Egyptian security forces have arbitrarily arrested the entire editorial team of Matsadaash, one of the country’s few independent investigative media outlets, without providing any warrants.

The six journalists have been forcibly disappeared since their arrests, with authorities refusing to disclose their whereabouts or any criminal charges against them, while denying their families and lawyers the right to communicate with them.

“Dismantling an entire newsroom in a matter of hours without warning or cause sends a chilling message to all journalists working in Egypt and shows just how little space is left there for critical reporting,” said Bassam Khawaja, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Egypt is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists, with at least 25 journalists currently behind bars, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The arrests of the Matsadaash journalists highlight longstanding restrictions on freedom of expression and the repression faced by independent journalists in Egypt.

More than 80 organizations worldwide have condemned the arrests & called for the release of the six journalists.

Demand Their Release

Home Raids and Arrests Without Warrants

The arrests began late Monday, September 28, when security forces raided the home of Abdallah Qadry. Authorities subsequently raided the home of Mohamed Ashraf Abu Emeira in the early hours of Tuesday, followed by the arrests of Islam Barakat and Omar Helal at their homes. Mohamed Mahmoud and Mohamed Adel were arrested on a Cairo street.

Authorities also confiscated the electronic devices belonging to the journalists.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said plainclothes security personnel raided the journalists’ homes and refused to provide search warrants. They also confiscated electronic devices belonging to family members and others living in the journalists’ homes.

EIPR, which is providing legal representation for the six journalists, demanded that authorities disclose the journalists’ locations and the reasons for their arrests. It also called for immediate access to lawyers and family members.

“Our journalists deserve recognition for their work. Instead, they have been held for more than 72 hours, their whereabouts unknown, without access to their families or our lawyers... We demand to know where they are, insist on their right to contact their families and lawyers, and call for their immediate release,” said Abdelrahman Mansour, co-founder of Matsadaash.

Fabricated Accusations to Justify Repression and Censorship

The Interior Ministry on Thursday accused the outlet of “fabricating news” & having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood but did not specify what criminal charges the journalists face.

Matsadaash published a fact-check debunking each of the government’s claims, rejecting accusations that the outlet is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, operates from abroad, or receives foreign funding.

Egyptian authorities routinely use allegations of Muslim Brotherhood ties to target critics, journalists, and activists. Egypt designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2013 after the military ousted then-President Mohamed Morsi, a senior Brotherhood figure.

“No journalist at Matsadaash is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and no journalist working at Matsadaash has any connection to any political organization inside or outside Egypt. Making such accusations without providing any evidence not only damages Matsadaash’s reputation; it also casts doubt on the professionalism of Egyptian journalists who openly practice their profession,” Matsadaash said in a statement, rejecting the government’s accusations against its journalists.

Not the First Time Authorities Have Targeted Matsadaash

In 2023, a Matsadaash editor was violently arrested at his home without a warrant and held for 48 hours over similar allegations after the outlet published a major investigation. During the raid, officers logged into Matsadaash’s Facebook and deleted two posts.

Three of the journalists now detained were also investigated, but authorities found no evidence linking them to the Muslim Brotherhood or any other political group, or that they had received foreign funding.

Founded in 2018 by Egyptian journalists, Matsadaash, which means “Don’t Believe It” in Arabic, focuses on fact-checking and investigative reporting. Its website is blocked in Egypt, but its Facebook page has more than one million followers.

Ahmed Douma, a prominent Egyptian poet, writer, and activist, was rearrested on April 6, 2026, at the Supreme State Security Prosecution headquarters following a six-hour interrogation and held in pre-trial detention for nearly two months.

On June 3, he was sentenced to one year in prison on spurious charges, including “spreading false news,” stemming from a Facebook post criticizing the 24-hour lighting in Egypt’s prison cells and an article titled A Prison Within the State and a State Within the Prison. The charge of “spreading false news” is regularly used against Egyptian activists, journalists, writers, and everyday social media users.

Douma’s trial concluded after just two sessions and was marked by serious fair trial violations, including the court’s refusal to hear defense witnesses and experts or inspect detention facilities to verify his claim that 24-hour cell lighting causes sleep deprivation, which the prosecutor deemed ‘fake news’.

In the article, Douma argues that imprisonment has become a central tool of control for governments across the region and beyond, and warns of its long-term consequences for society.

Douma spent nearly 10 years in prison for participating in Egypt’s 2011 pro-democracy revolution. During his imprisonment, he was subjected to torture, denied medical care, and held in solitary confinement for four years.

He was released in 2023 on a presidential pardon; however, Egyptian authorities continued to target him through arbitrary summons, interrogations, a travel ban, and denial of official documents. He also faced threats and physical attacks to silence him from criticizing the government.

“The weaponization of the criminal justice system against Ahmed Douma and other activists lays bare President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government’s relentless campaign to crush peaceful dissent and restrict civic space,” Mahmoud Shalaby, Amnesty International’s Regional Researcher, said in a statement.

Egyptian authorities have systematically dismantled space for dissent, punishing those who speak out while severely restricting the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association. Journalists, activists, human rights defenders, and bloggers have been arbitrarily detained—often for months or years without trial—and prosecuted on charges tied to their reporting, advocacy, or criticism of the government.

Since the 2013 military takeover, Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s rule has been marked by severe repression and widespread human rights abuses. Egypt is estimated to hold over 60,000 political prisoners, many of whom are confined to filthy cells, tortured routinely, and denied life-saving medication.

Thousands face enforced disappearances, prolonged detention without trial, mass death sentences, and prosecution in military courts. To manage this influx, the Egyptian government has built dozens of new prisons and jails in the past decade.

A new Taliban law on divorce allows the silence of a “virgin girl” who has reached puberty to be interpreted as consent to marriage.

The Decree No. 18, “Code on Judicial Separation of Spouses,” passed on May 14, 2026, explicitly distinguishes girls from boys and adult women: while a girl’s silence may be treated as marital consent, the silence of a boy or an adult woman does not constitute consent. The provision is particularly alarming given that puberty can begin as early as age 8.

By linking the minimum marriage age for girls to puberty, the Taliban has effectively legalized child marriage, according to the UN. Experts have emphasized that the law also effectively legalizes child rape.

“A marriage proposal is something that a girl may feel shy or embarrassed about, and she may not be able to openly say that she agrees to marry. Therefore, her silence is regarded as consent,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesman.

Previously, the legal age for marriage for girls was 16, and the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women Law criminalized marriage for girls below 15.

“Under the new law, that age limit is removed. If a girl reaches puberty at the age of 9 or 10, she is considered of a legal age to marry. This is another level of atrocity that the Taliban are inflicting on women since they came to power,” Horia Mosadiq, director of the Conflict Analysis Network, told The Times.

Men have a unilateral right to divorce, women and girls don’t

Afghan men retain a unilateral right to divorce, while women require their husband’s consent. They must go to a Taliban court and undergo mediation rather than automatically receiving protection & a divorce.

The law also states that judges, who are clerics, cannot issue a divorce order solely because of the husband’s abuse without the husband’s consent.

An abusive husband’s testimony is valued more during divorce

The law also states that a minor girl can annul her marriage after reaching puberty if she can produce witnesses and obtain court approval.

If her husband denies her claim and she has no witnesses, his testimony is considered valid over hers—another way to trap girls in abusive marriages.

“The decree allows divorce, but on very abusive terms for women: It has to go through mediation, with the family’s support and the husband’s consent. How could a girl who has been married to an abusive husband for four, five years dare to go to court? How can she afford going to court, or how does she even know that she can go to court?” Fereshta Abbasi, the Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times.

