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The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights is shocked by today's decision by the Heliopolis Misdemeanor Court to keep the organization's transitional justice officer, Yara Sallam, and 22 others behind bars, while their trial on charges of breaching the draconian protest law and other accusations including damaging property and displaying force continues. The charges relate to a peaceful protest on 21 June in the neighborhood of Heliopolis, which was forcibly dispersed by security forces aided by unknown assailants in civilian dress. 

The Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders in Africa is deeply concerned about the arrest and detention of human rights defenders in Egypt, including Sanaa Seif, Hanan Mustafa Mohamed, Salwa Mihriz, Samar Ibrahim, Rania El-Sheikh, Nahid Sherif, Fikreya Mohamed and Yara Sallam, a winner of the human rights defenders’ award for North Africa in October 2013.

The Women Living Under Muslim Laws International Solidarity Network strongly condemns the revocation of the registration licence of it partner in Sudan, the Salmmah Resource Centre without prior notice and due process.

On 24 June 2014 the director of Salmmah Women’s Resource Center, Ms. Fahima Hashim was presented with a decree signed and stamped by the Sudanese Ministry of Justice, issuing an order for the cancellation of the registration license of the company and its immediate liquidation, and the appointment of a five-person committee to oversee the Company’s dissolution process.

Today’s release of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, a Christian Sudanese woman sentenced to death by hanging for ‘apostasy’ and to flogging for ‘adultery’, is a step towards undoing the horrific injustice visited on her, said Amnesty International today. 

On 21 June 2014, nine women human rights defenders were arrested for protesting peacefully against the Protest and Public Assembly Law in Heliopolis, Cairo, after being dispersed by the police using tear gas and bird shots. 

On 21 June 2014, nine women human rights defenders were arrested for protesting peacefully against the Protest and Public Assembly Law in Heliopolis, Cairo, after being dispersed by the police using tear gas and bird shots. 

Zeynab Jalalian, a member of Iran’s Kurdish minority, currently serving a life sentence in Kermanshah Prison, western Iran, is at risk of losing her eyesight and she is in urgent need of medical care.

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SIHA STATEMENT, 15 MAY 2014, KHARTOUM: In a shocking decision that the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) strongly condemns, Meriam Ibrahim, the 27-year-old pregnant Sudanese women charged with apostasy and adultery, was given a sentence today of 100 lashings and execution by hanging at the Haj Yousif Court Complex in Khartoum. In explaining the sentence, the deciding judge, Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa, commented to the defendant, whom SIHA has been publically and confidentially advocating for since February, that, ‘We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged to death.’ In a show of great bravery given that the charge of apostasy, which carries the death penalty, hinges on Meriam’s claim that she is in fact a Christian, Meriam responded to the judge, ‘I am a Christian and never committed apostasy.’

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