Facing down jail and wealthy foes, Arab rights defenders soldier on
On a December Thursday in a nondescript Cairo apartment building, a table is spread with plastic containers of Egyptian morning mainstays – fava beans, taamiya, scrambled eggs, and falafel. And a box of Dunkin' donuts.
Reporters at the online newspaper Mada Masr are gathering for a tradition observed in newsrooms across the world: the end-of-week staff breakfast.
As they break bread, laughter and gossip fill the air. There are no obvious signs of the police raid a few weeks earlier that led to the brief detention of the paper’s top editors – except, that is, the bolted front door.
At Egypt’s last independent media outlet, which reports in a country that jails more journalists than almost any other, displaying normalcy is not just a coping mechanism, it’s a moral code.
“We live and work like any other news organization. We won’t let repression change us,” says Sharif Abdel Kouddous, an editor.
That sort of stubborn determination is common to reporters and human rights defenders throughout the Middle East who are fighting – and sometimes defeating – a wave of repression.
As Europe, Latin America, and even the United States witness a steady erosion of democratic norms and institutions, Arab activists and journalists are embroiled in an all-out war in defense of those values,
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