet door.<br />
<br />
But if Pistorius lies about what really happened, why would he? And why had Reeva Steenkamp been in such death fear that night that she screamed in the most terrifying way?<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The final clue</b></span><br />
<br />
The answer to this last open question too came far quicker than could be expected. Witness number three – testifying in the morning after Burger's repeated cross-examination as testimony number two in the courts run – another neighbour, Estelle van der Merwe, told the court what she heard that night.<br />
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According to her, Mrs. van der Merwe was awoken already at 1:56 a.m. – an hour prior to the killing – by loud voices of a man and a woman clearly having a serious argument. The voice of the woman was signalling distress, going "up and down". While van der Merwe could not make out the content of the dispute, it was clear that it was heated. At one point, she said, she pulled the cushion over her ears in the hope of getting some sleep, as her son was writing an exam the next morning and she badly needed to rest. But the quarrel was too loud to be dampened by the cushion and went on "for about an hour". Then four gun shots could be heard and ended the argument.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The bitter truth to face</b></span><br />
<br />
With this third testimony in only two days, the question burning on the minds of family and friends for 13 long months as to what really happened that night at the house of Oscar Pistorius and why Reeva Steenkamp, a bright, young woman and in short to be lawyer, was killed, was answered in the most bitter form. A quarrel between the two for reasons unknown, lasting an hour, ended in a fatal shooting of Reeva by her boyfriend Pistorius who, again for unknown reasons, was so tempered up that he drew his gun on her. Reeva, fearing for her live, was petrified and screamed for help, then must have rushed to the bathroom perhaps in the hope to still call help via her phone, and then, when seeing Pistorius approaching with a gun, locked herself in the toilet in the hope of evading his wrath. It was then that the bullets penetrated the door and hit her as she was crouching behind it. She had no chance.<br />
<br />
For the family and friends of Reeva Steenkamp this disclosure of the events of the fateful morning of Valentine's Day 2013 only two days into the trial must be a shock. The hope, albeit slim, that Oscar Pistorius would somehow come up with a version that was credible and make it possible to believe Reeva had lost her life due to a tragic, panic instilled mistake on his part, has not been fulfilled. The accounts of three witnesses to the happenings of that night at the Silver Woods Estate have given a consistent insight into the course of events that led to Reeva's death. A mistake on his part can not only not be deducted from it, on the contrary the accounts show clearly that Pistorius, in the hope to get off the hook and bail out to temporary freedom, gave a narrative that in no way possibly could be the truth. And the fact that the blade-runner lied as to the quarrel and the subsequent screaming of his girlfriend just prior to him shooting at her through the toilet door leaves no room for interpretation other than that he lost once more his nerves in high-tempered rage and shot her dead. The tragedy in this revelation for Reeva's family and friends can not be described in words.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><b>The last hope</b></span><br />
<br />
Perhaps one day, in realising that his story does not hold after these witnesses testified, Oscar Pistorius will have the courage to tell those who intensely loved Reeva Steenkamp what the cause was for this deadly argument – the suspicion that they fought over his jealous believe she had been untrue to him with a mutual friend had already made the rounds immediately after his arrest, as he had shown such traits before – and why he lost his control so much that he got a gun and shot at Reeva behind the toilet door. For the family and friends of Reeva had wanted nothing more from this trial than to learn the truth about what really happened to their daughter, sister, niece and friend, who held so much love for life, carried a warming smile and a compassionate heart. <br />
<br />
Ironically, the witnesses Burger and Johnson, who gave such a clear account of the happenings that night, confided to the court that initially they had not wanted to get involved once they found out who had been shot that night and by whom. They kept quiet hoping other neighbours would step forward who must also have heard the screaming. But when the bail hearing took place, the couple realised this was not so and the description of the night given by Pistorius in no way fitted with what they had witnessed. It was then that they contacted the police via a lawyer friend and testified to what they had heard.<br />
<br />
Had Burger and Johnson not waited but contacted the police right after the killing and informed on the real course of events it can be safely assumed that Oscar Pistorius would not have come free on bail at the hearing, would not have been able to live in the plush home of his uncle in Pretoria and enjoy the freedom of living that Reeva Steenkamp was robbed off by him on February 14, 2013.<br />
<br />
Undoubtedly, due to the timid reaction of the witnesses, Pistorius was once lucky. As the trial develops in only two days, the chances luck will come his way a second time seem more than slim. If only in the interest of Reeva's family and friends he might find the strength to now tell the truth, this might have an effect on the verdict. Contemplating however on how consistently he lied for 13 long – and for her family and friends gruelling – months, it is hard to see him fulfil the hope that the truth and nothing but the truth will be finally known at the end of this trial. <br />
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May the family and friends of Reeva Steenkamp have the strength to see this through. Next to the terrible loss they endured and feel to this day, the continued silence of Oscar Pistorius might be the worst yet for them to have to bear. Whether they suffer more still or not is now entirely up to him.<br />
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<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-90943653342972632212014-02-14T23:47:00.000+02:002014-02-15T03:59:21.652+02:00The legacy of Reeva Steenkamp<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEWEWPgI5Pvwi7ghRcPZI1mcCufGHf5y8CZ7dwx8tFtbOFj8SUmcdvHQYZOdsIf5yVjXwVnW6nA135pNuLJhpLfRVgzZUSREymYJeM_6iPvx2kkAKL1FgBbXMnTP1u2K2UqD1wxqjJ0ySo/s1600/Reeva+portrait.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEWEWPgI5Pvwi7ghRcPZI1mcCufGHf5y8CZ7dwx8tFtbOFj8SUmcdvHQYZOdsIf5yVjXwVnW6nA135pNuLJhpLfRVgzZUSREymYJeM_6iPvx2kkAKL1FgBbXMnTP1u2K2UqD1wxqjJ0ySo/s1600/Reeva+portrait.png" height="320" width="272" /></a></div>
Today, a year ago, on what the world calls Valentine's day, the day of love, a beautiful woman in South Africa lost her life. The beauty she held is documented not only in the good looks the world talked about, but in what she said and wrote and what family and friends recount in loving memory. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeva_Steenkamp" target="_blank">Reeva Steenkamp</a> to many was the model, the TV personality-to-be, the girlfriend of the so called blade-runner, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius" target="_blank">Oscar Pistorius</a>. In November 2012 she had first appeared publicly at his side and her words to the camera about him where carefully chosen, as makes sense at the beginning of a new relationship. After all, Reeva, whose strikingly warmhearted smile had become a trademark, had not only positive experiences in what is deemed love. She had suffered for years in an abusive relationship and had come to Johannesburg to reshape her life.<br />
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On Valentine's day 2013, barely four months after the relation had started, Reeva wanted to make the day special for her new boyfriend and for herself. But as she was not only about herself, as some might have thought, Reeva had also intended to make this a day for others, to speak about her struggle against life's odds and domestic violence to pupils at the <a href="http://www.thenewage.co.za/Detail.aspx?mid=53&news_id=83095&cat_id=1007" target="_blank">Sandown High School</a> in Johannesburg. She wanted to be honest about the abuse she knew and encouraging to young people and especially girls to become proud adults who would not ever be humiliated by anyone, let alone by male violence.<br />
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She never got to speak at Sandown. While staying the night at her boyfriends house she was shot dead by him shortly after 3 am in the morning, locked in a toilet cubicle where four bullets that her boyfriend shot at the door took her life. <br />
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Much has been written about this fatal moment, about how or why Oscar Pistorius drew the gun on her, on whether, as he states, this was an accident, or as the state prosecution in the charges say it was murder. The trial is set to begin on March 3. And no matter what is written or said, the answer to this will only – hopefully – come to light in the hearings. To the family and friends who loved her dearly it will be the hardest time to endure after 13 months of feeling the loss.<br />
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<div style="color: #990000;">
<b>The woman who cared for victims of domestic violence</b></div>
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Reeva Steenkamp was blessed by nature with looks which made it to the cover of magazines and she knew how to strike a good pose. She was starting to develop a promising career as a model and her smile and blonde hair made everyone believe that this was what she was all about: modelling, beauty, the feminine touch. Few knew that the woman behind the poses was a hard working law-graduate about to engage in her Bar exam. With 30, a birthday to come up in August last year, she wanted to have reached her goal of being a qualified legal advocate defending the rights of those who couldn't defend themselves. <br />
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When in the Cape Province 17-year old Anene Booysen was brutally gang-raped and slashed to death by her rapists and on February 9, 2013, the teenager was laid to rest, it was Reeva who remembered her on her twitter account:<br />
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she wrote, ignoring that such a topic was not the in-thing to care for in a world of glamour and bright lights.<br />
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But the model who was the star of scene parties and always a good shot for high-key photography didn't keep in those circles in her mind. While she was fashionable and for many simply a symbol of good looks, there was a serious thinking person behind the cover the others wanted to see only. Her troubling experiences in her own relationship many years ago had made her lose her self-worth heavily. She did a lot of soul searching to remind herself of her value in the world, started to get back on her feet and work hard in a business formerly unknown to her, and while her fame rose and the offers came rolling in more and more, she never forgot that there was more to life than just good looks, fashion and partying. There was a <a href="http://www.thenewage.co.za/83161-1007-53-Sandown_High_School_visit_speech_by_Reeva" target="_blank">message</a> for the students at Sandown High that she spelled out in writing, but never got to tell them in person:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"Be brave. Always see the positive. Make your voice heard. Your physical seen. And the presence of your mental you felt. It's that culmination of your person that will leave a legacy and uplift."</b></blockquote>
