Interviews with Nora Younis

Right after this 25th of May thing I got together with the group of three other bloggers. So the four of us got together. And we called for a demonstration in Sayyida Square, which is one of the most populated areas in Cairo. And it was just like we were so much criticized in the papers, even before the demonstration takes place. I mean this demonstration was heavily discovered– discussed in the Egyptian press. And then we went to Ayman Nour [Ayman Nour is an Egyptian politician who challenged President Hosni Mubarak in the 2005 elections.] to ask him to join us with his el Ghad [The Tomorrow Party, a secular, liberal opposition party] party to join our demon– we were just four people who were completely unknown. Like nobody heard of us before.

We also talked to other factions, other political factions. And—Kefaya [Kefaya, the Arabic word for “enough,” was the nickname for the grassroots organization, Egyptian Movement for Change.], for example, refused to participate. But the younger arm of Kefaya, the Youth For Change, accepted our invitation and came. And this started a series of streets demonstrations that we organized. It was against the ministry of interior, and it was targeting the ministry of interior. And Sayyida Zainab is the granddaughter of the prophet. And she is buried in this mosque, in this square. And people go to her when they are hopeless and when they have a prayer they wanted achieved. And they write it on a little paper, and they put it in the walls of her grave. For people who really have something they desire, and they want it to get achieved, they also clean her grave as courtesy.

So what we did is the slogan of the demonstration was “Let´s Clean the Sayyida Zainab Grave.” And this is why it was a joke. And everybody was joking out of us and saying, “This guys are crazy. They´re not talking politics.” And then– but our invitation was very clear. “We are going to clean the Sayyida Zainab grave on the minister of interior, Habib el-Adly [El- Adly served as Interior Minister under Mubarak and was later sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption and conspiring to kill protesters.], which means we´ll pray against him.” Which is all very symbolic. And we had posters. We had organized, like, all the posters against the ministry of interior. And– with names of people who died in police stations out of torture, with the stories of the small vendors who get arrested because they can´t bribe, they don´t have money to bribe the ministry of interior.

So we thought about the ministry of interior and its abuses on different levels of the Egyptian society. And we attracted a lot of people. And we moved on to different places. So we took those demonstrations to other public locations afterwards.

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