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By snubbing Copts on their holiest day, Egypt’s Morsi failed as President

Nervana

Pope Image(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

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

via Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Alone Girl Alone.

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

Nervana

Week 18 image

(Photo: May Day protest in Cairo, via Daily News Egypt)

Main Headlines

Monday

Tuesday

 Wednesday

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