Interviews with Nora Younis

So I kept doing the blogging for a while. And then I traveled to the U.S. for a fellowship. And then I came back to Egypt. And right after I came back, The Washington Post was opening an office in Cairo to cover the region. It was the year of 2007. But we had to part. And actually, we parted because of April 6th. So my boss was on vacation. And I wrote to her, and I told her, “I want to go to Mahala to cover the April 6th strike from there. But I have to be on an official assignment, because, most likely, I´ll be arrested, and I´ll need The Post to cover me. And she said, “No, you stay in Cairo and nothing will happen. And if something happen, we´ll take it from the wires.” So she refused. And I was completely furious.

So I started– I called up few friends. And all the reporters were calling me to ask, “Where should we send our cameras? It´s a nationwide strike.” And you know if you are a newspaper or a T.V. Station, you have a certain number of cameras, and you want to know where it´s the best– you don´t want to miss a shot. So I realized that the mainstream media cannot cover this. So I called up few friends. We bought some telephone lines. And we set up this hotline to receive pictures. We set up a blog and telephone lines to receive information from people if national strike succeeded or not. And people started calling us and telling us, like, what is the school attendance percentage? Did people go to work today or not? In different places.

And so we´re getting so many reports from the people. And we were updating the blog all over the day. And it was very successful. So my boss going back. She was furious, and she fired me. Right after that, I got an offer from Al-masry Al-youm [The Egyptian Today newspaper, established in 2004]. They wanted to start a multimedia unit. And they had seen my activist video. Because I was doing a lot of videos on the workers strike, like the tax collectors strike, and the Mahala workers strike. So they had seen my videos and they liked them. Al-masry Al-youm is a daily independent newspaper.

I think it started in 2004. And it was the second best circulating paper before the revolution. And the best circulating daily papers was Al-Ahram, the government paper, because of subscriptions. But now, after the revolution, Al-masry Al-youm became the number one– the best selling paper, actually, the most selling in the streets now. They offered me the position to start the multimedia unit for the website. And I got in; I start thinking, “Where should we start?” And I hired an editor. And we got one computer, one Apple computer, and some pocket cameras, like cell phone cameras. And we started training the reporters. We started training the reporters of Al-masry Al-youm.

So they started shooting all the way. And we would do the central editing and post the videos online. And then there was an English edition of the website. It started after this was a few months. And then we started also subtitling the videos, and doing the multimedia and bilingual. So we did this. And it became just bigger and bigger and bigger. We hired more people. We trained much more reporters. We started training the reporters who are outside Cairo. And then we started training the photographers to make videos, as well. And then we started buying better cameras and more computers and more editors, and blah, blah, blah. And now we are producing our first long documentary film.

But it´s much more difficult now, because I am the boss. So now I have to tell younger, more enthusiast journalists, I have to tell them what to do. And it´s very difficult for me. Because in the times they want to be activists, or they want to you know do their own thing, they want to drop the cameras and go do something. I understand how they feel. And I still have to make them work.

Nora Younis is a human rights activist, journalist and blogger who is now working as the website managing editor of Al-Masry Al-Youm Daily Independent, one of the best known newspapers in Egypt.

As a human rights activist, Ms. Younis won the Human Rights First (HRF) thirtieth anniversary award in 2008 for her work using new media tools to expose human rights violations and police brutality.

When she started blogging in 2005 she focused on addressing the information vacuum on protest movements in Egypt. Before Twitter came into being, she was continually sending mass text messages to human rights activists, political groups, and journalists, informing them of rallies, arrests, state violence and police brutality.

After Twitter became established among Egyptians, she moved into visual documentation. Most recognized is her video of the textile workers’ strike in Mahalla in September 2007 that soon grew into a nationwide movement known as the April 6th strike. One of her most famous blog posts includes her testimonial about the brutal police raid on a Sudanese refugee protest camp in Cairo in 2005 where at least 27 men, women and children were killed. Her testimonial was translated by fellow bloggers and activists across the world into more than seven languages. It was used in law suits and human rights reports condemning the Egyptian government.

During the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Ms. Younis played a major role in documenting and reporting events. Using improvised communications methods, she filmed and disseminated to global audiences the demonstrations and crackdowns in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Before she took up her position as website managing editor of Al-Masry Al-Youm Daily Independent, Ms. Younis covered the Middle East for The Washington Post (2008) and for other international newspapers.

Twitter: @NoraYounis 

With a history dating back to the 10th millennium B.C., Egypt has long played a central role in the Middle East. Egypt is the largest Arab nation and has an influential voice in Arabic and Middle Eastern culture. Egypt has a diverse economy, but has struggled to create sustained economic growth and opportunities for its population of 84 million people.

The country has little experience with representative democracy. From 1956 to 1970, President Gamal Abdel Nasser ruled Egypt with a strong hand, nationalizing the Suez Canal and taking the country into conflict with the new state of Israel. Upon his death, Anwar al-Sadat became president. Together with other Arab nations, Sadat launched the October War against Israel in 1973. In 1979, Sadat signed a groundbreaking peace treaty with Israel.

From Sadat’s assassination in 1981 until the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Egypt was governed by President Hosni Mubarak. For all of Mubarak’s time in office, and for much of the time since his resignation, Egypt has been under “Emergency Law,” which allows the government to suspend constitutional rights, including limiting political activity and restricting free speech. Emergency Law also allows the government to use summary arrests against political opponents.

For four successive terms, Mubarak was reelected in referenda without an opponent. In 2005, under domestic and international pressure, Mubarak proposed a constitutional amendment to allow Egypt’s first multicandidate presidential elections. Because the amendment would have imposed severe restrictions on the eligibility of opposition candidates, opposition groups boycotted the vote. Mubarak claimed to have won the September 2005 presidential election with an official 88 percent of the vote, amid widespread allegations of fraud and vote rigging. The main opposition leader, Ayman Nour, was subsequently prosecuted by the government for forging signatures on petitions and was sentenced to five years in prison, provoking protests from the United States and other democratic countries.

Following the example of the Tunisian Revolution, large protests swept Egypt in early 2011. The military, led by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), withdrew its support of Mubarak. On February 11, 2011, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi then assumed power in Egypt. SCAF dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution.

In November 2011, Egypt held parliamentary elections that were reportedly fair and democratic. In June 2012, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was elected President, in part because liberal and secular forces failed to coalesce around a single candidate. Morsi’s popularity declined as he declared his orders immune from challenge, removed judicial review processes, and was accused of taking steps towards the implementation of Islamist policies. Conflict arose between those supporting Islamist policies and those seeking a more liberal and secular government. Protests occurred throughout his presidency until Morsi was ousted by the military in July 2013. Muslim Brotherhood leaders were arrested and their camps and offices raided. Until new elections are held, a SCAF-installed provisional government led by acting President Adly Mansour is in control.

In its most recent report, the independent watchdog group Freedom House classifies Egypt as “partly free.” On its scale where 1 is the most free and 7is the least free, Egypt earned scores of 5 in both the civil liberties and political rights categories.