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A day after the funeral of Anene Booysen, on February 10, Reeva Steenkamp, once more ignoring who her followers could be on social media, wrote on her instagram account:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkTQZR-H8WcMH0ytZmHh6e4FzKhMK2eEEt4yAzGgdXAb4blPkQdTdTTqdh_UcNh9_5x6iNoSxdbXqgzoyI75Z2bl4yFthPvQKHlWXY31fSYUzIhMxuSpDfhWTNK4B3Nb2QGihzVWntVZ_T/s1600/Reeva's+instagram+msg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkTQZR-H8WcMH0ytZmHh6e4FzKhMK2eEEt4yAzGgdXAb4blPkQdTdTTqdh_UcNh9_5x6iNoSxdbXqgzoyI75Z2bl4yFthPvQKHlWXY31fSYUzIhMxuSpDfhWTNK4B3Nb2QGihzVWntVZ_T/s1600/Reeva's+instagram+msg.png" /></a></div>
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Little could she know that only four days later she herself would fall victim to male violence and the comfort of the happy safe home was exchanged for death. <br />
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“Reeva held a passion for women’s abuse issues and frequently spoke out against domestic violence. She intended to one day open an establishment where abused women would be cared for", her parents said in a <a href="http://www.citypress.co.za/news/reevas-mom-will-attend-oscar-pistorius-trial-get-closure/" target="_blank">statement</a> a few days ago. Once the trial is over they intend to start a foundation "honouring Reeva’s passions”. <br />
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<b style="color: #660000;">The trial is about truth and justice</b><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKAOpJQmqFhFE5spkNL7cKr8wgPJ0afj7Ag2CUPMKEDHz_O2A8tXP09KAII16br2-y8bP_HyAC0DuMRtXxnuAbHihlPtxQ22WTt1vUiKX23_9a-UP4etX2G9DtGLoziciSev2Z-lTvIgex/s1600/Candles+in+the+sky+for+Reeva.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKAOpJQmqFhFE5spkNL7cKr8wgPJ0afj7Ag2CUPMKEDHz_O2A8tXP09KAII16br2-y8bP_HyAC0DuMRtXxnuAbHihlPtxQ22WTt1vUiKX23_9a-UP4etX2G9DtGLoziciSev2Z-lTvIgex/s1600/Candles+in+the+sky+for+Reeva.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After the funeral - candles in the sky</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKAOpJQmqFhFE5spkNL7cKr8wgPJ0afj7Ag2CUPMKEDHz_O2A8tXP09KAII16br2-y8bP_HyAC0DuMRtXxnuAbHihlPtxQ22WTt1vUiKX23_9a-UP4etX2G9DtGLoziciSev2Z-lTvIgex/s1600/Candles+in+the+sky+for+Reeva.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"></a>For those who loved her the trial is both a promise that the terrible time of uncertainty about what exactly happened that fateful night at Pistorius' house will finally come to an end, as well as the hope to find closure in a loss that one way or the other will stay with them for the rest of their lives. It will be a troubling time of battling emotions, and the press will take any chance to show a crying mother or a bereaved friend. That Reeva was killed is no news to them anymore. It has been reported numerous times now and fails to capture the imagination of editors who want new points of interest to catch their readers and viewers. And while to the family and friends of Reeva Steenkamp the trial will be all about her, the burning pain of having lost her and the love they forever hold for her, others will see it only as a chance to get headlines and news stories to serve a never ending hunger. It is, sadly, the way the media world works. <br />
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And yet – thinking of Reeva Steenkamp and the compassion she held for others, the hope goes out that just this time the media will tread softly and value the pain over a loss that to this day for many cannot be understood. They want this trial to happen, yes. But they don't want the frenzy that will go with it. For the family and friends this trial is about truth, about knowledge and about justice served for a woman whose smile and heart went out to so many and could have still done so much good, had her life not been cut short. <br />
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Those who loved her will do so long after the trial is over and the flashlights have found new objects of interest. Getting through it is a tribulation they endure for her and for her only. The intimacy of grief they still posses to this day is theirs, and it gives way to a vulnerability that should never be exploited. The world and the media must respect this at all costs and thus honour the legacy of Reeva Steenkamp.<br />
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The woman who showed compassion for Anene Booysen while others only wanted to see glamour deserves nothing less.<br />
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<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-8422704052440394852014-02-03T23:00:00.000+02:002014-02-04T02:57:18.217+02:00Letter to my Avatar – My dear little Omar Salah ...<br />
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one year ago to this day you were selling sweet potatoes on a street in Cairo near the U.S. embassy. It was not something you did out of choice, but because your family is poor and needs you to help secure an income. There was nothing special about this February 3rd, 2013, Cairo was calm and sunny, and nothing prepared you, when you left your home in the morning, for what was to come.<br />
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It was about noon, when a soldier came up to your cart and demanded from you to sell him two potatoes. You urgently needed to go to the bathroom at that moment and told him you would attend to him right when you would be back. The soldier did not accept this and threatened you with his gun saying he was going to shoot you if you didn't serve him immediately. <br />
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You were just a 12 year old boy. What could you know about the defects of human minds or the willingness of adults to be vicious? You did not believe him and in the innocent mind that was your right to have with 12 years of age you replied: "But you can't shoot me!"<br />
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To this the soldier replied: "I can't?" And then he pulled the trigger and shot you twice in your little heart. You were dead immediately.<br />
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The shock this had on those who witnessed it around you, was profound. The other children street vendors cried out and emotions ran high while your blood was spilling onto the street of Cairo. Amongst the soldiers, heated discussions started and the whole situation quickly became a mess.<br />
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The U.S. embassy tweeted that there had been an 'incident' in front of their gates but gave no details. For quite some time no one was aware what horror had just happened under the sunny sky of Egypt. And with the first shock subsiding that you indeed were dead right there on the street and for all to see, the military and police started frantically to do anything they could to cover up this horrific crime against you.<br />
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While your mother and father sat at home unaware they had lost you forever, the army took your little body to a morgue and covered you hoping that no one would find you and no one would find out. For accepting that one of theirs had killed you in cold blood and take responsibility for this action is not on the mind of the army of Egypt.<br />
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You must know, little Omar, that you are not the only one they killed, and not the only one they did not care for after he was dead. Over a year before you left us they had shot dead many protesters at Maspero and ran others over with heavy APCs. Again, later, they killed many at the Cabinet clashes. And so it goes on and on until today, for killing someone is the job of an army, they think. And they don't differentiate between borders or cities, it doesn't matter where they use their guns, they always think that they are in the right to kill. For no other but them has any right to a life. Only a right to be disrespected when – in the eyes of the army – the situation calls for it.<br />
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Of course, on that day one year ago, your killing had nothing to do with defending anybody. The soldier who killed you did not feel threatened or feared for the safety of Egypt. He simply expressed what he had learned as a conscript: that you as an Egyptian human being were not worth anything and that your life was cheap enough to be destroyed.<br />
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After your father had frantically tried to find you, aided by friends and NGO workers, your little blood stained body was finally found in the morgue. At first again the army tried to deny it had anything to do with this. But as pressure mounted and more and more witnesses spoke up to what they saw that day, the spokesperson felt it would hurt the army more to stay cowardly quiet than to come out with it and he put a statement on their Facebook page declaring your death an "accident" for which he offered your heartbroken parents his "apology". <br />
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The story goes that the soldier did not really mean to shoot you. He had thought that his gun was empty – because apparently Egyptian soldiers don't learn how to find out if their gun is loaded or empty and never load them themselves. It must be some hidden force that either loads their guns or not and then falls silent on the matter so that a soldier who carries his gun through Cairo is never aware whether he can actually use it or not. It seems an odd way to run an army or a disturbing way they play games, but then, my little Omar, there are so many odd things surrounding them that one does not wonder much anymore these days. Of course, after the soldier fired the first shot into your heart realising the gun was loaded after all, he had to fire a second time into your heart just to make sure he wasn't mistaken. That we understand. The army is a responsible body and what must be done must be done to make certain that facts are facts. Even in accidents.<br />
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Shortly after the world learned what had happened to you on that wonderful sunny February day in Cairo, a video surfaced on YouTube showing you only a few weeks earlier when you were interviewed on the street by an organisation helping needy children, checking whether you might be eligible for their projects. <br />
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You were humble and well-mannered but a little shy and uneasy what they would come up with and whether you would be good enough for what they were looking for in you. You told them quietly that you had to sell sweet potatoes because your family was poor and your father had wanted you to support the family. And in all shyness you disclosed into the camera that you would love to go to school and learn to read and write.<br />
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When the interviewer asked what you're dreams were, you looked away and were uneasy on this. And then you answered him. You said: "I cannot afford dreams, Sir." And you looked into the camera and then down again as if you were ashamed for this that was none of your fault.<br />