Escaping abusive & forced marriages is practically impossible for girls and women.

Taliban courts operate without due process, are presided over by male clerics rather than trained judges, & exclude female lawyers, making the already difficult and discriminatory process of seeking divorce practically impossible for girls & women.

Women’s freedom of movement is also restricted, making access to courts or outside help nearly impossible.

Male guardianship policies that control women’s freedom and laws that give greater weight to an abusive husband’s testimony make it extremely difficult for girls and women to seek help and escape.

Gender Apartheid Under Taliban

Although child & forced marriage existed before the Taliban’s return to power, they have increased significantly in recent years, driven by worsening poverty, restrictive laws targeting women and girls, deepening gender inequality and patriarchal norms, and the dismantling of legal and protection systems.

Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban has systematically stripped women and girls of basic rights and freedoms, such as bans on education, bans on most jobs and public spaces, strict dress codes, and restrictions on freedom of movement.

Legal experts have described the Taliban’s legally enshrined system of oppression, designed to entrench and maintain power, as gender apartheid and are calling for it to be formally recognized as a crime under international law.

Learn more and support the End Gender Apartheid global movement.

I am a Palestinian man over sixteen who has published, spoken, and written against Israel in every forum available to me. The next time I go home, I could be pulled from a checkpoint, held without charge, tried without a jury, convicted on a confession I did not give in a language I do not read, and hanged before the sun sets twice. For the first time, I am afraid to go to Palestine.

There have been many moments over the last few years where I have been envious of our martyrs. Where I imagined myself among them, standing as lions against those invading our land, meeting death with my face forward. That envy is easy from abroad, easy from Ann Arbor, easy from a distance where martyrdom is sacred and abstract and belongs only to others.

But Monday night, the Israeli Knesset voted to make hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted in its military courts, and for the first time, martyrdom stopped being a concept.

I want to say this clearly before I say anything else. Israel did not sentence Palestinians to death on Monday; Israel’s official policy has always been Palestinian death because Palestinians are a continuous reminder of a colonial state and its colonial history.

Shireen Abu Akleh was sentenced to death. She was shot in the head while wearing a press vest. Amer Rabee was sentenced to death. He was thirteen, walking with his cousins, shot by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in the West Bank. Mohammed al-Durrah was sentenced to death in 2000, crouched behind his father, begging for his life on camera.

Palestinians are sentenced to death in their homes when settlers arrive with rifles and impunity. They are sentenced to death at checkpoints, in prison cells, in refugee camps, in hospitals that are no longer hospitals. The death sentence has always been active.

The Knesset passed the bill 62 to 48, with Netanyahu personally attending to cast his vote. Ben-Gvir wore a lapel pin shaped like a noose. The bill makes death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of acts deemed “terror” against Israel, in military courts where basic due process is effectively absent.

Settlers who kill Palestinians, and they do, with regularity and with near-total impunity, are tried in civilian courts. Israel has yet to prosecute any of its citizens for killing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the start of this decade.

The bill’s proponents call it a deterrent, which requires you to believe these military courts are courts at all. But they are not courts in any sense of the word. Military trials of Palestinians run a 96% conviction rate, built largely on confessions extracted through torture and duress, with no jury, no right to appeal, and no entitlement to pardon, placing this among the most extreme capital punishment frameworks anywhere in the world.

Executions are to be carried out by hanging within 90 days of sentencing, and the Defense Minister retains sole authority to decide whether a given Palestinian is tried in military or civilian court, which is to say the executioner decides the courtroom.

What makes this law particularly obscene is not only what it does to Palestinian adults but what it does to Palestinian children. Israel is the only country in the world that automatically and systematically prosecutes children in military courts, sending between 500 and 700 Palestinian children through them each year.

Between 2005 and 2010, at least 835 Palestinian minors were tried in military courts on charges of stone throwing, and only one was acquitted. These children arrive at interrogation bound, blindfolded, and sleep-deprived, and give confessions after verbal abuse, threats, and physical violence that in some cases amounts to torture, with military law providing no right to legal counsel during interrogation and judges seldom excluding confessions obtained by coercion.

Those confessions, extracted in the dark from children who cannot read the Hebrew they are signing, will now carry the weight of a death sentence. The same courts that prosecute a fourteen-year-old for throwing a stone at an armored jeep are now empowered to hang him for it.

Israel is the first state since Nazi Germany to codify death as a punishment reserved for one race and not another. Apartheid South Africa, whose systems of racial domination the world rightly condemned and eventually dismantled, did not go this far.

The last government to construct something equivalent wore a different uniform and spoke a different language, and the world has spent eighty years promising it would never allow it again.

Israel holds approximately 9,500 Palestinians, about half without any charge, all of whom are now at risk of the death penalty. Administrative detention orders are renewable indefinitely, issued on the basis of classified evidence that neither the prisoner nor their lawyer is ever permitted to see.

A Palestinian can spend years in Israeli custody without knowing what they are accused of, without ever being tried, and then find themselves before a military judge who signs a conviction and starts a ninety-day clock.

France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom called the bill discriminatory. Amnesty International called for its repeal. The UN Human Rights Office said it breaches international law.

The United States said it respects Israel’s sovereign right to determine its own laws, and Netanyahu welcomed the decision, and Ben-Gvir opened champagne. The same people who celebrate and applaud sexual violence and pedophilia were never going to mourn a noose.

What I want to say to the people who will read this law as news, as something new, is that the Palestinians who have been killed at checkpoints and in their homes and in the streets did not die any less finally because there was no trial. The bullet that killed Shireen Abu Akleh was a death sentence without paperwork. What Israel has done is grant itself the administrative dignity of a courtroom and decide that the extermination of Palestinians deserves a procedure.

Death has always been the condition of Palestinian life. We have lived beside it, raised children beside it, built our homes beside it, buried our dead beside it, and kept living. What Israel has done is not introduce death into the Palestinian experience. They have decided death every day since before 1948.

I am afraid to go home. And I am afraid of what it means that I am afraid, because Palestinians who never left have never had the option of fear. They have only had the option of living, which Israel has always tried to make indistinguishable from dying.

Warning: The following images contain graphic content.

Mohamed Al-Mosawi, 32, and six of his friends were arrested at a checkpoint on March 19 while out for a pre-dawn Ramadan meal and forcibly disappeared, with no access to their families or a lawyer.

On March 27, Al-Mosawi’s family received a call to collect his body from the Bahrain Defense Force Hospital. Authorities claimed Al-Mosawi had been arrested on alleged charges of “espionage.” The fate of the others arrested with him remains unknown.

Disturbing videos and photos showed clear signs of torture across his face and body.

“Sayed Mohammed AlMousawi, who was tortured to death by the Bahrain regime, was 32 years old. He was 18 when he was arrested the first time and 30 when he was finally released with a pardon 2 years ago. Read that again. And then think about that those arrested with him are still subjected to enforced disappearance,” Maryam Al-Khawaja, a Bahraini-Danish human rights defender and daughter of prominent imprisoned activist Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, wrote on X.

Al-Mosawi, a Shia activist, was first arrested at age 18, like hundreds jailed during the 2011 pro-democracy protests, and spent more than a decade as a political prisoner in the notorious Jau Prison. He was released in 2024 as part of a royal pardon that freed more than 1,500 prisoners. Now, two years later, he was rearrested and tortured to death.

Ebtisam Al-Saegh, a prominent activist who was previously tortured and sexually assaulted by members of Bahrain’s National Security Agency while in custody, told MEE that she “feels pain and helplessness” after Al-Mosawi’s death.

