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via @PrisonDivest: Need Your Signature: Petition to Have Congress Deny Funding for Private Prisons
Sonata
By snubbing Copts on their holiest day, Egypt’s Morsi failed as President
(Coptic Pope Tawadros II, as he arrives to celebrate Easter mass at Cairo’s main cathedral on May 4, 2013. Reuters)
This piece was published yesterday in The Globe And Mail, here is another copy in case you missed it.
On late Saturday, Pope Tawadros II led his first Easter Mass as head of the ancient Coptic Christian Church in Egypt by praying for security and prosperity in the country. It was the most important event of the year for Egypt’s Christian minority. Many Muslims attended the service, including various figures from the opposition parties. However, President Mohamed Morsi and Prime Minister Hesham Qandil were conspicuously absent; their Muslim Brotherhood government effectively snubbed the mass by sending a low-level token representative – the country’s housing minister.
Many voices in Egypt had pressured the President to attend the mass as a gesture of support to the Copts, particularly after the recent violent…
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Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Alone Girl Alone
Alone Girl Alone
May 7, 2013 Leave a Comment
When I am walking in the street
it’s like walking in a dark jungle and knowing wolves are at the ready.
I can feel them looking at me with red eyes
and searching for a moment.
When I am sleeping, I am waiting for someone to come and shoot me
and with the start of each day I am more alone than before.
I am an alone girl
standing among all these wild people
trying to be strong and help them.
They are not wild because they want to be but because they learned to be.
They learned to be cruel
and see an alone girl as a bad girl.
They learned to know her as a danger to their families and daughters,
they learned to see her as someone who sells herself,
they learned to throw her away,
they learned to annoy her, to break her, to leave her and to hate her.
They never thought she is human.
Only and only because she is a girl and her fault is to be alone.
She did not want to be alone;
she did not choose this life and she does not like it
and if she is alone that does not mean she is a bad girl,
it does not mean she doesn’t have the right to leave,
or that she can’t be a part of this society.
Sometimes I am tired of being an alone girl,
I am tired of people looking at me as a bad girl.
I am tired of hearing the bad words
they enjoy when they can’t touch me.
I am tired of them making fun of me so that I don’t go out again—
I am tired of them looking at my body
and separating me from other people with their eyes
I wish when they see me they would give me a small smile—
but I will never accept their hate
and I will never quietly listen to them
and I will never let them to break me
and I will never be silent.
By Masooma
Lost Childhood
Hunger strike reaches crisis point – World – NZ Herald News
“Defence lawyers have tried to engage in constructive dialogue but we have been met with resistance and silence,” explained US Army Captain Jason Wright, a lawyer who described seeing his client Obaidullah, now a 52kg “bag of bones”, a few days ago as “extremely distressing”.
“When I walked into the room he was demonstrably changed. He said, ‘They won’t treat us with dignity, they are treating us like dogs’. There is an urgency. It is clear that if this hunger strike continues there will be deaths. These men are going to die in this prison for nothing. It is an absolute outrage,” said Wright.
The protest began when, according to lawyers, the new administration decided to end “an era of permissiveness” and take a more punitive approach, in contravention with the Geneva Convention, which calls for preventative detention. Guards confiscated all “comfort items” but what inflamed inmates most was a search of their Korans, an act the administration denies.
First-hand reports reveal that most prisoners are now being held in solitary confinement in empty, windowless cells just 3.5m by 2.5m. Clean water is rationed, they say, and they have been stripped of all possessions.
They complain the air-conditioning has been turned up to an icy level, guards deliberately disturb prayer times and turn up throughout the night to take them for showers.
via Hunger strike reaches crisis point – World – NZ Herald News.
Egyptian Aak. Week18
(Photo: May Day protest in Cairo, via Daily News Egypt)
Main Headlines
Monday
- Key Egyptian negotiator with the IMF resigns
- Egypt walks out of round of global nuclear talk in protest:
- Egypt court overturns suspension of Sheik Mazhar Shaheen
- Tuna causes large scale food poisoning at al-Azhar University
- Egypt says Qatar asking 5% interest on $3 billion bonds
- Wasat party refuses to withdraw controversial draft judicial bill
- Amr Moussa says Brotherhood out for revenge
- Morsi’s office “surprised” at claims it restricts media access
Tuesday
- Morsi vows more jobs, and end to privatization
- US regrets that Egypt walked-out at nuclear talks
- Shura Council approves final draft of Islamic bonds law
- Egypt’s Finance Minister appoints advisor to lead IMF talks
- Azhar’s food poisoning cases rise to 161
Wednesday
- Egyptian workers protest on Labour Day
- Egypt prosecutor orders interrogation of Bassem Youssef‘s team member
- Egypt professor prevented from teaching for insulting…
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