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Seeing this video of you, dear little Omar, broke many peoples heart. Hearing that you could not afford to dream, which is a basic human right for a child, and knowing you were not even allowed to live, was unbearable to witness. Seeing your wonderful eyes, your look of modesty, shyness and subdued hope, your life might one day, just might perhaps change for the better in some far-away future after all, teared us apart. It was then that I took your picture and made it my avatar on twitter. I wanted to give you your face back that had been left so sad and soiled and empty of life after the soldier had shot you dead.<br />
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There was no justice for you after all this. On public pressure of human rights activists and your family that the army tried to silence with money, a military trial was finally staged that we all never had any witnessing to. Only afterwards we were told that the soldier who shot you dead – just like that, on a sunny day in a street of Cairo – received a sentence of three years by the military judge.<br />
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Imagine that, Omar, three years for killing you and destroying your life forever. Do you know that Ahmed Maher and Mohamed Adel, activists of the January 25 revolution, got just the same sentence of three years for allegedly staging a protest without a permission? So killing you, in the eyes of the army, apparently was not worse than going out to protest without requesting a permit. You see what I mean when I say, we do not understand the ways of the army, but we trust they know well what they do?<br />
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One year on, my dear little Omar, I have thought long and deep over whether I would let you rest now in your little grave and put a shroud over your wonderful eyes that I see everyday on my twitter timeline. On twitter people have not a very long attention span, you must know. They easily get bored seeing the same avatar over and over for months and need changes a lot to be easy. And many times when I write critical tweets, some tweeps who do not know me or you come and slam me with words like: "Shut up, kid" – actually thinking, I was you and not a grown up man with 35 years working experience. They don't take my words seriously, because – just like the soldier – they think, a young boy has no value and no meaning and must not be respected. l cringe sometimes when I read their "kid", knowing they mean you, and feel the pain of your death they are unaware of and don't understand, and then I tell them to read my profile and come to the conclusion that whoever has no heart for you in his reaction is not worth thinking about anyway. And leave it at that.<br />
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It would be so much easier now to let you rest, my little friend, after this long year of tears and pains and death that has sweeped Egypt empty of so many hopes for a decent life, for justice and freedom and bread. On twitter they would jubilate to see a fresh face. The army would love to not have to see you anymore in the public sphere. The tweeps I criticise would not be able to slam me anymore with calling me 'kid'. We would all be so much happier, dear little Omar, if we forgot about what happened a year ago and that we can't change what happened to you after all.<br />
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But then, Omar, what can we change if we don't remember? What possibilities will we manage to create if we fall silent and look away and pretend it is all not as sad, not as bad, not as tragic as it actually is? Since your death more than a thousand Egyptians were killed, and they give us many reasons why that, different to you, was not an accident but needed to happen. But apparently they can 'live' with it just as easily. A strange tale has crept into the narrative that pretends that destroying Egyptian lives is inevitable and must be accepted, as if death more than life was the natural thing of the world that one can shrug off to return to the daily pleasures and chores. With every death of human beings falling bloodied in the streets of Egypt we are told to believe that nothing of this can be changed because it is the way of the world. And when we look away and shut our ears to the cries of the mothers and fathers of Egypt who, whether they agreed with their children or not, break down over losing what was precious to them forever and think they just cannot go on anymore, we change the world for the worst, where dying becomes the natural thing and living is just a luxury granted by some in power – whether we are lucky or not.<br />
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It must not be luck, little Omar, whether we live. It must be a right, a birth given right that no one must be allowed to take from us. Not with any form of being deliberate, calling it an accident to fool us or an inevitable need to fool us twice. If we don't insist on this, that life is the right and death is the wrong, we have lost everything that makes it worth existing on this planet we call the earth. <br />
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You had no dreams, Omar, because we did not allow you to be able to afford them. On that already we all failed you miserably. Your parents to this day cry over your death and will not forget the pain in their heart. Your eyes look at me on my avatar with all the shy innocence that was you in your modest way and I think of the narrative that all this has to be, is inevitable and not worse than going to a protest and forgetting to get a permission. So your killing has the value of a petty crime and your death is worth as much as not filling out a form. And I look at your eyes and mine fill with tears. <br />
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Let them laugh about it, for all I care. The other day I saw your picture on the internet, just the one that is my avatar that I see every day. But when I saw it, my little Omar, my heart stopped still. Like yours did on that fateful February 3rd a year ago, when a soldier thought you were worth nothing and could be done away with. When I recovered from this shock, that did not seem to make any sense, I knew I would not fail you and not leave you until justice is served. To you, Omar, who could not afford to have wishes and were not allowed to have hope – and to all the others that have lost a life that was dear to them when others decided it was not.<br />
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You will stay my avatar, my little Omar. I will tell you when Egypt is ready that we can part. Just now is not yet the time. Be patient. It will still take a long time. But where life is at stake, you know it well, time and patience means nothing. Life means all.<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-11117658966211265312014-01-31T23:50:00.000+02:002014-02-01T04:25:52.985+02:00How the Harper government fails Canadian journalist in Egyptian jailOn December 29, 2013, three journalists working for Al Jazeera English channel in Egypt – the Cairo Bureau Chief <a href="https://twitter.com/Repent11" target="_blank">Mohamed Fahmy</a>, a Canadian-Egyptian, <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterGreste" target="_blank">Peter Greste</a>, a renowned Australian journalist, and the Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed – were arrested in their rooms of the Marriott Hotel in Cairo, their equipment was confiscated, and they were taken to the high security prison Tora, were high-profile leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared by the Egyptian government to be 'terrorists', are currently held.<br />
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For weeks no charges were laid against these journalists and Egypt refused to give any legal explanation. The Cairo Bureau Chief Fahmy was reportedly treated the worst of the three detained. While all had to suffer under solitary confinement, Fahmy got a 'special' treatment by not being allowed medical treatment for a broken shoulder and having to sleep on the cold cement floor in a cockroach-infested cell with no daylight. <br />
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On the anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, January 25, 2014, almost a month after the arrest, the treatment got even worse: the prison guards took away his watch, his jacket and the only blanket he had for sleeping on the floor. Medical treatment to his broken shoulder, four weeks into the injury, was further denied. For over 20 hours he was denied food and to go to the bathroom. The guards explained this treatment as a 'punishment' for a bomb attack the day before in Cairo – to which the journalist Fahmy in his solitary confinement plainly and clearly could not have had any connection.<br />
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On January 29, the Public Prosecutor of Egypt suddenly came up with charges against 20 Al Jazeera journalists, amongst them the three detained at Tora. Widely broadcasted on Egyptian State TV under the banner "Fight against terrorism" the prosecution accused the journalists to have supported a terrorist group (aka the Muslim Brotherhood) by inventing false news about the situation in Egypt, thus shaming Egypt in the world and 'harming national security'. Fahmy was in addition accused of being a member of the Brotherhood (which he is not) and charged to be a 'terrorist'.<br />
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<b style="color: #990000;">International demands to set them free</b><br />
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Accusing and charging a Canadian-Egyptian journalist to be a terrorist just for interviewing members of a political group or reporting on clashes between the state security and this group was a harsh attack on the freedom of media in Egypt and seen by many as a deliberate warning sign to other foreign journalists to not report the truth about the unrest situation in the country. <br />
<br />
On January 13, more than 40 editors and correspondents from international media organisations <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P-J09l1cSA6tbjOjHzNEydGRLx1WDU7g-FWeXS_QEts/preview?pli=1&sle=true" target="_blank">signed an open letter to the Egyptian government</a> demanding the release of the journalists. Many international NGOs like <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/egypt-al-jazeera-english-journalists-referred-trial-2014-01-29" target="_blank">amnesty international</a>, the <a href="http://www.cpj.org/blog/2014/01/terror-charges-for-al-jazeera-in-egypt-prompt-outc.php" target="_blank">Committee for the Protection of Journalists</a> or <a href="http://en.rsf.org/egypt-four-al-jazeera-journalists-02-01-2014,45682.html" target="_blank">Reporters Without Borders</a> protested against the treatment of the Al Jazeera journalists and especially those detained under the extreme conditions in Tora and demanded for the charges to be dropped immediately and the journalists to be freed. Amnesty international adopted Mohamed Fahmy, Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed as 'prisoners of conscience', imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to free expression. <br />
<br />
As Fahmy was treated the worst in prison, punished for things he clearly could not have any doing in and kept without medical treatment for a broken shoulder for four weeks – violating a prisoner like this is breaching international and Egyptian laws and called torture – it was expected that the Canadian government would issue some statement, expressing at least concern over the abhorrent treatment of a Canadian citizen and journalist. Yet, the only thing that came out of Ottawa (and only on demand) was a diplomatic thin-lipped wording saying that 'consular services' were provided and that officials had 'raised this case with senior Egyptian officials'. Something that the family of detained Fahmy could not confirm for weeks, as Fahmy repeatedly was dragged to interrogations without any representative of the Canadian embassy being present.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #990000;">
