Interviews with Namees Arnous

The strengths in the Mubarak regime to face this movement, very strong movement, is violence. Because we are – believe in peaceful movement, peaceful revolution, and they use the violence against demonstrators, so they win it. They killed a lot of us. The stupid thing or the weakness in their – in Mubarak regime face the challenges is they believe that they never fall. They believe that they are control everything. They believe that. Those people in the streets never did anything. So it’s a very weakness in their strategy because when they’re believe raise and raise they are control everything, they are – have all the power, all the police, all the state with them, all the violence, when we believe in freedom and democracy – raise. And in my belief, the belief win, not the violence.

And the strengths and weakness in pro-democracy during the revolution – actually the strengths with the pro-democracy is united during the revolution, and belief and the passion to freedom, and the new generation who believe in freedom. The only one weakness I think it’s because this revolution haven’t any leader, which make us have a lot of decisions at the same time, which affect negatively of our revolution. So I believe if we – if we had a leader of our revolution, it – maybe a lot of things changed. Maybe military not control the state now, I think.

Namees Arnous is a well-known television reporter and civil society activist in Egypt. During the Egyptian Revolution, Namees was asked to spread inaccurate stories by El Mehwar Television, her employer. When Namees used social media to publicize the channel’s stance against the Revolution, she was characterized as being a foreign agent and receiving money from foreign governments. She resigned from El Mehwar.

Namees then founded a new media production company which includes television, radio and social media outlets. She aims to promote human rights and democratic principles by training individuals in new media. She is currently working on a project to produce a new television program aimed at Egyptian women, focusing on issues of concern to them.

Namees has worked on a number of civil society campaigns. These include the Change Your Life Campaign, which aims to encourage women to be independent and the Be Free Campaign, which addresses young Muslim women extremists.

She worked on a civic journalism campaign to cover youth participation in elections in their respective regions. The campaign was broadcast on her NGO’s radio station and website.

Namees was among the inaugural group of the George W. Bush Institute’s Women’s Initiative Fellowship Program in 2012, a leadership program designed to empower and equip women to catalyze change.

Namees has her Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication with a focus on Television and Radio.