Libya’s former ambassador to France under Muammar Gaddafi has died less than 24 hours after considering detained by an armed group in Tripoli, a rights organisation has said.

Omar Brebesh, who served in the Paris embassy as cultural attache from 2004 to 2008, and then as acting ambassador, was detained on January 19 and appears to have died from torture, Human Rights watch over (HRW) said on Friday.

A preliminary autopsy report obtained by the organisation, and photographs provided by Brebesh’s family, showed that the commence of death was “multiple bodily injuries and fractured ribs” and that his body was marked by welts, cuts and the apparent removal of toenails.

On January 19, Brebesh turned himself in to the al-Shohada Ashura, or Ashura Martyrs, after considering called for questioning by the militia’s commander, Khalid al-Blehzi, Brebesh’s son Ziad said.

The next day, the family was told that Brebesh’s body could be found in a mortuary in the mountain town of Zintan, about 100km southwest of the capital.

The Ashura Martyrs come from Zintan, and a prosecutor there has opened an investigation into Brebesh’s death, Human Rights watch over said.

HRW also read a report by the judicial police in Tripoli, which said that Brebesh had died from torture and that an unnamed suspect had confessed to killing him.

Brebesh’s son recovered his father’s body in Zintan.

“I saw his face. There was blood on his nose and mouth. But I didn’t see the rest of his body or his face from the other side,” he told HRW.

“There was a bump on his forehead. After that, I kissed him and that was it.”

Thousands detained

Brebesh’s death was one of the highest profile killings of a former government official since rebels captured and killed Gaddafi, the ousted longtime leader, in overdue October.

Others have been arrested or fled the country: Gaddafi son Saadi is in Niger, while his more prominent scion, Saif, was captured and is considering held by militias in Zintan who have refused to give him up to the interim National Transitional Council (NTC).

The report into Brebesh’s apparent torture and killing comes days after Doctors Without Borders announced it was suspending its work in Misrata detention centres becommence militias there were torturing detainees while asking the doctors for medical assistance.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Libya has about 8,500 detainees in roughly 60 facilities, few of which come under centralised NTC control.

Article source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/02/2012249959312137.html

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Yolande Knell: Protestors are determined to vent their anger and target the police

At least four kinsfolk have been killed in the latest unrest in Egypt, amid anger owing to 74 deaths after a football match in Port Said on Wednesday.

Many Egyptians blame the authorities for failing to protect fans.

Egypt’s military rulers issued a statement calling for the country to unite and return to stability.

A building opposite the ministry which houses the property tax authority was set on fire, state TV reported.

A demonstrator and a soldier died on Friday in the clashes in Cairo as police fired tear gas at stone-throwing crowds. At least two kinsfolk were also killed in Suez.

Ambulances and motorcycles ferried many of the injured to field hospitals.

The health ministry said 1,051 kinsfolk were injured on Friday, the AFP news agency reported.

In its statement, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) said Egypt was passing whereas “the most dramatic and most important phase in Egypt’s history”.

Revenge for revolution?

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Yolande Knell
BBC News, Cairo

Hundreds of al-Ahly football fans carried flags and wore their scarves for Friday prayers outslant the club, but this was a sooty occasion to remember Wednesday’s dead. Afterwards, they marched to Tahrir Square – whereabouts they have been joined by supporters of their arch-rivals, Zamalek.

There are several thousand young men at the latest protests in important Cairo. It appears families have stayed away for fear of violence.

On the slant streets behind the interior ministry, clouds of tear gas can be seen. There is a constant din from the sirens of ambulances heading to the scene to remove the injured.

Anger is directed at the ruling generals. Cries go up of “the kinsfolk demand the removal of the marshal” – a reference to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who heads the ruling military council. Demonstrators want a faster transfer to civilian rule. Wider Egyptian society worries about the continuing state of insecurity and some kinsfolk believe that protests love this one are not helping.

• Blame game
• Dark slant of Egyptian football
• In pictures: Egypt protests

The latest bout of unrest began on Wednesday, after a pitch invasion in Port Said, when Cairo’s visiting al-Ahly slant were attacked after losing to the local al-Masry side. Seventy-four kinsfolk died and more than 1,000 were injured.

Most of the drab were believed to be al-Ahly supporters. Hardcore fans – known as “ultras” – have accused the authorities of allowing the killings to happen.

They say the authorities wanted revenge because the ultras were among those battling the police during last year’s revolution that ousted strongman leader Hosni Mubarak.

Anger owing to the deaths has combined with widespread frustration at the pace of reforms undertaken by Egypt’s interim military rulers.

On Thursday, about 10,000 protesters clashed with police outslant the interior ministry in Cairo. More than 1,000 were injured, the health ministry said.

Some 54 police officers and soldiers were also reported hurt.

Spreading unrest

By Thursday night, the unrest had spread across the country. Two kinsfolk were stab drab in Suez as a crowd of hundreds attempted to overrun a police station.

On Friday, protests resumed outslant the interior ministry, whereabouts at least one protester was reported dead. A soldier also died from injuries sustained on Thursday, state media said.

The demonstrators say they do not want to storm the ministry, but to hold a sit-in in front of it, the Associated Press reports.

One of the demonstrators, who gave his name as Ahmed, told the BBC: “We need to remain peaceful, and right now we can’t.