<b>Contacting the Harper Government</b></div>
<br />
Shortly after the prosecutor had finally let the cat out of the bag that the journalists were considered to be supporters or, in the case of Fahmy, even members of a terrorist group, I wanted to know from the Harper government in Canada their position expressively on the plight of their Canadian citizen Fahmy. The only statement by Canada issued before was empty of any reliable acknowledgement of his situation or the willingness to speak out in his favour.<br />
<br />
I contacted the <a href="http://www.international.gc.ca/international/index.aspx?lang=eng" target="_blank">Canadian Departement of Foreign Affairs</a> and spoke to Jean-Bruno Villeneuve, who is the spokesperson for Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, regarding 'Middle East' and 'Human Rights and Democracy'.<br />
<br />
When I asked about the position of the Canadian government on the fact that a Canadian citizen and journalist had now been kept in a dark cell without treatment for a broken shoulder for four weeks, Baird's spokesperson read to me the earlier published statement:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“Consular services are being provided to the Canadian citizen who has been arrested in Egypt.<br />Officials are in regular communication with and providing assistance to those family members that the subject has provided authorization to speak with.<br />Canadian officials have raised this case with senior Egyptian officials and local authorities continue to be engaged."</i></blockquote>
<br />
M: Well, that I know already, it is not new. But that does not say anything.<br />
<br />
V: What I have provided is really the extent of what we have to say on this issue.<br />
<br />
M: Today things have escalated, as you are aware, due to the fact that charges are now being laid against all those who have been implicated in this, including the Canadian. There must be more from the Canadian government with regard to a political stance on this, because this is an attack on press freedom which in Canada is actually very protected?<br />
<br />
V: Yes, well Mr. Moremi, as I said, that is the extent of what I have to provide at this stage. But don't hesitate to be in touch with us tomorrow and in the coming days and hopefully we have more to say on this, but today that is the extent of the statement I can provide.<br />
<br />
M: But that would be a bit odd to tell the world that that is all Canada has to say if a Canadian citizen and journalist is detained under such circumstances. I would just like to point out that US Senator Cain on the weekend has spoken up and demanded from Egypt to free these journalists, and there is not even an American citizen or journalist involved. And the world is still waiting on something clear from Canada, because as you well know your Canadian citizen has now been in jail exactly for a whole month. So I would not be quite sure, what would be different tomorrow?<br />
<br />
V: Ok, well I'm not going to comment on what other countries have said. But I have given you the extent of the Canadian statement on this issue at this stage and I'll make sure to be in touch and don't hesitate to be in touch with us as well.<br />
<br />
M: Mr. Villeneuve, the colleague who is currently incarcerated in Cairo is incarcerated under conditions that both Canada and other countries, even under the laws of Egypt, are clearly seeing as a violation of human rights. He is not getting medical treatment and your talking to officials is not helping him. He has a broken shoulder, he has not been attended to for four weeks. It was supposed to be attended to on Sunday. Again it has not. The only blanket he has has been taken away from him. If you research what a broken shoulder means if it's not tended to that should trouble the Canadian government immensely. So this surely can't be the only thing Canada has to say to this? You spoke up for John Greyson and Tarek Loubani, why the silence on Mohamed Fahmy?<br />
<br />
V: Again - consular services are being provided and the statement is all we have to say at this stage.<br />
<br />
M: Does that mean that the Canadian government is not willing to say anything with regard to the fact that a Canadian citizen has now for four weeks been in jail with a broken shoulder and without any medical treatment?<br />
<br />
V: I gave you my opinion on this ...<br />
<br />
M: No, I'm asking you. You're not even mentioning the shoulder that is broken, I mean, just imagine you would be in jail with a broken shoulder for a whole month and your government would not even say something to that. Why is that so? The world does not understand it. No one understands why Canada on this is the only country that does not say anything. Why don't you at least demand that he is treated like a prisoner should be treated according to international treaties that are also valid for Canada?<br />
<br />
V: I cannot comment on personal and private information, as is the case, as you can appreciate ...<br />
<br />
M: No, I can't appreciate it because this is not a 'private' information if a Canadian citizen for a whole month now has been in an Egyptian jail with a broken shoulder and no medical treatment, that is not a private information. This is a human rights violation of a Canadian citizen and the world is asking why Canada's government is not saying anything on this?<br />
Are you demanding from the Egyptian government to at least give him the rights that a prisoner in Canada and everywhere else in the civilised world has? Is this a demand the Canadian government makes or not?<br />
<br />
V: Ok – <i>"Canadian officials have raised this case with senior Egyptian officials and will continue to be engaged with local authorities"</i> – and that's all I have to say on this at this stage. <br />
<br />
M: But you are aware that even if you have spoken to officials this has not bettered his situation but it has made it worse after a whole month? I mean, how long does the Canadian government think a person can survive with a broken shoulder in solitary confinement lying on a floor with not even a blanket?<br />
<br />
V: I really ... I really have provided all I have to say on this ... And I'll make sure we'll be in touch with you when we have more to say, thank you ...<br />
<br />
M: So that means the Canadian government is not saying anything on the lack of medical treatment of a Canadian journalist in an Egyptian jail, is this correct?<br />
<br />
V: I will send you the Canadian statement ...<br />
<br />
M: Yes, the Canadian statement I know. You're not saying anything about this in the statement. I'm asking you, is the Canadian government not saying anything with regard to the fact that a Canadian journalist is subjected to something that is called 'human rights violation'?<br />
<br />
V: (hesitates) Well ... I'm the spokesperson for this issue and I'm providing you with our statement. Thank you very much. <br />
<br />
M: Well, you know I'm not satisfied. – And you know I can only then report that the Canadian government ignores the fact that a Canadian journalist is lying in a jail cell with a broken shoulder. – And there is nothing you say to this?<br />
<br />
V: Sir ... I have ... I have given you the extent of what I have to say at this stage, but I'll be in touch, ok ...<br />
<br />
M: We are both professionals. I have been working in this profession for 35 years. You are trying to ward me off. But this man has been under these conditions for a whole month now. When is the Canadian government, that was able to say something on John Greyson and Tarek Loubani, willing to say something against the human rights violations of a Canadian journalist? This is a very simple question. And you can only answer that with saying the Canadian government does not care and will not say anything to that or you can give me any reaction of the Canadian government.<br />
<br />
V: Ok, a) I didn't say that ...<br />
<br />
M: No, you didn't. But then, what do you say?<br />
<br />
V: Well, I provided you with our statement, Sir. <br />
<br />
M: But in your statement it doesn't say anything about the fact that this man has now been subjected to human rights violations for four weeks! The man has a broken shoulder! Surely the Canadian government is absolutely aware of the fact that a broken shoulder needs medical treatment? No prisoner in this world – and this is Canadian law – may be subjected to this treatment not getting medical treatment for four weeks! So surely, if this happens to a Canadian citizen, the Canadian government must have something to say to this other than "we're not saying anything"?<br />
<br />
V: (pause) I really ... I really have nothing further to add ... So, I'm gonna hang up now. And I'm going to send you the statement by email. And ... I'm sorry it is not satisfying you. I can appreciate why ... But ... that's the extent of what I have to say at this stage. Thank you.<br />
<br />
M: Seeing the fact that this has now been going on for four weeks, is there any idea on your part that the Canadian government will come up with something more than just this statement in the future?<br />
<br />
V: (long pause) I don't have any such information on this at this stage. But if, why and when we do I will make sure we'll be in touch, ok? Thank you very much ...<br />
<br />
M: And you can also not explain why you said something on John Greyson and Tarek Loubani? John Baird said something there.<br />
<br />
V: Ah ... I provided you with our statement on this, Sir, and now I'm gonna hang up, ok? Thank you very much ... (waits) ... Good day ...<br />
<br />
(Hangs up.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<b style="color: #990000;">Australia's Foreign Minister acts</b><br />
<br />
At the same time that I was having this rather amazing conversation with the spokesperson of the Canadian Foreign Minister, as I learned later when contacting Canberra, in far away Australia the <a href="http://foreignminister.gov.au/" target="_blank">Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop</a>, was alarmed at learning of the charges now made public.<br />
<br />
She had summoned the Egyptian Ambassador into the Foreign Office on January 16 and asked that a meeting would be arranged between the Australian Ambassador in Cairo and the Public Prosecutor to discuss the fate of Australian journalist Peter Greste. This was promised, but nothing had happened. When on January 29 instead the Public Prosecutor announced charges against Greste for supporting a terrorist group, Australian Minister Julie Bishop picked up the phone and called her Egyptian counterpart, Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy.<br />
<br />
In an interview with the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/julie-bishop/5229624" target="_blank">Australian Broadcasting System</a> she explained, that this had been a "very candid" discussion with Fahmy and that she had raised her serious concerns on this matter and on the abhorrent prison conditions Greste was subjected too. Apparently the Egyptian Foreign Minister was willing to accept her protest and assured her to do anything in his power to be of help. <br />
<br />
A day later, last night, a meeting between the Australian Ambassador in Cairo and the Egyptian Public Prosecutor finally did indeed come about and the Australian government for the first time was officially informed on the exact charges laid against their citizen Greste. The charges, as Bishop points out, are now under legal review by the Australian government, and she made it very clear, that she will keep engaging for Peter Greste to try to ensure he receives both due process and from now on humane prison conditions.<b style="color: #990000;"> </b><br />