Human Rights Watch said on March 19 that since the start of the war, Bahraini authorities have arrested dozens of people for peacefully demonstrating or posting on social media, in some cases seeking the death penalty.

HRW reported that detainees have been denied the right to contact their families or lawyers for several days.

Bahrain has increasingly tightened restrictions on civic space, deepening a longstanding crackdown on free expression. Authorities continue to arbitrarily imprison political leaders and activists and routinely deny them medical care, including for conditions caused by torture.

“This death cannot be viewed as an isolated incident. Rather, it is part of a broader, well-documented pattern of abuse that includes torture, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, denial of medical care, and systematic targeting of individuals for exercising their fundamental rights,” the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) said in a statement.

Hundreds attended Al-Mosawi’s funeral on Friday, chanting anti-government slogans, including “Down with Hamad,” referring to the king.

Anti-government protests in Bahrain, including mass uprisings in the early 1990s and in 2011, have consistently been violently suppressed by authorities. Activists and dissidents face arbitrary arrests and sham trials.

“We feel fear and terror as citizens, and this is why today, especially Shia citizens, feel unsafe. At any time, in any place, at a checkpoint, you can be arrested. Your home can be raided. You can be detained for any reason, disappear completely, and then suddenly your family finds your lifeless body,” one attendee at Al-Mosawi’s funeral told MEE.

Rights groups say recent arrests in connection with the war have disproportionately targeted Shi’a communities, who make up the majority of Bahrain’s population and have long faced systemic discrimination and repression.

The 2011 pro-democracy uprising in Bahrain was led largely by Shi’a citizens against the Sunni ruling Al Khalifa royal family. With the backing of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, authorities violently suppressed the protests and cracked down on dissent.

“There is widespread resentment, fear and terror in Bahrain, especially among Shias, who now feel targeted. These arbitrary measures are all directed at one sect only,” Naji Fateel, a Bahraini human rights defender who spent years behind bars and whose son was arrested this month, told AFP that pro-government Bahrainis are targeting Shi’a activists online, warning that a sectarian backlash is already underway.

Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, where more than 9,000 Department of Defense personnel are stationed.

The presence of American bases in Bahrain has been a point of contention for decades, with many Bahrainis viewing them as inviting conflict into the country. In recent weeks, the bases have drawn renewed criticism and protests.

Some believe the release of Al-Mosawi’s body, bearing visible signs of abuse, was a deliberate attempt by the government to instill fear and suppress dissent.

“The message is clear: the government warns and cautions, through the martyr [Al-Mosawi], against protesting, showing solidarity, or speaking up. The government wants a silent people who see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing,” one attendee at Al-Mosawi’s funeral told MEE.

The Taliban has enacted a new law that effectively legalizes domestic violence against women, permitting husbands to beat their wives and children as long as they do not cause “broken bones or open wounds.”

The 60-page penal code, signed by the Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, classifies spousal violence as “ta’zir” (discretionary punishment) rather than a crime. Even in cases of serious injury—which are nearly impossible to prove—the maximum penalty is just 15 days in prison.

Justice & Escape from Abuse Impossible

The law makes justice impossible to achieve and even punishes women who attempt to escape. To file a complaint, a woman must show her wounds to a male judge while fully veiled and accompanied by a male guardian, who, in most cases, is the abusive husband.

A woman who goes to her parents’ home without her husband’s permission, even to flee abuse, can be jailed for up to three months. Any family member who shelters her faces the same punishment.

Protections for Women Dismantled

The new penal code rolls back protections introduced under Afghanistan’s previous government, including a 2009 law that criminalized forced marriage, rape, and gender-based violence.

It replaces due process and fair trial with the unchecked discretion of Taliban judges. Defendants have no right to a lawyer or to appeal.

“Our life is more like a constant resistance against everything out there. No one sees us. No one cares about us. This new law is not just a law—it is making our bodies their field of control. No one would see our pain unless our bones are broken. They are legalizing fear. We are living in fear and silence,” Narges, a former university student in western Herat, told The Telegraph.

Taliban Legalizes Child Abuse

The law permits teachers to beat children in their care, with only the most severe injuries, such as broken bones, torn skin, or heavy bruising, considered excessive.

Article 48 further authorizes fathers to physically punish boys from age 10, claiming it serves the child’s “interest.” The law contains no prohibition on physical, psychological, or sexual abuse of children or women.

Gender Apartheid Under Taliban

Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban has systematically stripped women and girls of basic rights and freedoms, such as bans on education and employment, strict dress codes, and severe restrictions on freedom of movement.

Legal experts have described the Taliban’s legally enshrined systems of oppression as gender apartheid—a form of extreme, systematic gender-based oppression and discrimination designed to entrench and maintain power.

Activists and experts are calling for gender apartheid to be recognized as a crime under international law.

Learn more and support the End Gender Apartheid global movement.

University students in cities across Iran have joined the anti-government protests that began in late December, chanting slogans such as “Freedom is our right” and “Death to the Dictator!”

Iran’s intelligence agencies have been contacting st…

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On October 24, in northeast Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, 200 Israeli settlers descended on Palestinian villages like a mob sent by the state. They set cars on fire and roamed through streets with assault rifles while Israeli soldiers guarded their advance. Palestinian families hid as settlers poured gasoline and lit fires, while soldiers blocked ambulances from entering.

This was not an isolated incident. It was not spontaneous. It was not “clashes.” It was organized political violence. It was a state-backed terror attack.

Just days before, in the village of Ar-Rihiya south of Hebron, nine-year-old Mohammad al-Hallaq was playing football in the street when Israeli forces shot him in the head. He died before his family reached him. No headlines in Western news. Another Palestinian child executed, another life treated as disposable under occupation.

Mohammad was the 1001st Palestinian killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023—among them 213 children, some as young as two years old.

His killing is not separate from settler violence. It is necessary to the colonial project. Thhe bullet that killed Mohammad was fired by the same ideology that burned cars in Ramallah, the same system that arms settlers, the same state that authorizes terror against Palestinians as a tool of control.

A harrowing video on October 19 in the occupied West Bank captured a masked Israeli settler beating a 55-year-old Palestinian woman harvesting olives as she helplessly lay bleeding on the ground, leaving her critically injured. Settlers also attacked farmers, activists, and journalists. American Journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who filmed the assault, said the Israeli army led villagers into “a brutal ambush by armed settlers.”

Call them what they are. Israeli settlers are not civilians. They are not “fringe extremists.” They are not “nationalists.” They are a state-directed paramilitary arm deployed to ethnically cleanse Palestinian land. Every week, they burn, beat, shoot, and expel Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, and every week they do it with government financing, military protection, and full impunity under apartheid law. The world must stop laundering their crimes. This is terrorism.

Over seventy settler attacks were recorded in just one week from October 7-13, according to the United Nations. These attacks killed Palestinians, injured nearly one hundred, destroyed property and farmland, and displaced entire families.

On October 10 in Beita village, settlers, accompanied by Israeli forces, attacked Palestinian farmers and international activists harvesting olives, using live ammunition, tear gas, and physical assault. Sixty Palestinians were injured, several vehicles burned, and farming tools were seized.

On October 8, in the village of Deir Jarir, settlers opened fire alongside Israeli soldiers and killed a 26-year-old Palestinian man. On October 11, in Turmus Ayya, settlers attacked farmers during the olive harvest, a key economic activity for Palestinians, and destroyed at least 200 olive trees.

