Gay and Transgender Egyptians, Harassed and Entrapped, Are Driven Underground; New York Times, 8/10/16

Liam Stack, New York Times; Gay and Transgender Egyptians, Harassed and Entrapped, Are Driven Underground:

"Mr. Long said that online entrapment had become especially effective in the last two years, because the shutdown of gay-friendly spaces had left many with no place to go.

“There aren’t many queer places left in downtown or in the rest of the city, so people become more reliant on apps and social networks,” he said. “People are lonely and they meet someone who seems like they’re interested, and bang, they’re arrested.”

Ali agreed that despite the dangers, the internet was one of the few public spaces left for gay and transgender people.

“There is no other way,” Ali said. “It is Egypt.”"

Al-Jazeera employees among six sentenced to death in Egypt; Associated Press via Guardian, 6/18/16

Associated Press via Guardian; Al-Jazeera employees among six sentenced to death in Egypt:

"All of Saturday’s verdicts can be appealed against. Of the case’s 11 defendants, seven, including Morsi, are in custody.

Amnesty International called for the death sentences to be immediately thrown out and for the “ludicrous charges against the journalists to be dropped”.

The two al-Jazeera employees – identified by the judge as news producer Alaa Omar Mohammed Sablan and news editor Ibrahim Mohammed Helal – were sentenced to death in absentia along with Asmaa al-Khateib, who worked for Rassd, a media network widely suspected of links to Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Jazeera condemned the verdicts, saying they were part of a “ruthless” campaign against freedom of expression, and called on the international community to show solidarity with the journalists. “This sentence is only one of many politicised sentences that target al-Jazeera and its employees,” said the network’s acting director, Mostefa Souag. “They are illogical convictions and legally baseless. Al-Jazeera strongly denounces targeting its journalists and stands by the other journalists who have also been sentenced."...

Egypt was ranked 158 out of 180 countries in the 2015 Press Freedom Index, according to Reporters Without Borders. In December, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Egypt was second only to China as the world’s worst jailer of journalists in 2015."

My Secret Policeman; New York Times, 2/2/16

Mona Eltahawy, New York Times; My Secret Policeman:

"I joke with friends that a phone call is a promotion of sorts. From the start of my journalism career in Egypt in the early 1990s, I joined the many journalists and activists who are surveilled by the government. Sometimes, a state security officer would send a note inviting me to tea — what a perfect euphemism for an interrogation — at headquarters...

I often wonder if Omar Sharif made the transition from one to the other. And I worry what he and his colleagues are doing with the Egyptian government’s increasing ability to trawl data from applications like Skype, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with the help of See Egypt, the sister company of the American-based cybersecurity firm Blue Coat.

National Security is also busy rounding people up. Four members of the April 6 Youth Movement’s political bureau were recently taken from their homes in middle-of-the night raids. The government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi also targeted Facebook group administrators, a publishing house and an art gallery in a crackdown ahead of last month’s anniversary of the 2011 revolution."