Three armed men seized a Syrian blogger and forced her into a car yesterday evening (6 June), her cousin recorded the incident on her website. Amina Araf, a Syrian-American dual citizen who writes under the pen name, Amina Abdallah, discusses...
CATEGORY: Middle East and North Africa
Bahrain: Ayat al-Gormezi faces tribunal for poetry reading
Ayat al-Gormezi, the 20 year old woman arrested for reading a poem at a pro-democracy rally in Pearl Square, Bahrain, is due to face a military tribunal later today. Just days after she read the poem which ended “Down with Hamad”, police raided her...
Vodafone Egypt’s PR fail
Take the time to watch the outrageous Vodafone ad that has sparked public outrage in Egypt this week. Vodafone, the company that complied with the Mubarak regimes demands to shutdown communications networks is taking credit for what happened in...
Sectarian strife escalated by new political and religious forces
In the first week of May, in what was essentially a domestic dispute, a Christian woman by the name of Abeer Fakhry, wanting to divorce her husband, announced her conversion to Islam. It was her only option for legal separation, divorce being a...
Yemen: Journalists targeted as clashes continues
Journalists and protesters in Sana’a are facing gunfire and sniper attacks as fighting in Yemen’s capital city intensifies. Private satellite broadcasting station, Suhail TV, was attacked by mortar fire earlier this week. Cameras, archives and...
Iranian activist, Haleh Sahabi, dies in a fight with authorities
Iranian activist, Haleh Sahabi, 56, died yesterday (1 June) after a scuffle with Iranian security personnel during her father's funeral procession. Sahabi died in hospital after apparently suffering a heart attack. The regime tightly controls...
King Abdullah orders release of Jordanian journalist
Jordanian journalist, Alaa Fazza, was released from prison Wednesday, on the orders of King Abdullah II yesterday (1 June), the country’s independence day. Fazza was been detained 14 days by a military court on charges that he had accused the...
Bahrain: Human rights activist missing
Human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab, was summoned to a military court just hours before Bahrain was due to lift its emergency law. He is now missing. Rajab is president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR). Bahrain's state of emergency was...
The dark side of the Syrian internet
Surveillance and spamming — how the Syria’s embattled regime and its supporters battle protesters on social media. Jillian C York reports
Protesters still face challenges in post-revolutionary Egypt
In post-revolutionary Egypt, freedom of expression is yet to be a given. On 15 May, for instance, scores of protesters commemorating the Palestinian exodus of 1948 near the Israeli embassy were beaten and shot. At least 350 were injured and 160...