On October 13, near At Taybe, settlers and Israeli forces forced farmers off their land, assaulted them, confiscated vehicles, and banned their return without “prior coordination.” Settlers vandalized 130 olive trees and seized roughly 1,000 kilograms of harvested olives.

In July of this year, in the northern Jordan Valley, settler militias arrived in Israeli military vehicles and forced entire Palestinian herding communities to dismantle their own shelters and flee after waves of settler raids. This is forced transfer, a war crime under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. But Israel wants the world to believe settler violence is a problem of undisciplined individuals rather than state policy.

Settler militias are trained, organized, and frequently wear uniforms. They carry government-issued assault rifles. They scout targeted Palestinian villages before attacking and coordinate raids in convoys. During attacks, the Israeli army blocks roads, surrounds the area, and prevents Palestinians from defending themselves. Afterward, no settler is arrested. Instead, Palestinians are detained, and Israeli politicians celebrate the defense of Jewish land.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, now oversees civil administration in the West Bank under the Ministry of Defense. He has openly declared his mission is to either exterminate Palestinians or drive Palestinians away from their lands—even boasting that expanding settlements will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

His government subsidizes settlement housing, shields violent settler outposts from demolition, and fast-tracks land theft through new settler-only roads. Illegal outposts built by settler militias are later legalized by the Israeli government. Violence first, legislation later. This is how annexation advances.

Hundreds of Palestinian communities now face this coercive environment. In East Jerusalem, over 1,000 Palestinians face eviction by settler organizations like Ateret Cohanim. In Masafer Yatta, entire villages are being erased by settler raids and military orders. In the Jordan Valley, Palestinian shepherds are being forced off lands they have lived on for generations.

The Rome Statute defines apartheid as an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one group over another. Israel operates two systems of law in the West Bank: civilian law for Jewish settlers, military law for Palestinians.

Settlers can build freely. Palestinians are denied permits. Settlers receive state-funded infrastructure. Palestinians face demolitions and land seizures. Settlers can carry rifles. Palestinians are shot for carrying olives.

This is how Israel was created: on the blood and bones of Palestinians from “refugees” and Jewish militias that expelled over 50% of Palestine’s indigenous population by 1949.

To every government feigning confusion, there is no confusion on the ground. Forced displacement is a war crime. Collective punishment is a war crime. Settlement building is a war crime. Organizing civilians into armed groups to enforce territorial domination is state-sanctioned terrorism.

A moral world would treat the killers of Mohammad al-Hallaq as terrorists. A lawful world would dismantle settlements immediately and prosecute Israeli officials and settler commanders at the International Criminal Court. A just world would bring about the total and complete liberation of Palestine. Instead, the world rewards Israel with weapons, shields it from sanctions, grants it impunity, and accepts the lie of “security” to justify slaughter.

There will be no peace built on stolen land. No ceasefire can legitimize apartheid and occupation. The settlements must fall, every last one. The militias must be disarmed. The land must be returned to its rightful people. Anything less is complicity in a crime that has gone on for seventy-seven years too long.

The Taliban has banned books authored by women from Afghanistan’s universities, along with subjects such as human rights, philosophy, Islamic political movements, and sexual harassment. Some 140 books by women are among at least 679 books barred for allegedly contradicting “Sharia and Taliban policies.”

A member of the Taliban c…

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If you read the Western press this morning, you may come to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to take military control over Gaza is new. But dropping 2,000-pound bombs does not rescue captives, and wiping out whole neighborhoods does not come without plans to build something in their place.

On Friday, Israel’s security cabinet approved the occupation of Gaza City, formalizing what was always the endgame of this genocide.

The plan follows a deliberate sequence: First destroy, then starve, occupy, demand demilitarization, and finally carry out full ethnic cleansing once Palestinians have no political power and capacity to resist. This is how the dream of “Greater Israel” is achieved.

But why formalize this occupation now, after 22 months of systematic slaughter? Because the crime scene must be sanitized before the world sees what remains of Gaza.

On Sunday, the Israeli army assassinated Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa by dropping a missile on a media tent near al-Shifa Hospital. Their names are now added to the long list of more than 230 Palestinian journalists and media workers that Israel has killed since October 2023.

With Israel banning all foreign media from freely accessing Gaza, Palestinian journalists have been solely responsible for covering and documenting Israeli war crimes. The assassination is a clear message to them to stop, to stay silent.

Meanwhile, foreign journalists who rode on airdrop flights to Gaza were also warned. Aerial footage they released offered glimpses of Gaza’s corpse: A patchwork of shattered concrete, ruins, and hollowed streets. It is complete desolation.

The footage shocked viewers across the world, and so the Israeli government was quick to ban filming on these flights, warning that aid drops would be halted if there were any violations.

Israel knows it cannot continue to block foreign media access to Gaza forever. The genocide will come to an end eventually; aid convoys and relief workers will be allowed in, and with them, foreign journalists with cameras.

So before that day arrives, Israel is racing to erase the evidence because once the world sees Gaza, it will no longer be able to pretend that the war was about anything other than the mass killing of Palestinians and the erasure of their history.

The occupation of Gaza City is the murderer returning to the crime scene to hide the body. The goal is not only to cover up the crimes, but to convince the world that the dead have not died and that what we see is not what it is.

The official death toll in Gaza stands at 60,000, a number that by many expert accounts is an undercount. According to estimates, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have likely been murdered.

UN experts declared on August 7, “Israel is exterminating the people of Gaza by any and all means.” There are many crimes to cover up.

We have already seen the modus operandi of the Israeli army in trying to destroy evidence in Gaza. It has buried massacred civilians in mass graves with bulldozers; it has withheld bodies of Palestinian torture victims; it has dug into the sand whole crime scenes of execution; it has planted weapons in hospitals that it has ransacked; it has lied about discovering tunnels.

All of this fits neatly with Israel’s long history of burying evidence of atrocities.

Since 1948, Israeli authorities have systematically erased their ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by building on top of the ruins of pillaged Palestinian villages and towns.

Israeli intelligence has also removed documents from archives that provide evidence of Zionist and Israeli forces committing war crimes during the Nakba of 1948.

Some of the documents that have disappeared give gruesome details about the brutality of Zionist fighters during massacres of Palestinians, like in the village of Dawaymeh, near Hebron, where hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children were killed by artillery fire or directly executed. In 1955, the settlement of Amatzia was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village.

By occupying the northern part of the Gaza Strip now, Israel will certainly resort to these same methods of erasure and falsification. It will also be able to control foreign media coverage, just as it has done until now.

The Israeli army has only allowed foreign journalists into Gaza embedded with its military units under strict conditions that transform reporters into participants in hasbara. Embedded journalists must submit all materials for military review before publication, must operate under constant observation, and cannot speak freely with Palestinians.

Journalists thus become mouthpieces for the Israeli military, parroting their justifications for wholesale destruction and propagating their lies about Palestinian civilians as “human shields” and Gaza hospitals and schools as “terror hubs”.

The full-scale occupation can also help facilitate further massacres and ethnic cleansing. Those who refuse forced displacement will be labeled “militants” to excuse their slaughter. Israel used this strategy early in the genocide, dropping leaflets warning Palestinians in northern Gaza that they will be deemed “partners in a terrorist organization” if they do not comply with “evacuation orders.”

Mass displacement is essential to the cover-up because it creates a new narrative that Palestinians are voluntarily migrating rather than being ethnically cleansed. The short-term goal is to force those willing to comply into concentration camps in the south and detach them from their homes and land.