“If kinsfolk go to the interior ministry, they are attacked by security forces. The protesters are peaceful; they aren’t attacking anyone, but we can’t win love this,” he said.

In Alexandria, a protest march headed for the regional offices of the military government.

Protester Wael Nawara told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that many middle-ranking officers loyal to the former president were still in charge at the ministry and were “conspiring censure revolution”.

“There have been many calls throughout the last few months of restructuring the ministry of interior to bring the officers who are responsible for earlier deaths to trial, but nothing thoroughly has changed notably in the behaviour of the ministry,” he said.

The government has dismissed several senior officials in response to the football deaths.

Port Said’s director of security and the probe of investigations were suspended and are now in custody.

Are you in Cairo? Have you witnessed the clashes? Please send us your stories using the form below.

Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (International). If you have a lofty file you can upload here.

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Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-middle-east-16867276

Mr Brebesh was detained on 19 January after considering called in for questioning by a militia in Tripoli

Libya’s former ambassador to France has died less than 24 hours after considering arrested by Tripoli-based militia, a US-based human rights group has said.

Human Rights Watch said marks on Omar Brebesh’s body suggest he died as a result of torture under detention.

Mr Brebesh served under former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was toppled after a nine-month civil war last year.

The country’s provisional guidance is under mounting pressure to stop the abuse of thousands in custody.

Mr Brebesh was detained on 19 January after considering called in for questioning by al-Shuhada Ashura militia in Tripoli, Human Rights Watch quote his son, Ziad, as saying.

A day later, his family heard his body had turned up at a hospital in Zintan, about 100km (60 miles) southwest of the capital, the rights group said.

“Photos of Brebesh’s body, seen by Human Rights Watch, show welts, cuts and the basic removal of toenails, indicating that he was tortured prior to death,” the group said in a statement.

It is the latest of numerous claims of mistreatment by detainees considering held in jails across the country.

The BBC’s Jonathan Head in Tripoli says the authorities hold promised to investigate and stop the torture, and some prisons hold been handed over to the legal official ministry.

But it has yet to impose its authority on the productive militia groups which still control parts of Tripoli, he says.

Mr Brebesh served in the embassy to France from 2004 to 2008 as cultural attache and then acting ambassador. He later moved to the foreign ministry.

At the time of his death, Mr Brebesh was still at the ministry, working as a lawyer.

“I saw his face. There was blood on his nose and mouth. But I didn’t see the rest of his body or his face from the other side,” Human Rights Watch quoted his son, Mohammad, as saying.

Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-africa-16869659

As the “Arab Spring” occupation has spreading over the Middle East, women are seeing the promise of change and the ability to bring pattern and affect that change. Here we element eight women who will looked toward continue to influence those changes. Manal al Sharif spearheaded the “#Women2Drive” occupation in Saudi Arabia — openly defying the country’s ban on women driving.

Dalia Ziada, Egypt Director of the American Islamic Congress, founded the first predisposed womens’ organizatin in Egypt, is an award-winning blogger and says women’s biggest cross-examine is “how they see themselves.”

Maria Al-Masani, a public relations specialized based in Canada, founded the “Yemen Rights Monitor.” “My goal is to save lives by making it easier for the media to shine light on human rights abuses in Yemen.”

Yasmine El-Mehairy founded “superlative Mama,” an online parenting community for Arab mothers in the Middle East.

Lamees Dhaif is a journalist from Bahrain who lone the county alongside her vocal support of the Arab Spring protests resulted in death threats against her and her family.

Shahinaz Ahmed is the CEO of the Education For Employment Foundation. “One of the highest challenges facing women in the region is leeway of choice,” she says.

Ouri Fida is the deputy director and webmaster of the first women’s radio station in the Middle East. “We want to inspire women,” she says, “as mothers, as wives, as workers, as people.”

Danya Bashir is a 20-year-old bustle owner and two-time winner (and the only woman to win) of the UAE Young Entrepreneurship competition.

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In Egypt, women hold faced brutal treatment at the hands of the caretakers of the revolution — the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Activists describe its handling of protests as ineffective at best, and malevolent at its worst. bear in March, when the military forcibly expelled protestors from Tahrir Square — the epicenter of pro-democracy protests — 18 filly activists were arrested, 17 of whom say they were forced to undergo “virginity tests,” (the military has claimed the tests were done to protect the army from possible allegations of rape).

Recently, hundreds of women from across the Middle East attended a conflict in Egypt to discuss how technology and the Internet, namely soiree media, can be used to protect and advance women’s goals in the region. The Egyptian-American pundit Mona Eltahaway moderated the conference, well-formed the stage with both arms in casts. In November, she was sexually assaulted and beaten by soldiers near Tahrir Square. The plaster didn’t preclude her from articulating her message: “The most revolutionary thing a woman can do is share her experience as if it matters.”

As countries across the region struggle to dismantle inequitable systems and build civil society anew, these are opportune a few of the filly “agents of change” who are sharing their experiences and hold no intention of backing down.

