Adrian Plevin

Advocates Petition UN for Action on Jailed Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah

Alaa Abd El Fattah with his wife and intellectual partner, Manal Hassan. Photo by Lilian Wagdy via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) 22 August 2014 Written by Nani Jansen and Adrian Plevin. After imprisoned Egyptian blogger and human rights defender Alaa Abd El Fattah went on hunger strike this past Monday, the Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) petitioned the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) to take all necessary steps to secure Abd El Fattah’s immediate release.

Imagine you are a Palestinian academic or a student

The Islamic University of Gaza bombed by Israeli F16 warplanes, August 02, 2014. (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Nazmi Al-Masri on August 12, 2014 Over the one-year period from July 2013 to July 2014, I was supposed to participate in six international academic conferences and meetings as a partner in four international projects: three EU-funded projects (two from Erasmus-Mundus, one Tempus) and one BritishArts and Humanities Research Council-funded project. Because of the siege and the current war, I could not participate in any of these academic gatherings, which were held in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Jordan, and Cyprus....