Over time, it would become easier to expel Palestinians elsewhere and deny them the right to return. It is the same way Nakba refugees were forced to flee to Gaza and were then denied their internationally recognized right of return.

The response of the international community to Israel’s plan has been just more condemnations. Germany went as far as halting military exports that could be used in Gaza – something that should have been done 22 months ago, when Israel started indiscriminately bombing civilians.

These actions are pathetic. They do not absolve these governments of their complicity in aiding and abetting the crime of genocide; they are just another sign of their moral cowardice.

The international community must take decisive action. It must undertake military intervention, as mandated under international law, to force Israel to immediately end the violence, to allow unrestricted humanitarian aid into Gaza, and to give Palestinians the freedom they are entitled to.

International journalists must be granted immediate access to collect whatever evidence remains of Israel’s crimes before it disappears under the cover of “military operations.”

It is time the world starts believing Palestinians. For 22 months, Palestinians have said this is genocide. They have said it while stuck under the rubble, while starving, while carrying their children’s bodies. They said Israel was not defending itself but trying to erase Palestinians. They said occupation and ethnic cleansing are the goals. Israeli politicians themselves have said it.

Without urgent international action, the words “never again” will refer not to the prevention of genocide, but to the existence of Palestinian life in Gaza.

The truth so many Palestinians have died to tell must not be buried with their bodies.

In the words of Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafi: “They steal your bread, then give you a crumb of it. Then they demand your gratitude.” In Gaza, this sentiment is policy.

When thousands of Palestinians were lined up like cattle to retrieve aid under the watchful eye of Israeli snipers, the world saw the violent collapse of the illusion that humanitarian aid serves humanity rather than the empire. The US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution sites quickly became a theater of humiliation—a system designed not to feed the starved, but to manage their deaths.

Today, humanitarian aid in Gaza has become a ritual of humiliation—a performance of power disguised as compassion. A death trap masquerading as mercy.

On March 19, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said it would allow a “basic amount of food” into Gaza for “practical and diplomatic reasons”—not to relieve suffering, but to prevent famine from interfering with the ground invasion. Aid not to save lives, but aid to save optics. Netanyahu himself admitted: “Our best friends… senators I know as strong supporters of Israel—have warned they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge.”

So food was permitted—not as nourishment, but as camouflage.

The violence of hunger is not only physical; it is also psychological. Mothers wait for hours in flour lines that may never move. Children cry not only from the emptiness of their stomachs but also from watching their parents’ helplessness. What is stolen is not just food—it’s agency.

Between May 19 and 23, only 100 aid trucks entered Gaza after three months of blockade. During the ceasefire, 500–600 trucks were needed daily. At least 300 people—mostly children—have already died from hunger. Out of the 91 attempts the UN made to deliver aid to the besieged north Gaza between October 6 and November 25, 2024, 82 were denied and nine impeded.

Nearly 71,000 children under the age of 5 in Gaza are at risk of acute malnourishment, with at least 57 children already dead due to hunger since the blockade began in March. And still, this is called “complex.” The UN special rapporteur on the right to food said Israel’s deliberate starvation campaign is set to kill more than bombs.

In a video, Samir, a renowned calligrapher and teacher, is seen crying out of hunger, begging for anyone, anything, to stop his suffering. The elderly man cried, “I’m dying, I’m dying. I die at night”. He hadn’t eaten in three days. All he wanted was bread.

A young Palestinian boy, Ahmad, lost her mother after she was shot and killed while waiting to get food for her eight children. “She just wanted to feed her family. Just a piece of bread, yet the occupation struck her… The Americans tell us: ‘Leave the safety to us. We didn’t even get one minute of safety!”

At least 163 hungry people have been killed and 1,495 wounded while trying to get food at the new U.S.-backed aid distribution sites.

This is the true function of “aid” in Gaza: not to relieve, but to subdue. To break. And to even kill. It is a particular kind of violence to make a people beg the world for crumbs. Even the act of receiving aid—scrambling after parachuted packages under the eye of a drone and snipers—is staged to degrade.

Dignity is not abstract in Palestinian culture. It is carrying your son’s body without asking for pity. It is cooking for strangers when your own cupboard is bare. It is refusing to depend on the same regime that bombs your farmland and blocks your medicine. And that dignity is what is under attack.

This is not new. From the Nakba in 1948 to now, Palestinians have been forced to rely on aid as a form of control. A self-sufficient people were turned into refugees. Their land stolen. Their economy shattered. Their agency stripped away.

A dignity-centered approach to aid asks: not just how do we keep Palestinians alive—but how do we affirm their humanity? How do we restore autonomy, the right to flourish? Aid must not only feed—it must respect. That means recognizing Palestinians’ legal right to self-determination, and taking concrete action—including sanctions and military intervention—to stop this genocide.

So let’s be clear: Gaza is not dying from lack of aid. It is dying because the international community has normalized indignity for Palestinians. Because aid has been reduced to crumbs scattered across a ravaged landscape while the bombs keep falling. Aid is not a substitute for rights. It is not a replacement for self-determination. You do not cure genocide by killing survivors on quarter-full stomachs.

To live with dignity is not a luxury, but the people of Gaza are being told that even that is too much to ask.

A nationwide truck drivers’ strike in Iran has entered its second week, disrupting major transport routes and gaining broad public support. Despite arrests and intimidation by authorities, the strike has spread to at least 155 cities, according to Iran’s National Union of Truckers and Drivers, making it one of the country’s largest labor protests in recent years.

Videos show trucks parked along major roads as drivers protest against mounting economic pressures, including low fares, rising insurance costs, low freight rates, and a proposed fuel price hike.

“Along with making various promises, authorities still continue to issue threats: ‘If you do not proceed with loading cargo, you will be deprived of your legal rights.’ And they arrest honorable drivers, labeling them as ‘disruptors of public security.’ Our response is one word: Resistance — until we achieve our most basic human and legal rights!,” the country’s National Union of Truckers and Drivers said in a statement.

The drivers began striking on May 22, 2025, in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, one of Iran’s most critical transportation and shipping hubs, which was rocked by a massive explosion in April.

Their strikes are gaining growing support from the public, Nobel laureates, and a broad range of sectors, including teachers’ unions, student organizations, and civil society groups. Many of Iran’s previous rounds of anti-government protests started out as economic protests, including demonstrations in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

At least 20 truck drivers and supporters have been arrested thus far amid the ongoing wave of nationwide strikes. The National Union of Truckers and Drivers has demanded the release of their colleagues and reported violent police tactics against striking drivers in some cities.

Among those arrested is Shahab Darabi, a Kurdish truck driver and blogger, who was violently arrested by security agents on May 24 after participating in the strike and expressing support for it online. He was taken from his home to an undisclosed location, and there is no verified information available regarding his current condition or whereabouts. He was previously detained in February after criticizing Iran’s elections online.

Another individual, Farzad Rezaei, a Kurdish truck driver from Zarineh town in Kurdistan Province, was arrested by security forces on May 29 for supporting the nationwide strike. Detained at his home, he was taken to an undisclosed location, and his current condition remains unknown.

“Instead of responding to legitimate demands, the government has chosen a path of repression and intimidation. We call for the immediate and unconditional release of our detained colleagues,” the National Union of Truckers and Drivers said.

Dr. Laila Soueif, 69, is a mathematician, a university professor, and the mother of one of Egypt’s most prominent activists, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has spent most of the past 14 years behind bars since taking part in Egypt’s 2011 pro-democracy uprising.