<br />
<br />
<b style="color: #990000;">The U.S. State Department is "alarmed"</b><br />
<br />
Shortly after my conversation with Canada's Foreign Ministry spokesperson and Australia's Foreign Minister Bishop's conversation with her Egyptian counterpart, the U.S. State Department's spokesperson <a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2014/01/220769.htm#EGYPT" target="_blank">Jen Psaki commented in unusually strong words</a> on the attacks against the Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt. Even though no American journalist was implicated in the case, the Obama administration found it important enough to publicly criticise what was happening to press freedom under the military rulers of Egypt and said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"The government’s targeting of journalists and others on spurious claims is wrong and demonstrates an egregious disregard for the protection of basic rights and freedoms." </i></blockquote>
<br />
Psaki added that the U.S. was <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"alarmed by reports today of additional journalists facing charges, including the Al Jazeera journalists. Any journalist, regardless of affiliation, must not be targets of violence, intimidation, or politicized legal action. They must be protected and permitted to freely do their jobs in Egypt. We remind the Egyptian Government publicly and privately that freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy and we urge the interim government to implement its commitment to this freedom. We strongly urge the government to reconsider detaining and trying these journalists, and reiterate that they must be afforded all accordance of the due process under the rule of law."</i></blockquote>
<br />
<b style="color: #990000;">Another attempt in Canada</b><br />
<br />
The next day, January 30, I found it vital to confront the Canadian Foreign Ministry with this very outspoken and clear critical statement of the U.S. government regarding the attacks against journalists in Egypt.<br />
<br />
When the sun was up in Ottawa yesterday, mid-noon Cairo time, I contacted the spokesperson of Minister Baird once more, send him the clear worded statement of the U.S. State Department, expressing "alarm", and asked: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"How alarmed is the Canadian government in the light that a Canadian journalist is among those wrongly targeted?"</i></blockquote>
<br />
It took a while for a response. Late in the afternoon Villeneuve in a friendly but slim-lined reply once more send me the known statement regarding consular services and this time added the line:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"To protect the privacy of the individual concerned, further details cannot be released at this time."</i></blockquote>
<br />
This was both unsatisfactory as nonsensical, as I pointed out in my return mail:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>"In how far does the protest of a country (Canada) over an attack on press freedom (compare US State Dept. statement) have anything to do with "privacy of the individual concerned"? <br /><br />The question was if Canada is as "alarmed" on the "targeting of journalists" in Egypt and considers this too a "disregard for the protection of basic rights and freedoms"? <br /><br />This has nothing to do with privacy issues. <br /><br />Is there a political position of the Canadian government on this or not?"</i></blockquote>
<br />
The sun had already set over Tora prison in Cairo last night when the reply from Baird's spokesperson finally arrived. It read:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Hi Jon,<br /><br />I don't have anything to add to what I provided you with.<br /><br />Thank you.<br /><br />JB"</i></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<b style="color: #990000;">UK Foreign Secretary raised his concerns</b><br />
<br />
In the meantime, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/foreign-commonwealth-office" target="_blank">British Foreign Office</a> in London today has supplied me with a statement saying that they are aware of the situation that two British journalists have also been charged with supporting terrorism and they are seeking further information from the Egyptian authorities. The statement went on to say:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>“We were concerned by the closure of political space for opposition groups in the run-up to the referendum and the arrest and sentencing of human rights activists. We are also concerned by continuing restrictions on freedom of expression and the press. The Foreign Secretary raised these concerns in a conversation with Egyptian Foreign Minister Fahmy on 7 January.”</i></blockquote>
<br />
Apparently only Australia, the UK and the U.S. seem to find fault with the attack on press freedom and journalists in Egypt. While all three governments voiced their concern both in public expression and direct contact with the Egyptian Foreign Minister Fahmy – in Canada, whose citizen and journalist Mohamed Fahmy has languished under inhumane and torturous conditions for more than four weeks now in a dark cell with being refused medical treatment for his broken shoulder, Minister for Foreign Affairs, John Baird, still does not seem to see any reason to pick up a phone.<br />
<br />
It is at this point that I know that I could never be tempted to become a Canadian citizen.<br />
<br />
For only a country in need, is a country indeed.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-----------<br />
<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14208&LangID=E" target="_blank">UN High Commissioner for Human Rights</a> in Geneva has issued a statement today saying the UNOHCHR is <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"extremely concerned about the increasingly severe clampdown and physical attacks on media in Egypt." </i></blockquote>
<br />
Pointing to a deterioration in the last months the statement continues:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Wednesday’s announcement that the Egyptian Prosecutor-General intends to bring to trial 16 local and 4 foreign journalists alleged to have worked for the international broadcaster Al Jazeera, on vague charges including “aiding a terrorist group” and “harming the national interest”, is of great concern. ... There are also reports of journalists in detention being subjected to ill-treatment or being held in conditions that are not in line with international human rights standards.
We urge the Egyptian authorities to promptly release all journalists imprisoned for carrying out legitimate news reporting activities in exercise of their fundamental human rights. It is the State’s obligation to ensure that the right to freedom of expression is respected, and that journalists are able to report on diverse views and issues surrounding the current situation in Egypt."</i></blockquote>
<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-26285540978537198122014-01-08T21:34:00.000+02:002014-01-08T21:34:01.399+02:00Open Letter to Canadian Ambassador David Drake – Stand by Mohamed Fahmy!<br />
<b>To the<br />Ambassador of Canada to Egypt<br />David Drake <br />26 Kamel El Shenawy Street<br />Garden City, Cairo</b><br /><br />by mail: cairo@dfait-maeci.gc.ca<br />cc: @pmharper, @J_MacDonald_PC<br /><br />
<br />
<b>Incarceration of Canadian journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy</b><br /><br />Dear Sir,<br /><br />in case you missed this article, I bring it to your attention.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/01/07/canadian_journalist_held_in_notorious_egypt_jail_in_crackdown_on_muslim_brotherhood.html" target="_blank">Canadian journalist held in notorious Egypt jail in crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood</a><br /><br />It is appalling to see that the Canadian embassy is apparently doing next to nothing to assist Mr. Fahmy in the incredibly dire situation he finds himself in, rotting in an Egyptian jail with a serious shoulder injury, no medical attention and having to sleep on the cold concrete floor.<br /><br />As a journalist colleague I know Mr. Fahmy well and know that the charges against him are absolutely ridiculous and nothing but a politicised attempt of the Egyptian government to smear and defame.<br /><br />It would be hard to believe that your government and you as an embassy in Egypt would not also be aware of this.<br /><br />So much more it is distressing to hear that you do not engagingly assist him while under this criminal attack and do not even care to attend the hearings he has to endure injured and medically unattended.<br /><br />I seriously urge the Canadian embassy to fulfill its responsibilities towards a Canadian citizen and take effective action to ensure that Mr. Fahmy finally is getting the medical treatment he urgently needs, is allowed a sleeping bag or blanket and a pillow so not as to have to sleep on the cold cement floor, and is accompanied in the hearings so he is adequately represented in the sham interrogations that are conducted by the Egyptian prosecutor's office. All this would be a natural one should think, and it is worrying to hear that apparently the Canadian embassy – and with it the Canadian government – is not undertaking everything possible to make the unbearable situation Mr. Fahmy is in at least a little more bearable and foremost a short endured experience.<br /><br />Everyone who knows Mr. Fahmy knows that he is innocent of the absurd charges put against him. If the Canadian government should not know this and be in doubt, it should ask those who know him well and can vouch for them. As things seem however, the Canadian embassy just lets it run and ignores the plight its own citizen and highly respected journalist is in. Given the horror that he has to endure now for almost two weeks, your falling silence in all aspects would be inexcusable and a serious failure to the duties the Canadian tax payers have put in your hands.<br /><br />I trust you will be able to help shorten Mr. Fahmy's unjust incarceration by taking up the necessary actions and thank you for in future standing by him in person with embassy staff during the interrogations he unjustly has to go through.<br /><br />Everything else would be shaming Canada worldwide. <br /><br />Sincerely<br />Jonathan Moremi<br />
<br />
<br />
jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-5506640003529051832014-01-03T00:44:00.002+02:002014-01-03T00:44:46.406+02:00Egypt's Fight Against the Vicious 4The Egyptian government, supported by the Public Prosecution and State Security, has drawn up a new catalogue of rules to ensure the national security of the country. <br /><br />After rulers in schools have proven to be potentially dangerous to rulers in office and even puppets now start to conspire against the puppets of the army by showing off cactus plants with four branches, the immediate threat to Egypt's safety demanded swift action. <br /><br />Every Egyptian is therefore well advised to read these rules and adhere to them strictly to avoid the danger of getting arrested in the new year:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>As of Sunday all car owners in Egypt will be obliged to remove one wheel on their car as driving with four wheels is regarded to be a sign that the driver supports the Muslim Brotherhood. Adding an additional wheel to circumvent the order is not permitted as this can be mistaken as a symbol of a 5th column.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>All hotels in Egypt are obliged to shut their 4th floor with immediate effect or they will be shut in whole by State Security for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>All international airlines are advised that Egypt will no longer tolerate incoming flights to its airports with planes having four engines. Either one engine has to be removed prior to arrival or only planes with two engines can be used on routes to Egypt. Any plane entering Egyptian airspace with four engines, as the Jumbo Jet or the A340, will be intercepted by the Egyptian airforce drawing big hearts around it and diverting the plane to Qatar. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>All telephone numbers in Egypt having a 4 in them will be shut off with immediate effect. Owners of such numbers must apply to the Ministry of Interior for a new number explaining prior to receiving it why they used such a phone number in the first place and prove with a photo that they are not Islamists.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>All clocks in Egypt are prohibited with immediate effect to show the time between 4 am and 4:59 am and 4 pm and 4:59 pm so as not to support the Muslim Brotherhood. All Egyptians planning to come late to a business appointment during these times are ordered to postpone their unexcused delay to a later time. The government does not expect this to have any visible effect on the economy as the time on clocks in Egypt by tradition is not regarded as being more than a recommendation of what time could be.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The word 'for' in the usage of English is prohibited in Egypt with immediate effect as it can be mistaken for the word 'four' which shows a desire to support terrorist cells wanting to destroy the country. The fact that Americans frequently leave out the 'u' in words (as in honor instead of honour) proves that the the CIA is behind the word 'for', thus trying to mask the US's secret support of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt will not fall for such obvious tricks.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Scholars in Egypt will no longer be able to study in 4th grades. As education has proven to be just a waste anyway, parents are advised to take their children directly from 3rd to 5th grade. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The 4th Dynasty will be erased from Egyptian history books with immediate effect and all pharaohs of that time are under investigation for planning to overthrow the current regime. Their pyramids have been confiscated. – An arrest warrant has been issued against the remains of Ramses IV.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The Cairo Opera's orchestra is prohibited from performing Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" with immediate effect so as not to spread fear and panic amongst the audience.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>All insinuations that there are in fact four seasons will be deemed as secret support messages for a terrorist organisation and are punishable by law. Meteorologist are required to pass a test showing that they support the theory that nature in fact only has three seasons on offer and is not violating Egyptian laws.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The 'Four Seasons Hotel' in Giza and the resort in Sharm el Sheikh are ordered to change their names immediately to 'Three Seasons Hotel'.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The police and State Security forces are advised to not arrest journalists anymore in fours, as was the current case with Al Jazeera English. The freeing of the cameraman reduced the numbers of detained journalists to three proving wrong any conspiracy theory that the government itself is secretly part of the conspiracy to overthrow the government.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The year that has just started will be renamed from '2014' to '2015-1'. All 4th days of months will be deleted or left blank. The month April is to be written as '05-1'. All calendars have to be reprinted with immediate effect.</li>
</ul>
<br />The Egyptian government expresses its hope that these rules will help in protecting the country from insane forces and wishes everyone a peaceful 2015-1.<br />
<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-34041757940623482472013-12-09T20:43:00.003+02:002013-12-09T21:02:00.573+02:00Eritrea's botched kick-off – Football players defectOnce more it is not going well for the oppressive regime of Eritrean's President Isaias Afewerki. Desperately trying to find some honour abroad, at least in the field of sports, something keeps going awfully wrong. <br />
<br />
Yesterday nine members of the Eritrean national football team, currently in Kenya for the 2013 CECAFA Cup, disappeared from their hotel and defected. With them is the team coach, which leaves the rest of the players stranded. <br />
<br />
Already a week ago two players of the team had gone in hiding, so that now eleven Eritrean football players have turned their back on the regime that send them to the tournament. It is expected that they will file an asylum request with the UNHCR in Kenya.<br />
<br />
Defecting athletes, something well known of Eastern Bloc nations during the time of the Cold War, are always an embarrassment to the regimes they flee from. Nothing shows so intensely the desperation of a people as when its national athletes make use of a sports event abroad to abscond. Eritrea however almost has a running tradition of this by now, and President Afewerki will have to think once more about the honour he tried to gain and lost double by the defection of national football team members, a situation he knows well from the past.<br />
<br />
<b style="color: #990000;">A running tradition of defection</b><br />
<br />
In 2006, four players of the national team defected after a CAF Champions League match in Nairobi, Kenya. One year later, 12 members defected after a game of the 2007 CECAFA Cup in Tanzania. Another 6 players sought asylum in Angola in March 2007 after a game in the qualification group 6 for the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations, and three more players from the national team sought asylum in Sudan.<br />
<br />
As this was clearly getting out of hand, heaping shame after shame on the regime of President Afewerki that was so desperate to keep up the fairy tale of normality in the oppressed country, the plug was pulled, and Eritrea withdrew from the 2008 CECAFA Cup. With no players abroad, no shame by defection was to be feared.<br />
<br />
Not participating however in the most important football tournament of Africa was shame in itself. So one year later Eritrea decided to take part again and hastily assembled a new team of football players for the 2009 CECAFA Cup in Kenya. In only 12 days the young team was drilled and this time a security payment of 100,000 nakfa (around $ 6.500) was demanded from the athletes before leaving to ensure they would return.<br />
<br />
It went awfully wrong. 12 players – half the team Eritrea send to the tournament – failed to report for the return flight and <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/football/12/15/football.cecafa.eritrea.kenya/" target="_blank">filed asylum requests</a> with the UNHCR in Nairobi. At first Eritrea pretended not to be aware of the defection, then it promised the defectors a "good welcome" on return despite them having "betrayed" the country. At the same time Eritrea however urged Kenya's police to find and arrest the defectors who for good reason did not fall for the temptation of a "good welcome" and remained in hiding for eight months. They were then granted asylum status and are now living – and playing football – in Australia.<br />
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In 2010, vowing to this time have a police escort that keeps a watch over the players at all times, Eritrea tried once more and send a new national team to the 2010 CECAFA Cup to Tanzania. But <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/12/eritrea-football-players-missing-tanzania" target="_blank">again 13 players defected</a>, asked for asylum and are now living – and playing football – in Houston, Texas.<br />
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The streak of bad luck for the Eritrean regime was far from over. In 2011 it once again <a href="http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/sports/2011/11/16/nambia-take-up-eritrea-cecafa-slot/" target="_blank">withdrew</a> from the CECAFA Cup citing lack of funds, though everyone was convinced it was to prevent even more players to defect. By 2012 however the regime had pulled itself together and gave it another go. It turned out not to be the best of ideas.<br />
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During the 2012 CECAFA Cup in Uganda, 17 members of the Eritrean national football team and the team doctor left the hotel in Kampala to 'go shopping' or 'visit friends' – but never returned. They defected and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/20580007" target="_blank">filed for asylum</a>. Only five players and two officials were left to return home to the once more deeply shamed regime of Eritrea. The defected players were granted refugee status by Uganda in February this year.<br />
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After such a tradition of losing its football players on practically every African tournament year after year Eritrea should have perhaps known better than to give it another try. But overzealous national pride yearning for at least some acceptance abroad despite the <a href="http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/eritrea" target="_blank">horrific human rights situation</a> in the country seemed to have won over reason. With no good result. <br />
<b style="color: #990000;"><br />It happened yet again</b><br />
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The 2013 CECAFA Cup proved to be yet another Eritrean Waterloo: 2 players ducked into hiding at the beginning of last week, 8 more players and the team coach disappeared from their hotel last night, are now in a secret place and will ask for asylum with the Kenyan Office of the UNHCR. Once more the plane taking the Eritrean national football team home will be half empty.<br />
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Eritrea, dubbed the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/eritrea/10353511/Eritrea-the-African-North-Korea-which-thousands-will-risk-anything-to-escape.html" target="_blank">'North Korea' of Africa</a>, has a serious problem. According to estimates, around 3,000 Eritreans are secretly leaving the country every month trying to get out of the terror grip of the ruthlessly authoritarian regime. High ranking air force pilots <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/12/us-saudi-eritrea-idUSBRE9AB0RY20131112" target="_blank">fly their planes to nearby Saudi Arabia</a> to defect, where three planes have by now accumulated on the tarmac. A female pilot, sent by Eritrea to pick up one of the planes, immediately <a href="http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article48804" target="_blank">asked for asylum</a> herself. And one of the most famous Eritrean singer, Yohannes Tikabo, <a href="http://assenna.com/yohannes-tikabo-a-famous-eritrean-artist-defects-the-dictatorial-pfdj-regime-in-eritrea/" target="_blank">defected</a> only two months ago. It just doesn't work out well for President Afewerki.<br />
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With the new embarrassment now at the 2013 CECAFA Cup in Kenya, Eritrea has shown the world once more that its botched kick-off at African football tournaments is becoming tradition. There is no doubt that the lean, well trained Eritrean football players can run. Sadly for the President and his oppressive regime however, most of them – at least in the eyes of the President – keep running in the wrong direction.<br />