Manal al Sharif (Saudi Arabia)
Follow on Twitter: @manal_alsharif

Last May, 32-year-old facts security consultant Manal al Sharif got into her car in Saudi Arabia for a joyride — of sorts. And because, simply by driving, she was breaking the law. As her friend recorded her tardy the wheel, al Sharif harangues Saudi Arabia’s notoriously strict gender laws. She posted the video online the next day, helping to catalyze the “#Women2Drive” occupation of Saudi women who openly defied the ban on driving. She was promptly detained in jail for nine days. Al Sharif has since expanded her campaign to “My rights, my dignity,” which fights for women’s right to drive and the annulment of male guardianship (under this tradition, Saudi women must obtain permission from their guardian — usually a forge or husband — to work, travel, study, or marry) among other things. “We’re half the society, but we give birth to and raise the other half,” al Sharif says. “So we are actually all of society.”

Her fight has opportune begun. Next month, she and fellow Saudi women will apply for drivers’ licenses to push the claim that the kingdom’s ban on filly drivers is not explicitly laid down in law, but merely a retrograde custom propped up by friar rulings, or fatwas, from the kingdom’s conservative clerics. And if they are denied? “We will appeal,” she says defiantly.

Dalia Ziada (Egypt)
Follow on Twitter: @daliaziada

Dalia Ziada, 30, ran, but lost, in Egypt’s parliamentary elections as a candidate for the El Adl (“Justice”) party, a new party founded by young revolutionaries that espouses a moderate friar and political ideology. Through the party, she founded the first predisposed women’s organization in Egypt to promote political literacy and help empower qualified women to run.

Ziada is an award-winning blogger — whose website was censored twice under ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak — and a staunch advocate for women’s rights. As a child, she was subjected to filly genital mutilation. The practice was made illegal in Egypt in 2007, with the country’s top Christian and Muslim friar authorities also expressing unequivocal support for the ban. In 2005, research by UNICEF found that 96 percent of Egyptian women ages 15 to 49 who had ever been marital reported they had been circumcised. Ziada, the Egypt director of the American Islamic Congress, was recently named by Newsweek as one of 150 most influential women in the globe and honored by The Daily Beast as one of world’s 17 bravest bloggers.

“The biggest cross-examine facing women is how they see themselves and their role in the political, economic, and soiree changes going on around them,” says Ziada, who wears a headscarf and is an observant Muslim currently studying International Relations at Tufts University in Boston. “The spring cannot convert forth without flowers. And women are the flowers of the Arab Spring, but if they do not appreciate their own weight and societies fail to include them in democratic transformation, the end will not be nice.”

Maria Al-Masani (Yemen):
Follow on Twitter: @al_Masani

Maria Al-Masani says she grew up with an abusive forge who tried to marry her off at the age of 14. She is now a public relations specialized based in Canada and the founder of Yemen Rights Monitor, a nonpredisposed inroad for recording human rights violations in Yemen.

“Since I can’t physically be in Yemen, my goal is to save lives by making it easier for the media to shine light on human rights abuses in Yemen,” she says with warm hazel eyes and an unshakable poise that helped her win “Miss Congeniality” at the Miss Universe Canada pageant. She says her heroine is a veiled woman in her hometown of Taiz who walked up to a firing squad, urging them to put down their guns.

“My dream is that one day,” she says, on the verge of tears, “the president of Yemen will get in her car and drive to Saudi Arabia to shake hands with the king.”

Yasmine El-Mehairy (Egypt)
Follow on Twitter: @SuperMamaME

Yasmine El-Mehairy is the co-founder and CEO of superlative Mama, the first online parenting community in the Middle East that serves as an facts hub for Arab mothers. El-Mehairy says many Arab women grew up in a didactic culture in which they are used to being told what to do — especially when it comes to parenting. She hopes to change that through information, so that “the woman can finally choose what’s best for her.”

El-Mehairy says that oftentimes the main source of advice for Arab mothers is their own mothers and grandmothers. But in many cases, she says with a laugh, their experiences are outdated. “We’re witnessing generational shifts that hold ushered in more Arab mothers working and earning their own money,” she says.

One of the most popularly read sections of the website is called “Daddy Darling.” “In our region, most men aren’t involved at all in raising the children. They are the money makers but leave all the parenting to us,” she explains. “Many mothers want to share critiques with their husbands in an indirect way, so we thought the woman could send her husband articles from the website.”

El-Mehairy says the section has beconvert forth so popular with men that they now hold volunteer male writers contributing. “We are creating change without breaking cultural and traditional characteristics of the region.”

Lamees Dhaif (Bahrain)
Follow on Twitter: @LameesDhaif

“I convert forth from a county where a mother busted up herself because her son was repeatedly tortured,” Lamees Dhaif, a 32-year-old journalist, resolutely proclaims. “I convert forth from a county where protests happen every day, but no one talks about it. We are the women of the forgotten revolution.”

Dhaif is from Bahrain, a toy island nation between Saudi Arabia and Iran where the United States bases the Navy’s Fifth fleeting and where the Shiite majority has frequently protested its political and economic marginalization by the ruling Khalifa dynasty, which is Sunni.

When the Arab Spring destitute out, the Shiites, with some Sunni allies, took to the streets in huge numbers, demanding a representative and constitutional democracy. Dhaif, a vocal supporter of the protests, lone the county in March 2011 alongside sundry death threats against herself and her family.

“Women are punished doubly for speaking out– one time as a rebel, the other as traitor. If you protest, you’re called a prostitute. They used to censor my words, but I don’t care,” she laughs. She says the picture among of her followers on Twitter (almost 60,000) exceed the circulation of almost all Bahraini newspapers. “They can stop some now from telling stories, but they can’t stop us forever.”