She has not eaten any food since September 29, 2024, when her son was supposed to be released after completing his unjust sentence. She is calling on the U.K. government to help release her son, who has both British and Egyptian citizenship.

Dr. Soueif was admitted to London's St Thomas' Hospital on Thursday, May 29, with dangerously low blood sugar levels. She has lost about 42% of her body weight since September 2024.

“It's a miracle mom is alive. At some point [last night] the blood sugar machine was not reading, but my mum is still conscious. She's holding on,” said Sanaa Seif, daughter of Dr. Laila Soueif.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah, 42, is a British-Egyptian writer, software developer, and activist who played a leading role in Egypt’s 2011 revolution. He has spent the majority of the past decade in prison and was most recently re-arrested in 2019 amid a widespread crackdown and sentenced to five years in prison on bogus charges of “spreading false news” for sharing a Facebook post about torture in Egyptian prisons.

Alaa has been subjected to beatings, torture, and other ill-treatment. According to Amnesty, for the past five years, prison authorities have denied him fresh air, sunlight, and access to his lawyer and consular visits.

Authorities refused to release him on September 29, 2024, when his unjust five-year sentence was up, as they did not count the two years he had spent in pre-trial detention, violating international legal norms and Egypt’s criminal law.

In March, after a call between the U.K.’s prime minister and Egypt’s dictator, she shifted to a partial hunger strike. On May 20, she resumed a full hunger strike, saying: “Nothing has changed, nothing is happening.” Her son Alaa has been on his own hunger strike since his mother’s admission to hospital in February.

Since the 2013 military coup, Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s rule has been marked by severe repression and widespread human rights abuses.

Egypt now holds the highest number of political prisoners in the region, with over 60,000 political prisoners, many of whom are confined to filthy cells, tortured routinely, and denied life-saving medication.

Thousands face enforced disappearances, prolonged detention without trial, mass death sentences, and prosecution in military courts. To manage this influx, the Egyptian government has built dozens of new prisons and jails in the past decade.

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A massive explosion tore through Iran’s largest commercial port on Saturday, killing at least 70 people and wounding over 1200 others, state media reported.

The number of fatalities has been rising, and the head of Iran’s Red Crescent said that more bodies are expected to be found among the containers and that DNA testing is needed to identify some victims.

The blast occurred at Shaheed Rajaei Port in southern Iran’s Bandar Abbas city near the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil output passes. It was felt by residents up to 50 km away, shattering their windows and cars.

“Someone is sitting near the port with a handheld loudspeaker, reading out the names of the wounded. It’s apocalyptic. People are angry and worried,” an eyewitness told IranWire.

Fires continued to break out in different parts of the affected area, with helicopters and firefighters working to extinguish them until Monday. The explosion occurred as Iranian and U.S. negotiators met in Oman for a third round of talks over Tehran’s nuclear program.

“I personally knew two people who went missing. One body has been identified; the other is still missing. Most of the missing were contract workers not officially listed anywhere,” said Marzieh, a local resident.

DNA Testing Needed to Identify Victims

Authorities have said that DNA testing is required to identify some victims of the port explosion due to the severity of injuries.

Hundreds of people are searching for missing loved ones, posting appeals on social media, and checking hospitals in hopes of finding them.

“Several honorable doctors and nurses are posting the names of the injured admitted to their hospitals on their Instagram accounts and profiles. Even this simple information isn’t being provided by the government. The burden falls on the shoulders of grieving and afflicted people,” a local resident told IranWire.

Authorities said some victims have been identified through “recognizable faces and available photos,” but families of missing victims have been urged to contact the forensic medicine office.

“In those terrifying moments, we had to pay for X-rays and bandaging ourselves, despite the urgent situation and lack of companions. Later, the hospital became so crowded that they placed another patient on my bed,” said Hooman, who was a kilometer from the blast and was hurled across a warehouse, suffering glass injuries that required stitches. Heavy traffic delayed his arrival at the hospital, where he was shocked that patients were charged despite the chaos.

On Sunday, authorities ordered all schools and offices in the area to close and urged residents to stay indoors. The Ministry of Health warned of dangerously high levels of ammonia, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide throughout the city.

The families of missing victims are enduring painful and uncertain days as they look for their loved ones.

“My partner works at the Persian Gulf oil refinery. Today, they told everyone they have to come to work, and they don’t care at all about people’s lives. They’re giving no explanation to the public about the air pollution or the need to wear masks. I was outside for just five minutes, and my throat started burning,” a user posted on social media.

Residents reported feeling the impact of the blast up to 50km (31 miles) away. It blew out windows and roofs of nearby buildings and destroyed cars.

During a mourning ceremony in Bandar Abbas on Monday, some families of the port explosion victims expressed anger over officials' lack of transparency. A woman was filmed in a video calling on officials to resign: “Put yourself in the place of that child waiting for their parents. Incompetent officials, resign! Resign!”

What caused the explosion?

Chemicals at the port are suspected of fueling the explosion, but the exact cause has not been confirmed yet.

A spokesperson for the country’s crisis management organization appeared on Saturday to blame the explosion on poor storage of chemicals in containers, adding that the Director General of Crisis Management had earlier warned of potential danger.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported “a person with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that what exploded was sodium perchlorate, a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.”

The Associated Press, citing British security firm Ambrey, reported “the port received missile fuel chemical in March. It was part of a shipment of ammonium perchlorate from China by two vessels to Iran, first reported in January by the Financial Times.”

In response, Iran’s Defense Ministry spokesman on Sunday denied that missile fuel chemical had been imported through the port. However, ship-tracking data reviewed by the AP confirmed that a vessel suspected of transporting the chemical was present in the area in March.

On Monday, a committee investigating the explosions stated that “negligence in observing safety protocols and passive defense measures has been confirmed.” Adding that “determining the definitive cause of the incident requires a thorough and comprehensive investigation.”

Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni told state television on Monday that “culprits have been identified and summoned,” without providing details.

Iran’s ISNA news agency deleted a report just hours after publishing it, which quoted Iran’s Customs Administration as saying the cargo that caused the deadly port explosion and massive fire had not been under customs control and lacked a declaration and registration number. ISNA has not explained the deletion.

Suppressing Information?

Tehran’s Prosecutor’s Office has filed criminal charges against several media outlets and social media activists over their reporting of the port explosion. Authorities warned others against publishing content that could “disturb the psychological security of society.”

The crackdown follows growing public frustration over limited official information after the blast.

Iran has a long history of restricting press freedom, especially during times of crisis. Authorities frequently target independent journalists and outlets for reporting that contradict or challenge official narratives.

“The Shahid Rajaee Port is as large as a city, and more than 7,000 workers are employed there. Unfortunately, 99% of the victims were workers. We had repeatedly warned before that more attention must be paid to the safety of port workers, but our voices were not heard.

“There are workers here who don’t even have proper shoes or safety helmets; the work environment is unsafe. It’s heartbreaking to see such incidents happen — why must workers who are just struggling to earn a piece of bread be sacrificed like this? What crime have they committed?” said Arsalan Heydari, labor activist and head of the Bandar Abbas Workers' Retirees Association.

Workers Trapped in Cycle of Negligence & Impunity

Iran has a longstanding pattern of industrial disasters followed by hollow investigations and a lack of meaningful reforms. Despite recurring tragedies, official responses are typically superficial—marked by high-profile visits, vague statements, and promises of inquiries that rarely result in accountability or improved safety for workers.

Authorities frequently suppress information, issue conflicting explanations, and discourage independent oversight. This enables preventable disasters to recur, often with devastating human and environmental consequences.