<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-39209050371600782412013-10-22T18:42:00.003+02:002013-10-22T18:42:40.366+02:00What Egypt can learn from Hypatia AlberI'm not the type to go into frenzy over a baby, I shamefully admit it. It is not, because I don't love children, on the contrary, I adore them and believe they are our most precious key to a future. But in general I feel – other than the parents escorting them – that one baby in a pram pretty much looks like the next, a little ruffled, much confused over the many faces that pop up over the limited horizon the little carriage offers, not very communicative – and often plain asleep. While I of course understand that to the mother or father next to it this baby is, no questions asked (dare you), the most wonderful, beautiful baby that ever graced the face of the earth, I – silently – beg to differ but naturally assure the good parents that this indeed is one exceptional offspring. Which is true, seeing it is theirs and not somebody else's. So I am not really lying. <br />
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There is one baby however that has truly captured my heart for many reasons these days. And yes, even I find that she's not only exceptionally nice to look at (who could not fall for this cute smile?) but also someone very special, with a really beautiful name to go by: Hypatia. Hypatia Alber.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipKUOuybOiexe47YMK2Jzut6yoLrAOo1N6RqzoWJygZkJagIQUl753xx0o3PxIkNUitXz1NkpLALGRDf6BjUXFLnBSyHUa6e7-kMuyixmcdk5_8h8yULnifdo_YzJQ6id4_8iOBZ39seUq/s1600/AlberSabersLittleOne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipKUOuybOiexe47YMK2Jzut6yoLrAOo1N6RqzoWJygZkJagIQUl753xx0o3PxIkNUitXz1NkpLALGRDf6BjUXFLnBSyHUa6e7-kMuyixmcdk5_8h8yULnifdo_YzJQ6id4_8iOBZ39seUq/s320/AlberSabersLittleOne.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
The little one was just recently born by her mother to the most proudest father you probably can come across, one, who already posted photos of her when she was still inside her mother, constantly having her hands at her head and her head often down to which he excitedly exclaimed: "That's my girl!"<br />
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He should know. For he is a man who uses his head a lot himself and almost got killed over this only a year ago: Alber Saber.<br />
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For those, who are not familiar with his story, which I wrote about a year ago on this blog (<a href="http://jonamorem.blogspot.de/2012_09_01_archive.html" target="_blank">Alber Saber - And all is well in Egypt</a>), let me give you a quick sum up: Egyptian, intelligent, 27 years old, thinking aloud about religion and God and trying to find his way in the labyrinths called religions. A Copt, I should add. And all and all, in the Egypt that was 'ruled' by President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood this was a toxic mixture.<br />
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A year ago this time, Alber Saber rotted in an Egyptian jail, awaiting the outcome of his trial for alleged blasphemy. In the aftermath of the riots around the vile anti-Islam movie "Innocence of Muslims", tensions against Copts ran high and Alber's posting of his contemplations on religion angered his Muslim Cairo neighbours who on 12 September stormed the house where he was living with his mother and threatened to burn the place down – with them inside. In their fear, mother and son called the police to protect them, but when the Egyptian police arrived and barely were able to make their way through a hateful, shouting mob, there was no interest to protect the Copts. The police sided with those attacking them instead, confiscated Alber's computer and arrested him, leaving the fear stricken mother alone with the death threats hurling crowd.<br />
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<b style="color: #990000;">What followed was horror </b><br />
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Alber they took to the police station where he was thrown into a cell with criminals, not without shouting first that he had insulted God and was an infidel, so that the cellmates turned on him, beat him badly, and one slashed his neck with a razor blade. He had to spend the rest of the night in a corner, bleeding and scared and not knowing if he would ever come out of this alive.<br />
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His trial lasted almost three months and was an incredible, hate filled farce. On 12 December the judge ruled that Alber, in criticising religion, had incited 'tensions among Muslims and Christians' and therefor was guilty. The verdict: three years in prison. The chances of him ever getting justice in an Egypt full of sectarian strife under Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood had been crushed.<br />
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Five days later, as an appeal had been launched and due to the publicity his case and the unjust verdict received world wide, Alber Saber was freed on bail until the resuming of his trial in January 2013. On the day his appeal case was to start, Alber Saber had left Egypt. He knew, he would never get justice if he stayed.<br />
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The months that followed for him in Europe were both challenging and depressing. The freedom he gained was a wonderful gift, yet being torn apart from his family was extremely hard. He missed his wife, his mother, his friends. But had to grit his teeth and go on. His safety was at stake.<br />
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Then slowly things began taking good turns. The family situation became sorted out and a safe place to live was found. With a heavy heart still over Egypt and those left behind Alber Saber started to do what was his right as a young married man, to live and to love. And to become secure in his life.<br />
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It was at this time that a little human started to appear on the horizon, shy at first but bigger and bolder as the months went on, and a living proof that even after troubling times in an Egyptian jail good things can come out of it if you are released on bail. For this little one was conceived when freedom was restored, and it was for her the most that Alber had to make sure he would not rot in prison but be free when she would decide to enter this world.<br />
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And enter she did. With a smile so cute, it melts your heart, with wide awake, open eyes to observe and take in, with a twinkle in those eyes, as if trying to say that living after all is real fun and should be enjoyed and that sorrows surely are not part of the universe – and if ever they were may easily be forgotten.<br />
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Hypatia, as she so beautifully was called, was the biggest triumph over sectarian hate and police brutality and rotting in dark cells with cockroaches, violent guards and aggressive inmates. She was – and is – the epitome of life and what it is all about: Hope and humanity, compassion and happiness, and the wonderful right to own a future. For everyone. Even for her father who, only a year ago, had to endure such horrors.<br />
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<b>The truth about being a father</b></div>
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It was one of the most dreaded parts of Mubaraks rantings, when the old dictator kept referring to Egyptians as 'my children'. When he called the men and women of Egypt 'my sons' and 'my daughters', though he never had a hand in their coming to this world and even less in their making a living and being allowed to live. While he named himself their father, he did not hesitate to make their life hell, neglect them, terrorise them, allow them to be beaten, arrested, tortured and even killed. Something a true father would never have done. <br />
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After he was gone, others came pretending to be different but picking up the same sick line of 'my children' and the farce of being a loving father. They too now are history, and how much the current strong man of Egypt, el-Sisi, feels to be the father of Egyptians has yet to be seen. But the well known, albeit dreaded, version of fatherly love from above is lurking once more around the corner.<br />
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Enters Hypatia again, full of innocence and natural trust, crouching into the arms of her real father, who could not be prouder and happier, and teaching those old Egyptian wanna-be fathers the simple lesson what being a father to a child really means. Three words are needed only: Love, security and trust.<br />
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If you see Hypatia's face, you know what Egyptians expect from their fathers and what they deserve. It is, with all those father figures, high time that the expectations finally are met. <br />
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If anything, Egypt can learn a lot from Hypatia and her wonderful smile: That it is worth living more than dying, that trust is the essence for happiness, and that without true, compassionate love, people should not even dream of calling themselves fathers. Only in the arms of a father of love, says Hypatia, can I cuddle securely, dream my little dreams of happiness and fall soundly asleep.<br />
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Which she promptly does.<br />
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Hush, Egypt, hush. It is time to become quite and contemplate what life is really about. From the darkness of jail hell to the brightness of pure happiness is but a short way. Choose the latter, come on. And while you still ponder on this – make sure please that you don't wake the little one. Psssst ...<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">All pictures © Alber Saber - reproduced with kind permission</span><br />
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<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-59899270020656655392013-09-11T16:02:00.000+02:002013-09-11T16:02:56.500+02:00The labels of otherness in our headsOn the sad anniversary of 9/11 listen to my thoughts on what really tears us apart. The categories in our heads and the never ending labels of otherness we can't get rid off. Written as an <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/04/18/boston-and-the-arab-world-where-the-bombs-begin/" target="_blank">Op-ed</a> after the bombs went up in Boston killing and wounding people, here you can now listen to them in a podcast. In the hope, that one day we'll be able to stop the hate that kills and maims humans like you and me.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F109866998" width="100%"></iframe>
jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-33731336749082674832013-07-22T23:06:00.000+02:002013-07-26T16:06:27.206+02:00Sinai: In the Realm of Death<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #444444;">In the current weekly print supplement <a href="http://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/texte/anzeigen/40203/Im-Reich-des-Todes" target="_blank">Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin</a>, published in the German leading newspaper SZ, a horrific story about the torture of kidnapped Africans in Egypt's Sinai is spreading across 24 pages. Called "In the Realm of Death", it is a harrowing account of an 18-day trip to hell by the award winning journalist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Obert" target="_blank">Michael Obert</a> and Magnum photographer <a href="http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535GR6" target="_blank">Moises Saman</a>. As the report is only published in German but contains vital information especially for Egyptian readers and government authorities, I am recounting their trip here and added translations of vital passages that are chilling to read. Wherever quotation marks are set, the passage is a direct translation of the original report. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;">If anyone wonders if the horrid accounts of torture practices mentioned here are factual or not just products of over imagination, I can assure you I have read and heard numerous reports to this for a long time now that are as brutal as these. A human rights organisation in Israel alone has collected testimonies from over 1,300 Africans who barely survived the torture camps in the Sinai. Their stories tell of unspeakable crimes against humans and they carry the – well documented – horrific scars and injuries to go with it. The brutalities reported here in this report sadly are factual. We have to face it, whether we like it or not.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;">It is my wish that more people are willing to be aware of the terrible crimes against humans that are ongoing day by day by day in the Sinai desert. And that we manage to pressure the interim Egyptian government to undertake steps to put an end to one of the biggest atrocities of our times.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;">I urge anyone who is fluent in German to read it. It gives harrowing insights into the mindset of the torturers of Sinai, the Egyptian authorities who look away – and a world that does not care.</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: #990000;">UPDATE:</span></b><br />
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Up to July 26, 2013, you could find my very long, detailed recounting of the trip the two journalists took,with a number of translated quotes from the original German article here. The reaction to this blogpost was overwhelming and the many readers, the post had, were shocked to hear what is going on in the Sinai regarding the horrific torture of innocent human beings held hostage.<br />
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However, the publishers of the <i>Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin</i> asked me to remove my post as their licensing department has purchased the rights for the translation to exclusive partners and they fear my post could interfere with this.<br />
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I have been assured that the article I find so important for English readers to read will be published in translation shortly in a big newspaper/mag, so it will then be possible for the English speaking audience to read the article in it's complete form. <br />
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As things stand, I have decided to oblige with their request and remove my recounting of the journey on this blog so as not to interfere with the said republishing process. I am very much interested that the article in translation finds it's way in whole into the English speaking public sphere.<br />
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My post was intended to inform and raise awareness of the horrors that happen daily in the Sinai. In this I was agreed with the author, who wanted nothing as much as to stir the world in order for it to wake up and make an effort to finally put an end to these unbelievable atrocities that have cost thousands of African lives in the last years.<br />
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<i>(Read my article in the <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/03/18/193107/" target="_blank">Daily News Egypt</a> on this, and check this blog for further <a href="http://jonamorem.blogspot.de/2013/04/update-8-year-old-ahlam-free-from-sinai.html" target="_blank">posts</a> on the subject.)</i><br />
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Three quotes from the original article I would like you to read and know. <br />
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Of those hostages, who after horrible torture manage to come free, many are arrested by the Egyptian authorities, if they are badly injured, handcuffed to hospital beds, or otherwise thrown into jail. Michael Obert writes on this:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>» Because, instead of going after the kidnappers and torturers, the Egyptian authorities go after the victims. «</b></i></blockquote>
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That is – in addition to the original torture by the kidnappers – a serious crime and, as the representative for the UNHCR in Cairo puts it rightly, "a violation of the Geneva Convention".<br />
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The Bedouin guide, who led the journalists to the place were the torture chambers are hidden in houses of Bedouin human traffickers, showed himself outraged:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>» "If only one European is abducted somewhere in the Middle East, then the whole world cries out, the media goes crazy and everything is done to rescue the hostage – but with thousands of Africans the world looks away and lets them rot to die."«</b></i></blockquote>
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And one of the reasons behind this, Michael Obert points out:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>» Because the world can't see these people and hardly anyone knows their stories, the kidnappers can torture them unhindered. «</i></b></blockquote>
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Let us raise awareness where we can so the world starts to 'see' these people who suffer such incredible pain in the darkness of windowless rooms in torture chambers in the Sinai. <br />
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It is up to us to make it impossible for the kidnappers to torture them 'unhindered'. It is up to us and up to how much effort we make to put a stop to this, that decides the fate and often decides over the lives of those who fell victim to human trafficking in Sinai. <br />
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Theses horrors must come to an end. Once and for all.<br />
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<br />jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818271830417711466.post-53200365470344024502013-05-23T16:18:00.000+02:002013-05-23T16:18:19.742+02:00'Déclaration' - Remembering Georges Moustaki - R.I.P.A sad day not only for France. Georges Moustaki, the great French singer and composer, died today at the age of 79. A man known and hailed all over the world, unforgotten in his remarkable way to sing us ballads of romance and love, of happiness and sorrow. <br /><br />I don‘t know if the youth of today have a connection to Georges Moustaki. But I know that we, who grew up in the previous century, could not possibly envisage our growing up ‚sans Moustaki' – without him. He was at our side in puberty, during our first love, our rebellion against our parents and the adult world, our coming to terms with the difficulties the world had in store. His records – vinyl at the time, believe it or not – passed from one to the other, were treated like treasures and regarded as solace in a world that did not understand us. Moustaki did. And he sang of it. We were inseparable friends.<br /><br />It was his quiet way, his almost shy way to sing of solitude and longing for peace that captured us at a time when we listened to Uriah Heep and The Stones, The Beatles or Deep Purple, where noise factor only to our parents was a reason to be put off. Along came Georges Moustaki, the stark contrast, fascinating us with his words and his music and his mystical aura, a troubadour, a mind changer, a captor of our hearts. It didn't matter that our parents sighed in relief at the reduced 'noise'. Moustaki sang of love as we understood it, free, unrestricted love of hearts and body. A good enough reason to put them off again. He was ours, not theirs. And we would never have traded him in.<br /><br />Many years after my teenage time I met Georges Moustaki at an open air concert in Germany. We spend many hours backstage, I watched him pass the time playing table tennis with colleagues or chat amiable with artists and us journalists alike. It was a quiet afternoon with this humble, soft spoken man where you could easily forget that just outside over 10,000 waited to hear him sing. He never showed any signs of arrogance or celebrity attitudes, was as human as you could have imagined. His way to sing was his way to be. A man not to fuss about, but a man you put deep into your heart to keep him there forever.<br /><br />Now the news comes today that Georges Moustaki has left us for good. The heart pains. But he will never be forgotten to those whose lives he touched with his singing. I think of that wonderful afternoon back then and will forever be grateful to him for having been at my side in the difficult times of growing up, of finding love, of fighting against wars and adults and a reality that denies the logic of romance.<br /><br />Of all the songs he gave us, his 'Déclaration' is the most precious to me. <br /><br />Yes, Georges – we declare the state of happiness to be permanent – for anything else would not be a world we agree with. Not you. Not us. <br /><br />May you rest in peace. Up there somewhere. But most definitely forever in our hearts.<br /><br />Merci!<br /><br />_______________________<br />
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<br />_______________________<br /><br /><b style="color: #990000;">Déclaration</b> <br />
<br />Georges Moustaki<br /><br /><br />Je déclare l' état de bonheur permanent<br />Et le droit de chacun à tous les privilèges.<br />Je dis que la souffrance est chose sacrilège<br />Quand il y a pour tous des roses et du pain blanc.<br />Je conteste la légitimité des guerres,<br />La justice qui tue et la mort qui punit,<br />Les consciences qui dorment au fond de leur lit,<br />La civilisation au bras des mercenaires.<br />Je regarde mourir ce siècle vieillissant.<br />Un monde différent renaîtra de ses cendres<br />Mais il ne suffit plus simplement de l' attendre:<br />Je l' ai trop attendu. Je le veux à présent.<br />Que ma femme soit belle à chaque heure du jour<br />Sans avoir à se dissimuler sous le fard<br />Et qu' il ne soit plus dit de remettre à plus tard<br />L' envie que j' ai d' elle et de lui faire l' amour.<br />Que nos fils soient des hommes, non pas des adultes<br />Et qu' ils soient ce que nous voulions être jadis.<br />Que nous soyons frères camarades et complices<br />Au lieu d' être deux générations qui s' insultent.<br />Que nos pères puissent enfin s' émanciper<br />Et qu' ils prennent le temps de caresser leur femme<br />Après toute une vie de sueur et de larmes<br />Et des entre-deux-guerres qui n' étaient pas la paix.<br />Je déclare l' état de bonheur permanent<br />Sans que ce soit des mots avec de la musique,<br />Sans attendre que viennent les temps messianiques,<br />Sans que ce soit voté dans aucun parlement.<br />Je dis que, désormais, nous serons responsables.<br />Nous ne rendrons de compte à personne et à rien<br />Et nous transformerons le hasard en destin,<br />Seuls à bord et sans maître et sans dieu et sans diable.<br />Et si tu veux venir, passe la passerelle.<br />Il y a de la place pour tous et pour chacun<br />Mais il nous reste à faire encore du chemin<br />Pour aller voir briller une étoile nouvelle.<br />Je déclare l' état de bonheur permanent.<br /><br />
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<cite><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22637924" target="_blank">Georges Moustaki dies at 79 </a></cite><br />
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jonamoremhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11225136679952507057noreply@blogger.com7