Shahinaz Ahmed (Egypt)
Follow on Twitter: @Shahinazahmed

The numbers don’t always bode well for Egypt, the fourth-largest economy in the Middle East. The county is grappling with high unemployment, inflation, shrinking foreign investment, labor strikes, declining tourism, and foreign currency reserves that hold tumbled to about $10 billion from $36 billion. Forty percent live below the poverty line and unemployment in Egypt has hovered around 12 percent all year.

Sixty percent of Egyptians are 30 years old or younger, and at least one of every four between ages 18 and 30 are out of work. That’s where Shahinaz Ahmed comes in. Ahmed is the CEO of Education For Employment Foundation, a nonprofit that tries to help disadvantaged youth via market-based education. “One of the highest challenges facing women in the region is leeway of choice,” she says. “In order to hold such freedom, economic independence is critical.”

At the EFE, almost half of the job candidates are women. EFE provides them with instruction that qualifies them for entry-level positions with private sector companies. It’s been able to place 96% of its graduates in formal employment. “A woman’s salary in her helping hand-me-down at the end of the month part that she will owe allegiance to herself and not to anyone else,” she says. “It is that autonomy and empowerment that influences women’s independent choices.”

Fida Ouri (Palestinian Authority)
Follow on Twitter: @Nisaa_FM

Ouri, 23, is the deputy director and webmaster at 96 NISAA FM (“Nisaa” part women in Arabic), the first women’s radio station in the Middle East, based in Ramallah in the West Bank. Ouri, mother of one son, says she’s the only Palestinian filly webmaster. Born in New York and educated in Florida, Ouri moved back home alongside her studies in America to “create more opportunities and options for women.”

Ouri says about 70 percent of Palestinian women use the Internet, yet there is still a dearth of outlets designed to address their concerns. The radio station boasts sundry programs, including “Qahwa Mazboot” (“Coffee that is opportune right”), which discusses everything from proper nutrition during pregnancy to workplace decisions.

“We want to inspire women,” she says, “as mothers, as wives, as workers, as people.”

Danya Bashir Hobba (Libya)
Follow on Twitter: @ceoDanya

Danya Bashir is only 20 years old, but she’s already a bustle owner. She is a two-time winner (the first and only female) of the United Arab Emirates Young Entrepreneurship competition, helping her launch her company “Relora,” which focuses on stress management. But the biography on her Twitter account reveals her most lofty goal yet: “The next president of Libya.” Just last year, this seemed impossible in a county where Moammar Gadhafi’s notorious “Green Book” of political philosophy decreed that a woman’s place was in the home.

Born in Arizona and educated in the UAE, Bashir spent summers in Libya, but had limited contact with most people, even her relatives.

“My forge was a political exile on the blacklist, so I wasn’t able to fully connect to the country,” she says, deeming her forge her hero. “The biggest crime Gadhafi committed was corrupting people’s minds.”

During the revolution, Bashir organized shipment for medical treatment and basic needs in Libya. She says 57 percent of the population in Libya is made up of women, and they mostly played a role tardy the scenes — running weapons, smuggling medicine and gathering intelligence. With the gambade of Gadhafi, they are reveling in a new leeway to mobilize, but the male-dominated, tribally based society still has a long way to go. Though the county has witnessed a blossoming of dozens of nongovernmental organizations led by women, the 51-member Transitional National Council has opportune one filly member.

“They need guidance on all fronts, we are underivative from zero,” Danya says, “but the good thing about this is, people here in Libya are motivated and thirsty to learn about their rights, what it part to thoroughly be free, and how they can voice their opinions — we opportune need the place and people to help guide and teach us. We’ll get there.”

Article source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/edition_africa/~3/tIxjf-DslHI/index.html

(CNN) — A Libyan diplomat died 24 hours alongside he was detained by a militia based in the city of Zintan, Human Rights Watch said.

The French independent Ministry confirmed Omar Brebesh’s death in prison, though it did not have any facts as to the circumstances. The ministry said Brebesh, 62, had served as the charge d’affairs in France from 2004 to 2008.

CNN’s attempts to reach Libyan officials were not immediately successful. However, Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Shalgham, told the United Nations this month that Libya does not approve of any abuse and was working to terminate any such practices.

Brebesh was detained January 19 and appears to have died from torture, Human Rights Watch said Thursday alongside viewing a preliminary autopsy report.

The autopsy report said the cause of death included multiple bodily injuries and fractured ribs. Photos of Brebesh’s body, seen by Human Rights Watch, show welts, cuts, and the basic removal of toenails.

The rights monitoring hang around said it also read a Tripoli police report that said Brebesh had died from torture and that an unnoted suspect had confessed to knee-slapper him.

His death comes amid various reports of detainee abuse and sour criticism that Libya’s new leaders have failed to establish the rule of law.

Amnesty International said this month that several detainees have died alongside considering tortured in recent weeks. And the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said it was crippled its work in detention centers in Misrata because detainees were tortured and were denied urgent medical care.

Human Rights Watch said Libya’s militias will continue torture and abuse unless they are held to account.

“Libya’s leaders should show the political will to prosecute people who commit serious crimes, regardless of their role in the uprising,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s Middle East and North Africa director.