Between May 2024 and April 2025, at least 2,079 workers reportedly lost their lives, and over 16,000 others were injured in Iran due to inadequate safety standards and the state’s systematic failure to protect laborers.

Independent unions aren’t recognized in Iran, and for decades, labor rights activists have faced imprisonment, surveillance, and abuse simply for demanding safer workplaces and basic labor protections.

Hospitals in Bandar Abbas urgently called for blood donations, prompting many citizens to line up at health centers. A widely shared photo showed Mahmonir Molaei-Rad, mother of Kian Pirfalak, the 9-year-old killed by security forces during the Women, Life, Freedom protests, donating blood.

Syrian photojournalist Anas Alkharboutli, who worked for the German Press Agency (DPA), was killed on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, in an Assad regime strike near Hama. The attack severed both his legs, and he succumbed to his injuries on the way to the hospital.

Ali Haj Suleiman, a freelance journalist who was with Alkharboutli during the strike, said a low-flying plane circled overhead before targeting a group of journalists.

The journalists, who were reporting on the surprise offensive by anti-Assad opposition fighters, were filming the warplane heading south, but according to Suleiman, it turned around and launched missiles at their location. Despite wearing vests labeled “Press,” they seemed to be deliberately targeted, with no other vehicles nearby.

Alkharboutli, 32, was studying energy engineering when he decided to pause his studies in 2011, when security forces arrested fellow students during Syria’s uprising. He then turned to photojournalism to document the brutal siege and attacks on his hometown in Eastern Ghouta by Assad regime forces and allies.

“When you are displaced, you are not necessarily aware of everything that’s going on. The most difficult moment is when you get on the bus and realize you’re leaving home, where you grew up and spent your whole life,” Alkharboutli said in 2021 about being forcibly displaced during the Assad regime’s assault on his hometown.

Wounded by shrapnel in 2016 while covering Assad forces’ attacks on his hometown, he also suffered personal losses: one brother was killed in an airstrike, another was imprisoned by the regime, and his parents were forced to flee Syria over a decade ago.

In 2020, Alkharboutli won the Young Reporter Trophy at France’s Bayeux Award for war reporting and the sports category at the 2021 Sony World Photography Awards.

These are some of the photographs that Alkharboutli captured throughout his career.

Ayman Moussa, an Egyptian student and athlete, was arrested at the age of 19 during a protest against the military coup in Egypt on October 6, 2013. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in an unfair mass trial.

Some political prisoners involved in the same case, particularly students, received presidential pardons; however, Ayman remains unjustly imprisoned.

“I’m sitting in my cell on the ground – where I sleep – feeling like a little rat trapped in a cage in a lab, waiting to be tested on in an experiment where I have no idea what results it’s going to produce… What it’s going to turn me into!! I’m tired of losing a gift every birthday,” Ayman wrote in a letter from his cell on his 23rd birthday in 2016.

Ayman lost his entire twenties in prison, missing graduations, family gatherings, and birthdays. Most tragically, he lost his father, who died from a heart attack. Despite his family’s pleas, Egyptian authorities denied him the opportunity to attend his father’s funeral

Abdelrahman ElGendy, an Egyptian writer who was arrested at just 17, met Mousa in prison, and the two became close friends. ElGendy spent six years and three months in some of several prisons until he was released on January 12, 2020. His friend Ayman continues to be unjustly held behind bars.

“One of the few times I saw him shed a tear was in 2016, when he saw photos his mother had smuggled in from what would have been his graduation day ... His entire class, every last student, wore T-shirts with Ayman’s face printed on them over their gowns. Ayman’s mum told him how they had stomped on the stage, chanting his name, and thunder-clapped,” said ElGendy.

Since the 2013 military coup, Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s rule has been marked by severe repression and widespread human rights abuses.

Egypt is estimated to hold over 60,000 political prisoners. Thousands are subjected to enforced disappearances, prolonged detentions without trial, mass death sentences, and prosecution in military courts without due process. To manage this influx, the government has built several new prisons and jails.

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Today marks two years since Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was killed on September 16, 2022, after being fatally beaten by the guidance patrol or “morality police,” who are responsible for enforcing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s mandatory dress codes.

Not a single official has been held accountable for Jina’s killing or the brutality that followed. Over 500 protesters were killed, thousands injured, and several unlawfully executed.

Jina had been arrested on September 13 by “morality” officers for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”. She was taken to a detention center in Tehran to be “convinced and educated.”

She was transferred to the hospital a few hours after her arrest with symptoms similar to a concussion. According to her family and doctors, she was already brain-dead when admitted. Jina’s family was only allowed to see her body after it had been wrapped for burial, when only her feet and face were visible.

“After a few [female detainees] were released, we suddenly heard screams. All of us were banging on the doors. All of a sudden the agents rushed out of the building and attacked us with batons and tear gas. My whole body is black and blue, and my eyes have been burning since last night. Five minutes later, an ambulance left the building,” Jina’s brother, Ashkan Amini, said about the moments after Jina was taken into custody

Jina was originally from Saqqez, Kurdistan province in Iran. Her family called her by her Kurdish name, Jina, meaning “life,” but since the Iranian state only allows names of Persian or Islamic origin, she was officially registered as Mahsa Amini.

“She wanted to study microbiology. She wanted to be a doctor - that was a dream that never came true. Her mother is so sick; we all miss her,” said Amjad Amini, father of Jina Mahsa Amini.

Jina and her family had traveled to Iran’s capital, Tehran, to visit relatives as her last holiday trip before starting university. When “morality police” agents forcefully detained Jina, her brother Ashkan tried to intervene, but he was physically harassed too.

“My son was with her. Some witnesses told my son she was beaten in the van and in the police station. My son begged them not to take her, but he was beaten too, his clothes were ripped off. I asked them to show me the body cameras of the security officers; they told me the cameras were out of battery,” said Amjad Amini.

The “Woman, Life, Freedom” revolution is ongoing

Jina’s killing in custody ignited an anti-government movement across Iran and around the world against the Islamic Republic’s repressive rule. The movement became known as “Woman, Life, Freedom”—a slogan with roots in Kurdish feminist thought and liberation struggles.

Two years on, Iranians continue to resist the government through daily peaceful acts of disobedience despite the risks of imprisonment and violence.

UN: Islamic Republic authorities committed crimes against humanity

Iranian authorities used brutal force, including live ammunition, metal pellets, and tear gas, against largely peaceful protesters. Over 500 people were killed, including children; hundreds were intentionally blinded; over 19,400 were arbitrarily detained and tortured; and ten protesters were executed.

The UN’s Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran has documented that these atrocities rose to the level of crimes against humanity.

This war on women must end now.

Women and girls living under the Islamic Republic of Iran endure an extreme, systematic, and structural war against them. This was designed to dehumanize and repress them for the purpose of entrenching and maintaining power.

However, they courageously continue the fight against being treated as second-class citizens under laws that dictate their bodily autonomy, economic and educational access, and other basic rights and dignity. This treatment has a name: Gender Apartheid.

The Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code is the most visible manifestation of its broader systemic and institutionalized gender apartheid. Two years on, Iranians continue to resist the government through daily peaceful acts of disobedience despite the risks of imprisonment and violence.

Syrian activist Yahia Hakoum wrote on X that after nearly a decade, his family was finally informed that his brother Mahmoud had been executed on the day of his arrest by the Syrian regime in 2015. For years, the family remained in the dark about his fate, uncertain if he was alive or dead.

