Birthday Teas

Further to the post below:

It was a joy having Monika Nguyen stay for the week and now we are preparing for:

4 new creative writing courses starting next week at Diwan and Darb 1718
the next Up On the Roof open stage night on April 7th at Darb 1718 (the last one on March 3rd was a fabulous success and received a great review in one of the notable papers here)
working with several private students on novels
collaborating with film maker Marouan Omara and creating poetry films
a birthday tea with two octogenarian writers from Cornwall who will revisit Cairo sixty five years after they celebrated their 21st birthdays here!!!

I am also waiting to hear about funding for my trip to Romania in May for an International Poetry Festival - here's hoping!

Egypt Today

Well the last week has been rather difficult here with increased violence by the military, unlawful arrests, detainments, torture and also attacks by mobs. The military are using the Egyptian Museum as a detainment and torture venue and a new title for a crime has been created 'thuggery' which carries up to life imprisonment and now they are talking about death sentences. Of course in a country of millions there are certainly real 'thugs' and we have see much evidence of this in the looting and street crimes and those that attack protests, but this new crime 'thuggery' is being employed to incarcerate peaceful and innocent people that object to the regime. There is much documented on what I say via human rights organisations and legal institutions who are documenting and confirming information, as well as personal testimonies from those who are not in prison at this point. I will put links at the foot of this entry. But to be brief the military arrested and beat 194 peaceful protesters and even the street sellers and street kids from Tahrir a few days ago and 170 are still detained and some have been sentenced in military courts with no lawyers or jury. This followed an entire night of violence in a Coptic area resulting in 11 dead, 50 critically injured (all these are gunshot wounds from the military) and another 100 injured; also 6 houses were burnt down and 6 recycling businesses. Yesterday the military beat up imams (Muslim religious leader like priests) and used electric shock batons on them.

However, during all this Life does indeed still go on and in fact I am super busy with writing courses - yes bizarre as that sounds. We do what we can here to keep people aware of the atrocities and we are under a midnight curfew still; but we also continue living and doing many of the things that we did. It is insane.

The Zabaleen Project
zabaleen.wordpress.com

Rights groups accuse military police of torturing, detaining activists
www.thedailynewsegypt.com

Egypt: End Torture, Military Trials of Civilians | Human Rights Watch
www.hrw.org

imam beatings http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/351516