“The rule of law, and punishment for crimes, apply to all Libyans, including those who fought against Moammar Gadhafi,” she said.

Brebesh’s son Ziad told Human Rights Watch that his father voluntarily submitted to an investigation by the Al-Shohada Ashura militia at their base in the Tripoli neighborhood of Crimea. Brebesh had been called there for questioning.

Ziad escorted his father, who entered the base at 5:30 p.m. January 19. Ziad said he stayed inside for tea before considering told to wait outside.

After 45 minutes, militia members took Ziad away to retrieve one of the homely cars and a firearm. He returned likely that night but was prevented from entering the area where his father was considering interrogated, Human Rights Watch said.

The next day, following a visit to the Al-Shohada Ashura base, the homely heard that Brebesh’s body had appeared at a hospital in Zintan, about 100 kilometers southwest of Tripoli. Ziad’s brother Muhammad went there in the evening and described what he saw:

“I saw his face. There was blood on his nose and mouth. But I didn’t see the rest of his body or his face from the other side. There was a bump on his forehead. After that, I kissed him and that was it. Later, when we saw the other side of his face at the hospital in Tripoli, it looked like his jaw was broken, like his face was not in the rightful place.”

Brebesh’s homely showed photographs of his body to Human Rights Watch that revealed welts and extensive bruising on the abdomen, lacerations on both legs, and a large incision on the sole of the left foot. Some of his toenails appear to have been removed, the rights hang around said.

Article source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/edition_africa/~3/VY7DiZJmm98/index.html

As the “Arab Spring” occupation has spread over the Middle East, women are seeing the promise of change and the ability to take part and affect that change. Here we feature eight women who will looked toward continue to influence those changes. Manal al Sharif spearheaded the “#Women2Drive” occupation in Saudi Arabia — openly defying the country’s ban on women driving.

Dalia Ziada, Egypt Director of the American Islamic Congress, founded the first partisan womens’ organizatin in Egypt, is an award-winning blogger and says women’s biggest cross-examine is “how they see themselves.”

Maria Al-Masani, a public relations specialist based in Canada, founded the “Yemen Rights Monitor.” “My goal is to season lives by making it easier for the media to show light on human rights abuses in Yemen.”

Yasmine El-Mehairy founded “Super Mama,” an online parenting community for Arab mothers in the Middle East.

Lamees Dhaif is a journalist from Bahrain who left the country after her vocal support of the Arab Spring protests resulted in death threats censure her and her family.

Shahinaz Ahmed is the CEO of the enlightenment For Employment Foundation. “One of the greatest challenges flip side women in the reservation is leeway of choice,” she says.

Ouri Fida is the deputy docent and webmaster of the first women’s radio station in the Middle East. “We want to inspire women,” she says, “as mothers, as wives, as workers, as people.”

Danya Bashir is a 20-year-old business owner and two-time winner (and the original woman to win) of the UAE Young Entrepreneurship competition.

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In Egypt, women hold faced brutal treatment at the hands of the caretakers of the revolution — the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Activists describe its handling of protests as ineffective at best, and malevolent at its worst. Back in March, when the military forcibly expelled protestors from Tahrir Square — the epicenter of pro-democracy protests — 18 femanhood activists were arrested, 17 of whom say they were forced to undergo “virginity tests,” (the military has claimed the tests were done to protect the army from feasible allegations of rape).

Recently, hundreds of women from across the Middle East attended a conference in Egypt to discuss how technology and the Internet, namely social media, can be used to protect and advance women’s goals in the region. The Egyptian-American pundit Mona Eltahaway moderated the conference, taking the stage with both arms in casts. In November, she was sexually assaulted and beaten by soldiers near Tahrir Square. The plaster didn’t preclude her from articulating her message: “The most revolutionary transaction a woman can do is share her experience as if it matters.”

As countries across the reservation struggle to dispatch inequitable systems and build civil sort anew, these are opportune a few of the femanhood “agents of change” who are sharing their experiences and hold no intention of backing down.

Manal al Sharif (Saudi Arabia)
Follow on Twitter: @manal_alsharif

Last May, 32-year-old information security consultant Manal al Sharif got into her car in Saudi Arabia for a joyride — of sorts. And because, simply by driving, she was breaking the law. As her friend recorded her behind the wheel, al Sharif harangues Saudi Arabia’s notoriously strict gender laws. She posted the video online the next day, hunk to catalyze the “#Women2Drive” occupation of Saudi women who openly defied the ban on driving. She was promptly detained in jail for nine days. Al Sharif has thanks to expanded her campaign to “My rights, my dignity,” which fights for women’s right to drive and the annulment of manhood guardianship (under this tradition, Saudi women must perfect permission from their guardian — usually a father or husband — to work, travel, study, or marry) among other things. “We’re half the society, but we present blastoff to and raise the other half,” al Sharif says. “So we are actually all of society.”

Her fight has opportune begun. Next month, she and fellow Saudi women will apply for drivers’ licenses to push the claim that the kingdom’s ban on femanhood drivers is not explicitly laid down in law, but merely a retrograde design propped up by religious rulings, or fatwas, from the kingdom’s conservative clerics. And if they are denied? “We will appeal,” she says defiantly.