Since the Syrian revolution started in March 2011, over 135,000 people have been detained and/or forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Of those, around 112,000 people remain forcibly disappeared, meaning their loved ones have no information about their fate or whereabouts.

Yahia Hakoum wrote on June 4, 2024:

“In 2015, my brother Mahmoud was arrested along with several young people from my village. At that time, a video was circulating, accusing Mahmoud and his friends of being terrorists. A few months later, we learned, after paying a lot of money, that Mahmoud had been killed.

However, we had no proof of this claim. In 2016, we tried to obtain documents for Mahmoud as well as for my brothers Zakaria and Youssef. But at that moment, the civil status official informed us that they were erased, meaning there was no trace of them.

Thus, for years, we were unsure of their fate. We accepted that they were dead, although without any proof that they were still alive.

Two weeks ago, an intelligence officer came to our village to ask for news and information about Mahmoud, what is called in Syria a police or security study.

When people tried to understand why this security study was being conducted for someone who had disappeared for nine years, the security officer replied that an amnesty was soon to be proclaimed and that they were conducting security studies on all persons likely to be released.

However, yesterday, my sister was called and informed that Mahmoud was dead, just as other families in the village were informed that their children were dead on April 8, 2015, the very day of their arrest.

This is Mahmoud’s story. We relive the pain of his death for the second, even third, time. Each time, we are given hope, then that hope disappears. We relive hope, then it disappears again.

Yesterday, we received official confirmation and were asked to complete all the steps to declare him dead in the civil status. This morning, my sister discovered that this had already been done. They had already written on the papers that he was dead without even informing us. This is the story of my family, and of thousands of Syrians who still live in uncertainty about the fate of their loved ones.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi died on Sunday, May 19, along with his foreign minister and other government officials, in a helicopter crash in a mountainous area in northwest Iran.

Instead of being investigated and prosecuted for crimes against humanity that he committed throughout his career, Raisi was declared president in June 2021 in a presidential election that was neither free nor fair, according to Amnesty.

Throughout his presidency, Raisi persisted in his brutal crackdown on political opposition and human rights—a direct result of systematic impunity in Iran.

“While a fatal helicopter ride means Iranians will not physically see Raisi in a defendant’s dock, his name will no doubt appear in future litigation as the architect and enforcer of policies that perpetrated the crimes against humanity of murder, rape, torture, and persecution,” said human rights lawyer Gissou Nia.

“The Butcher of Tehran”: Raisi’s Involvement in the 1988 Prison Massacres

Raisi had a long career in the government’s judiciary. In 1988, as the Deputy Prosecutor General of Tehran, he was appointed to a four-person committee known as the “Death Commission” by then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini.

The “Death Commission” ordered the execution of thousands of political prisoners between late July and early September 1988. At least 4,500-5,000 political prisoners were summarily and extrajudicially executed after unfair, arbitrary trials that lasted just a few minutes. The victims’ bodies were buried in unmarked individual or mass graves, and many families were never informed.

For his role as a judge on the “death commission,” Riasi was nicknamed the “Butcher of Tehran.”

Iraj Mesdaghi, a survivor of the 1988 Prison Massacres now living in exile in Sweden, recalls Raisi visiting prisons to watch the executions.

Mesdaghi spent 10 days in the “death corridor” of Gohardasht prison and was released after promising to end all of his political activities.

“Whenever they went to execute a group of 10 or 12 or 15 prisoners, all the members of the Death Commission, including Raisi, went to the amphitheater and witnessed. And then they made a party. They came to our cells with cake and cookies and asked us to join their celebration,” said Mesdaghi.

Raisi's involvement in the crackdown on the 2009 protests

Raisi served as the First Deputy Head of the Judiciary from 2004 to 2014, playing a direct role in the crackdown on the 2009 nationwide protests following a disputed presidential election. He championed a campaign that included the arrest, torture, and execution of protesters.

He is associated particularly with the execution of two political prisoners, Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Alizamani.

Head of the Judiciary during the 2019 Bloody November Protests

As Head of the Judiciary, Raisi oversaw a brutal crackdown on human rights during the 2019 “Bloody November” protests, initially sparked by a sudden fuel price increase.

From November 15 to 19, the government imposed a near-total internet shutdown and carried out one of the most brutal crackdowns against protesters. According to Reuters, around 1,500 people were killed.

Under Raisi’s leadership, the judiciary granted impunity to government officials and security forces responsible for the unlawful killing, mass arrest, enforced disappearance, and torture of hundreds of protesters.

During his two-year tenure as Head of the Judiciary, Raisi oversaw the execution of over 400 individuals, including political prisoners such as Navid Afkari, Mostafa Salehi, Ruhollah Zam, and Hedayat Abdollahpour.

The judiciary, collaborating closely with intelligence services, plays a key role in quelling dissent and prosecuting dissidents, such as students, street protesters, and activists.

“As the Head of the Judiciary since March 2019, Raisi was in charge of an institution responsible for many of the long-established patterns of rights violations in Iran, including the use of torture to obtain coerced confessions, prosecution of peaceful dissidents in grossly unfair trials, and lack of respect for due process rights,” said Human Rights Watch.

Brutal Crackdown on “Woman, Life, Freedom”

During Raisi’s presidency, his government brutally cracked down on the massive “Woman, Life, Freedom” anti-government protests, which erupted after 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini was killed in police custody in September 2022 following her arrest for allegedly wearing an “improper” hijab.

Security forces killed at least 551 protesters, including 68 children. Authorities detained more than 20,000 people, including journalists and celebrities. Several protesters were sentenced to death, and at least nine were executed after sham, unfair trials involving torture.

In March 2024, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran determined that authorities committed crimes against humanity in the 2022-2023 anti-government protests.

Suppression of Women’s Rights

Raisi’s presidency is marked by a harsh crackdown on women’s rights and a commitment to upholding gender apartheid—a deeply institutionalized system of discrimination and oppression against women since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

A few months before Amini’s killing, Raisi signed a decree in August 2022 enhancing punishments for women who violate mandatory veiling laws.

Raisi’s government also introduced and advanced the “Hijab and Chastity Bill” in Parliament, which is now in its final stages of becoming law. This bill intensifies punishments and surveillance for women defying mandatory Islamic dress codes and also targets business owners and employers who serve these women.

Dina Ghalibaf, an Iranian journalist and student, was arrested on Tuesday, April 16, after publicly sharing her experience of being sexually assaulted by the “morality police.”

On Monday, she posted on social media about her detention by the so-called “morality” police at a metro station in Tehran. The following day, security forces raided Dina’s residence and detained her, with her social media accounts subsequently suspended.

"Yesterday at the Sadeghiyeh metro station, when I insisted that I have the right to use the subway since I pay taxes, I was violently taken to a room and subjected to electric shocks. I was handcuffed, and one of the officers sexually assaulted me,” Ghalibaf wrote on X.

“The police officer was speaking in the most disgusting language and mocking Jina [Mahsa Amini] and women. While I was handcuffed, he put his hand on my face and started caressing it,” she wrote.

The so-called “morality police” officers are responsible for enforcing discriminatory dress code regulations in Iran. They are frequently reported for physically harassing women, resorting to slapping, beating with batons, and forcing them into police vans, all because of how they are dressed.

Last year, Dina was reportedly summoned by her university's disciplinary committee for participating in a student protest against the execution of protesters in Iran.

“In 2019, I started studying political science at Shahid Beheshti University, but that university was not the home I thought it would be. I was banned from continuing my studies by the order of the disciplinary committee, or better to say, the dictatorial government,” Dina wrote on her LinkedIn account.