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Podcast

Repression & Political Prisoners in Egypt—From Tahrir Square to Tora Prison

Join us for a panel discussion on the brutal repression of political dissenters in Egypt since 2016 and how to build solidarity. Since 2016, the tyrannical regime of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has built 30 new prisons to house the estimated 70,000+ political prisoners incarcerated since Sisi seized power in 2013. Egyptian civil society activists and journalists have been especially targeted. But the Sisi regime also routinely imprisons anyone whose speech, writing, or actions express the slightest criticism or deviation from its official line: be they doctors speaking out about deficiencies in Covid-19 treatment, lawyers denouncing corruption, Facebook posters or Tik-Tok influencers. Prisoners of conscience are disappeared, held in solitary confinement without trial, and denied access to food, health care, and family visits. Torture is widespread. Despite this, Western countries continue to maintain warm relations with Egypt. French president Emmanuel Macron recently presented Sisi with his country’s highest public award, the Légion d’honneur. Trump famously referred to Sisi as his “favorite dictator,” but there is no sign that US-Egyptian relations will be any different under President Biden: just days after Egyptian security forces detained family members of human rights activist and dual US-Egyptian national Mohamed Soltan, the State Department announced it is considering a sale of missiles to Egypt worth $197 million. Please join us for an urgent discussion about this situation and how to build solidarity with Egyptian activists facing this horrific repression. Speakers: Mohamed Soltan, human rights activist and former political prisoner in Egypt. Mohamed was imprisoned in the crackdown on pro-democracy activists following the July 3, 2013 coup d'état. He engaged in a 489-day hunger strike to protest his unjust imprisonment and was released in May 2015. He is a co-founder of the Freedom Initiative, a human rights organization dedicated to the release of political prisoners in the Middle East. @soltan Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of the organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). Previously, she served as executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch (2004 – 2020), overseeing the work of the division in 19 countries. She has led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, accountability, legal reform, migrant workers, and human rights. @sarahleah1 Hussein Baoumi, researcher on Egypt and Libya for Amnesty International. Prior to joining Amnesty International, he was a fellow with the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, Programs Director at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms in Cairo, and an international fellow with Dejusticia, a Bogotá-based organization dedicated to social justice and human rights in Colombia and the Global South. @husseinmagdy16 ---------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by Internationalism From Below, the Arab Studies Institute, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), and Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and organizing work. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/EY-CP1_BURs Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

More Episodes

May 18, 2026

Ukraine’s Anti-Imperialist Struggle

February 24th marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine. Right now, it is bombing the country’s energy system, cutting off heat and electricity for millions in the depths of a bitterly cold winter. At the same time, the Trump administration is trying to bully Ukraine into a land for peace settlement that rewards Putin’s aggression and, with the willing collaboration of Ukraine’s oligarchs, puts the country up for sale to Western multinationals. Join this webinar to hear about Ukraine’s struggle.

Speakers:

Artem Chapeye is the author of Ordinary People Don’t Carry Guns (Washington Post 2025 best non-fiction) and The Ukraine. He is a writer, translator, activist, and, after the 2022 invasion, an enlisted member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine .

Tanya Vyhovsky is a Ukrainian American, Vermont State Senator, member of Vermont’s Progressive Party, and also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Denys Bondar is a native of Ukraine and an associate professor of physics at Tulane University as well as a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Network and Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction.

May 18, 2026

We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities

Join editors and contributors of We Are Each Other's Liberation, a major anthology that illuminates historical and contemporary solidarities between Black and Asian feminists.

A collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective, We Are Each Other's Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Bringing together organizers, artists, journalists, poets, novelists, and more, this collection introduces readers to new ways of understanding and reflecting on race and feminism.

Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today—We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

Get a copy of We Are Each Other's Liberation from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2519-we-are-each-other-s-liberation

Speakers:

Rachel Kuo is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective, which engages intersectional feminist politics grounded within Asian diasporic communities.

Jaimee A. Swift is the creator and executive director of Black Women Radicals, dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender-expansive people’s radical activism in Africa and in the African diaspora.

TD Tso is a feminist writer, editor, cultural organizer, and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective.

Pratibha Parmar’s films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice. Her practice engages the image as a site of struggle—challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films are a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures. Pratibha is a published author and editor of of several anthologies. The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Sming Sming Books published, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender: Visual Justice in the Filmmaking of Pratibha Parmar in 2025.

Margo Okazawa-Rey is an activist-educator working on issues of militarism for over 30 years. She has long-standing activist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, with Du Re Bang and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, respectively. She is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, its US group. She also hosts feminist radio program Women’s Magazine, broadcast on KPFA Berkeley California station of the Pacifica Radio network, and is known as DJ MOR Love and Joy, transnational feminist virtual dance party DJ.

Dr. Beverley Bryan is a lifelong educator and political activist, who is co-author of the classic book Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (1985) which detailed the experiences of Black women and their fight for equality from post-war up to 1980s Britain. Dr. Bryan was a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD); a Saturday school organiser, a mainstream primary school teacher who pioneered Black history teaching in her classroom in the 1970s and a member of the British Black Panther Movement. A lifelong educator, Dr. Bryan is a retired Professor of Language Education from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

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