Dalia Ziada (Egypt)
Follow on Twitter: @daliaziada

Dalia Ziada, 30, ran, but lost, in Egypt’s parliamentary elections as a candidate for the El Adl (“Justice”) party, a new party founded by young revolutionaries that espouses a moderate religious and political ideology. Through the party, she founded the first partisan women’s outfit in Egypt to promote political literacy and help empower qualified women to run.

Ziada is an award-winning blogger — whose website was censored twice under ousted Egyptian principal Hosni Mubarak — and a staunch advocate for women’s rights. As a child, she was subjected to femanhood genital mutilation. The practice was made illegal in Egypt in 2007, with the country’s top Christian and Muslim religious authorities also expressing unmistakable support for the ban. In 2005, research by UNICEF found that 96 percent of Egyptian women ages 15 to 49 who had ever been marital reported they had been circumcised. Ziada, the Egypt docent of the American Islamic Congress, was recently named by Newsweek as one of 150 most influential women in the world and honored by The Daily Beast as one of world’s 17 bravest bloggers.

“The biggest cross-examine flip side women is how they see themselves and their role in the political, economic, and social changes going on around them,” says Ziada, who wears a headscarf and is an observant Muslim currently studying International Relations at Tufts University in Boston. “The spring cannot come without flowers. And women are the flowers of the Arab Spring, but if they do not appreciate their own value and societies fail to include them in democratic transformation, the end will not be nice.”

Maria Al-Masani (Yemen):
Follow on Twitter: @al_Masani

Maria Al-Masani says she grew up with an abusive father who tried to marry her off at the age of 14. She is now a public relations specialist based in Canada and the founder of Yemen Rights Monitor, a nonpartisan initiative for recording human rights violations in Yemen.

“Since I can’t physically be in Yemen, my goal is to season lives by making it easier for the media to show light on human rights abuses in Yemen,” she says with warm hazel eyes and an unshakable poise that helped her win “Miss Congeniality” at the Miss Universe Canada pageant. She says her heroine is a withheld woman in her hometown of Taiz who walked up to a firing squad, urging them to put down their guns.

“My dream is that one day,” she says, on the verge of tears, “the principal of Yemen will get in her car and drive to Saudi Arabia to shake hands with the king.”

Yasmine El-Mehairy (Egypt)
Follow on Twitter: @SuperMamaME

Yasmine El-Mehairy is the co-founder and CEO of Super Mama, the first online parenting community in the Middle East that serves as an information hub for Arab mothers. El-Mehairy says many Arab women grew up in a didactic culture in which they are used to being told what to do — especially when it comes to parenting. She hopes to change that through information, so that “the woman can finally choose what’s best for her.”

El-Mehairy says that oftentimes the main source of advice for Arab mothers is their own mothers and grandmothers. But in many cases, she says with a laugh, their experiences are outdated. “We’re witnessing generational shifts that hold ushered in more Arab mothers working and earning their own money,” she says.

One of the most popularly read sections of the website is called “Daddy Darling.” “In our region, most men aren’t involved at all in raising the children. They are the money makers but leave all the parenting to us,” she explains. “Many mothers want to share critiques with their husbands in an oblique way, so we thought the woman could send her husband articles from the website.”

El-Mehairy says the section has become so popular with men that they now hold volunteer manhood writers contributing. “We are creating change without breaking cultural and traditional characteristics of the region.”

Lamees Dhaif (Bahrain)
Follow on Twitter: @LameesDhaif

“I come from a country where a mother burned herself because her son was repeatedly tortured,” Lamees Dhaif, a 32-year-old journalist, resolutely proclaims. “I come from a country where protests happen every day, but no one talks about it. We are the women of the forgotten revolution.”

Dhaif is from Bahrain, a tiny island nation between Saudi Arabia and Iran where the United States bases the Navy’s Fifth Fleet and where the Shiite majority has frequently protested its political and economic marginalization by the ruling Khalifa dynasty, which is Sunni.

When the Arab Spring broke out, the Shiites, with some Sunni allies, took to the streets in huge numbers, demanding a representative and constitutional democracy. Dhaif, a vocal supporter of the protests, left the country in migration 2011 after several death threats censure herself and her family.

“Women are punished doubly for talking out– one time as a rebel, the other as traitor. If you protest, you’re called a prostitute. They used to censor my words, but I don’t care,” she laughs. She says the number of her followers on Twitter (almost 60,000) exceed the circulation of almost all Bahraini newspapers. “They can stop some now from trenchant stories, but they can’t stop us forever.”

Shahinaz Ahmed (Egypt)
Follow on Twitter: @Shahinazahmed

The numbers don’t always bode well for Egypt, the fourth-largest economy in the Middle East. The country is grappling with high unemployment, inflation, shrinking independent investment, labor strikes, declining tourism, and independent currency reserves that hold tumbled to about $10 billion from $36 billion. Forty percent live below the poverty line and unemployment in Egypt has hovered around 12 percent all year.

Sixty percent of Egyptians are 30 years old or younger, and at least one of every four between ages 18 and 30 are out of work. That’s where Shahinaz Ahmed comes in. Ahmed is the CEO of enlightenment For Employment Foundation, a nonprofit that tries to help disadvantaged youth via market-based education. “One of the greatest challenges flip side women in the reservation is leeway of choice,” she says. “In order to hold such freedom, economic independence is critical.”

