Nora Younis receives Human Rights First award

Nora Younis will receive the annual Human Rights award from the Human Rights First Organization when they celebrate their first 30 years as an organization in New York tomorrow. She will share the prize with Oleg Kozlovsky, a young democracy activist in a country that slides further from the straight path of democracy for each day it seems. Senator Ted Kennedy is also awarded for his long and distinguished career as a human rights defender.

Human Rights First have been very suportive of human rigths in Egypt, during the last years and Campaigned for Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who won the same award in 2002 Alaa and Kareem among others, and i would like to extend my greetings and humble thanks for your support on this happy occasion.

This is how they describe Nora:

... When Egyptian soldiers used water cannons and nightsticks to brutally evict Sudanese refugees from a public square in Cairo, Nora Younis was there, taking notes and shooting photos. Her blog of the incident drew international attention to the Egyptian government's abuses against these vulnerable refugees. Nora continues to raise awareness about rampant human rights abuses in Egypt through her compelling blog posts.

1000 Mabrouk ya Nora!!

Internet week on al Jazeera

This week al Jazeera has been focusing on the internet in different Arab countries like Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and Morocco. There´s also a report on the Obama campaign´s use of the internet.

The segment on Egypt was on today, with a three minute long report followed by a good live interview with Nora Younis, unfortunately the interview is not on You Tube, but here is the report as well as the playlist for the other reports in the series.

Important piece by Knickmeyer/Younis on Ahmed Maher and Facebook

WaPo has a piece this morninng by Knickmeyer/Younis on Ahmed Maher and Facebook activism in Egypt. I¨ll write more later, but do take some time to read the story.

Good work Ellen & Nora!

More on Ahmed Maher´s ordeal here.