A woman waves the Egyptian flag during a protest in Egypt

Photograph: Lilian Wagdy

 

In the initial months of 2011, the Facebook Revolution was the hottest headline around the world - modern, relevant and easily digestible for a western audience. But what role did social media really play in bringing down Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak?

By Kawkab al-Thaibani in Sanaa
Basam al-Haidari is 26-years-old,. He has little education but dreamed of supporting his big extended family - ten siblings, five of whom are deaf.

Instead of leading his family to security al-Haidari has walked himself into a death sentence.

Last April, al-Haidari was behind the bars of the Specialized Criminal Court of Appeals when he heard the Judge confirm the death sentence, for a crime committed while messing around on the internet.

He was sentenced to death for offering to spy for Israel.

The mass burial site for the victims of an Israeli air strike on Qana on July 30, 2006.(FEYROUZ / CC)

By Tom Sleigh

When we drove into Qana last year," Joseph told me, scanning the gray concrete houses on either side of the road, "we heard flames roaring, the sound of the jets, people screaming, and the ringing of cell phones." He looked at me and shrugged. "The relatives of people were calling to see if they were okay." Joseph worked for the Red Cross during the 2006 war with Israel and was one of the first to enter the village after an Israeli bombardment massacred twenty-eight Lebanese civilians. Soft-spoken, slight, he was solicitous on the surface but, like many Lebanese, reserved, even wary. When I hired him as my driver and interpreter to take me south from Beirut, I knew only that he drove a taxi with his father and worked as a draftsman in an engineering firm to pay his way at Lebanese University. But then he offered to take me to Qana. He could show it to me, he said; he could tell me what he'd seen.

Tom Sleigh most recent volume of poetry is Space Walk. He teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. His essay "The Deeds," from the Summer 2008 issue of VQR, was selected forBest American Travel Writing 2009.

A Kurdish journalist kidnapped in Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, was tortured and then dumped on a main road with two bullets in his head. Zardasht Osman, 23, was killed because he had lacerated region's two Kurdish parties, including the powerful Barzani clan. A university student, Osman was a freelance journalist who used a pseudonym online "I am in love with Barzani's daughter," read one of his scathing posts which violated the taboo of even referring to a female family member of the region's president, Massoud Barzani. Osman wondered aloud how he might marry one of Mr. Barzani's daughters.

Hafez Ibrahim was 16 when he attended a wedding in his home town of Ta'izz. Everyone was in high spirits and most of the men were armed. At some point, the celebrations boiled over, a struggle broke out, a gun went off and someone was killed.
 

• Update: Egyptian police beat protesters demanding constitutional reforms
• Police confiscate media cameras
• Ayman Noor calls it "an insulting image" that soldiers deny freedom of expression

In Cairo yesterday armed police cracked down on a few dozen protesters demanding reforms to Egypt's arcane constitution. In Washington meanwhile, well-heeled Egyptian diplomats  turn up with worrying regularity at events to discuss internet censorship and citizen journalists. 

by Barbara Becker

When I was in college, I had a small book of questions meant to serve as conversation starters for social gatherings. There was one question in particular that I had no idea how to answer, and not having a response seemed to indicate some form of personal shortcoming in my young and idealistic mind: "Is there a cause for which you'd be willing to sacrifice your life?"

It wasn't until years later when I began working in international human rights that I encountered others who could answer that question affirmatively. This past year, I had the privilege of getting to know such a person when I spent time with Aminatou Haidar, the Western Saharan human rights defender who was in the U.S. last fall to accept the 2009 Civil Courage Prize for her peaceful advocacy on behalf of the Sahrawi people.