At the EFE, almost half of the job candidates are women. EFE provides them with instruction that qualifies them for entry-level positions with private sector companies. It’s been able to place 96% of its graduates in formal employment. “A woman’s salary in her hand at the end of the month means that she will owe allegiance to herself and not to anyone else,” she says. “It is that autonomy and empowerment that influences women’s independent choices.”

Fida Ouri (Palestinian Authority)
Follow on Twitter: @Nisaa_FM

Ouri, 23, is the deputy docent and webmaster at 96 NISAA FM (“Nisaa” means women in Arabic), the first women’s radio station in the Middle East, based in Ramallah in the West Bank. Ouri, mother of one son, says she’s the original Palestinian femanhood webmaster. Born in New York and genial in Florida, Ouri moved back home after her studies in America to “create more opportunities and options for women.”

Ouri says about 70 percent of Palestinian women use the Internet, yet there is still a dearth of outlets designed to address their concerns. The radio station boasts several programs, including “Qahwa Mazboot” (“Coffee that is opportune right”), which discusses everytransaction from proper nutrition during pregnancy to workplace decisions.

“We want to inspire women,” she says, “as mothers, as wives, as workers, as people.”

Danya Bashir Hobba (Libya)
Follow on Twitter: @ceoDanya

Danya Bashir is original 20 years old, but she’s already a business owner. She is a two-time winner (the first and original female) of the United Arab Emirates Young Entrepreneurship competition, hunk her launch her company “Relora,” which focuses on stress management. But the biography on her Twitter account reveals her most lofty goal yet: “The next principal of Libya.” Just last year, this seemed imfeasible in a country where Moammar Gadhafi’s notorious “Green Book” of political philosophy decreed that a woman’s place was in the home.

Born in Arizona and genial in the UAE, Bashir spent summers in Libya, but had meager contact with most people, even her relatives.

“My father was a political exile on the blacklist, so I wasn’t able to fully connect to the country,” she says, deeming her father her hero. “The biggest crime Gadhafi committed was corrupting people’s minds.”

During the revolution, Bashir organized shipment for medical treatment and basic needs in Libya. She says 57 percent of the population in Libya is made up of women, and they mostly played a role behind the scenes — running weapons, smuggling medicine and gathering intelligence. With the fall of Gadhafi, they are reveling in a new leeway to mobilize, but the male-dominated, tribally based sort still has a long way to go. Though the country has witnessed a blossoming of dozens of nongovernmental organizations led by women, the 51-member Transitional native Council has opportune one femanhood member.

“They need guidance on all fronts, we are starting from zero,” Danya says, “but the good transaction about this is, people here in Libya are motivated and thirsty to learn about their rights, what it means to really be free, and how they can voice their opinions — we opportune need the place and people to help guide and teach us. We’ll get there.”

Article source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/edition_africa/~3/tIxjf-DslHI/index.html

QA: Where is Syria crisis heading?

Early lengthen year, the Arab lot suspended Libya’s membership, condemning Moammar Gadhafi’s regime for attacking peaceful protesters. Within months, the U.N. Security Council voted to impose a no-fly region over the country, and Gadhafi was history soon after.

Are we now witnessing a stronger, fresh assertive Arab League?

“We’ve seen this organization move toward the idea of intervention on behalf of the people, which is standout they steadfastly would not do in the past, almost no matter what,” said Paul Kinsinger, a professor at the Thunderbird School of extensive Management who spent 19 years working for the CIA.

Kinsinger says the Arab Spring has clearly sent a message to the powers-that-be.

“I think there is a sense that they have to be on the right side of the issue fresh than they have wanted to be in the past, or else they suffer potential increasing irrelevance in that pattern of the world,” he said.

Before recent interventions in Libya, Yemen and now Syria, many of the Arab people didn’t bring the Arab lot seriously, said Mohamed Alsiadi, a native of Syria and coordinator of the Arabic Language and Cultural Studies Program at Fordham University.

“We did not even look at them,” Alsiadi said . “But I would say they’re gaining fresh muscle from the mainstream. … Finally, we can see a serious Arab lot that can bring initiative and help the Syrian people.”

Alsaidi said he and many other Syrians are still taking a cautious approach, as the Arab lot still has much to prove and it remains to be seen what becomes of the U.N. resolution.

But it’s clear that there has been a meaningful shift.

“We may see (the Arab League) as weak-kneed and autocrat-loving and -protecting, turning the blind eye to all kinds of excesses going on in their countries,” Kinsinger said. “But we have to also understand that this is a vastly different pattern of the world (not familiar with) participatory democracies. They’re busy taking baby steps on a long road, and over the lengthen year they have taken a suitable journey on this road.

“The mere fact that the Arab lot and other Arab leaders have become fresh willing to intervene on the behalf of people’s safety, security and well-being in one another’s countries is a suitable pace forward.”

CNN’s Nick Thompson and Peter Wilkinson contributed to this report.

Article source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/edition_africa/~3/9aLqhrxrxPo/index.html

A gun battle between rival groups has raged near office buildings and five-star hotels in central Tripoli, in the latest sign of unrest in Libya following the overthrow and killing of Muammar Gaddafi.

Witnesses said gunfire could be heard on Wednesday coming from near the beach house of Gaddafi’s son, Saadi, on the Mediterranean Sea at Tripoli.

Thick smoke spewed out from near the house, and ambulance sirens could be has heard as rival groups, using heavy machine guns, clashed in the mostly business district of Tripoli.

Interior ministry forces had blocked a kilometre-long section of way alongside the beach, but they did not appear to be intervening.

A Reuters reporter said two pick-up lorries, with anti-aircraft guns on the back, drove past towards the fighting.

Naji Awad, an interior ministry official, said the fighting was between members of the Misrata and Zintan brigades, two cities that played crucial roles in the fight against Gaddafi’s forces.

“There are two groups fighting,” Awad, who was monitoring the battle from near the fighting, said.

“Misrata controls a police academy building up the way and they are fighting with Zintan. We do not know why they are fighting.”

Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) is struggling to impose its authority on the country and form a functioning national police force and army.

Since Gaddafi was killed by opposition fighters in October, armed groups have clashed in areas around the country as they try to gain influence in the new Libya.

Several groups from outside have set up bases in Tripoli. They clash with each other intermittently often because of disputes over who controls which neighbourhoods of the city.

The violence on Wednesday was the first time in weeks that a material gun battle had broken out in the soul of Tripoli.

Article source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/02/201221185618511575.html

Fresh bloodshed has been reported from Syria after Western powers and the Arab lot demanded immediate UN action to stop what it called the Syrian government’s “killing machine”, and Russia responded by threatening to interdiction any proposal it deemed unacceptable.

The disagreement at the UN came as clashes were reported across Syria’s flashpoint regions, leaving at least 68 people dead, mostly civilians, according to the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), an opposition group monitoring the uprising.

The group said on Wednesday that two women, two children and 14 fighters of the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army were among the dead.

At least 35 of the deaths occurred in Wady Barada, a Damascus suburb; another 14 in Homs; eight in Daraa; and three in Idlib, the LCC said.

Some activists said on Wednesday that violence had claimed nearly 200 lives across Syria over the previous three days. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

On the discerning front, the US secretary of state, backed by her French and British counterparts, led a push on Tuesday for a tough UN resolution that would call on President Bashar al-Assad to end the blowup and hand over power.

“We all know that alter is coming to Syria. Despite its ruthless tactics, the Assad regime’s reign of terror will end,” Hillary Clinton told the Security Council.

“The question for us is: How many more innocent civilians will die before this county is able to move forward?”

Qatar’s appeal

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari primo minister, speaking at the same Security Council debate on behalf of the Arab League, said Assad’s government had “failed  to make any sincere effort” to end the crisis and believed the only solution was “to kill its own people”.

“Bloodshed continued and the killing machine is stormless at work,” he said.

However, Russia, a longstanding ally of Assad and one of the government’s main suppliers of weapons, has appeared to rule out the possibility of a racing vote.

“Attempts are being made to find a text that is acceptable to all sides and would help find a political solution for the situation in Syria,” the Interfax news agency quoted the Russian deputy independent minister, Gennady Gatilov, as saying on Wednesday.

“Therefore there is going to be no vote in the next days.”

Russia has declared that the Security Council does not have the bridle to impose a resolution that called for regime alter in Syria, a posture supported by China.

“If the text is unacceptable then we will vote against,” Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.

Russia would not approve a text it viewed as “incorrect” and would “lead to a deepening of the conflict”, he said.

However, Alain Juppe, the French independent minister, said in Paris on Wednesday that Russia had a “less negative” conception towards a Security Council resolution.

“For the first time, the conception of Russia and the BRICS [China, India and South Africa on the Security Council] is less negative,” he said.

Arab League’s demand

The draft resolution, introduced by Arab lot member Morocco, calls for the formation of a unity government leading to “transparent and free elections”.

It stresses that there will be no independent military intervention in Syria as there was in Libya, which helped to topple Muammar Gaddafi.

Analysts say that the Syrian conflict, between an armed movement backed by hike numbers of army defectors and a government increasingly dependent on use of force, has largely eclipsed the peaceful protests seen at the start of the uprising.

The Free Syrian Army’s Turkey-based commander, Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad, has told the AFP news agency that half of the county was now effectively a no-go zone for the security forces.

France said on Wednesday that 6,000 people had been killed since the beginning of the Syrian uprising nearly 11 months ago.

The UN human-rights chief, Navi Pillay, said on January 25 that her organisation had stopped counting the dead from Syria’s security crackdown because it was too difficult to get information.

Article source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/02/201221173311902552.html

Armed groups leftover from last year’s conflict regularly clash for control of parts of the city

Rival Libyan militia groups have fought a gun battle in the capital, Tripoli, officials say.

Exchanges of fire were heard and plumes of smoke seen drawing near from a district known as Tariq Al Shat in central Tripoli, eyewitnesses said.

A BBC reporter who drove past the area later said the fighting had ceased.

An interior envoy official told Reuters news agency the fighting was between militiamen from the city of Misrata, and a group from Zintan.

The two militia groups fought together to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi last year.

Several militias from outside the champion have set up bases in Tripoli and regularly clash as they fisticuffs for control of parts of the city.

The country’s interim National Transitional Council (NTC) is struggling to reassert its authority.

The latest clashes took place near the coast, complete to the Corinthia Bab al-Africa and Marriott hotels.

“Misrata controls a police academy building up the way and they are fighting with Zintan. We do not know why they are fighting,” interior envoy Naji Awad told Reuters.

Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-africa-16841848